David Huzzard: The cruelty of baseball

The Nationals' 2015 season has been a lesson in the cruelty of baseball. Sure they built a roster full of injury-prone players and they had to expect they'd miss time. The ultimate outcome of how many players and how much time affected the Nationals in far more ways than just when those players were out.

Clint Robinson, Danny Espinosa and Michael A. Taylor were all admirable fill-ins and helped the Nationals get to nine games over .500 and a lead in the division, but then Anthony Rendon, Ryan Zimmerman and Jayson Werth returned from the disabled list and all but Rendon took back their spots in the field. Rendon went to second base instead of third because his injury had pushed Yunel Escobar to third base for the majority of the season and trying to compete in season is no time to ask someone to learn a new position. Not having the ideal defensive lineup is one byproduct of the injuries, but by far not the worst.

The Nationals played well with the reserves in, but they knew they were a better team with the regulars and that the regulars had to get up to game speed with the only way to do so is by playing. The problem is the Nationals had three players returning to the lineup at the exact same time. When that was coupled with the struggles of players that had been playing all season, the Nationals lineup took a nosedive.

Before the season started, the Nats, like all teams, knew they were going to suffer injuries, but the Nats suffered injuries to a degree beyond anyone's imagination. There were times during the season that the Nats had more regulars on the DL than in the lineup, but the cruelest part is that it wasn't the absence of the injured players that hurt the Nats, it was their return.

It is going to take some time for a player coming off the DL to get up to game speed, and that amount of time varies from individual to individual. Some players come off the DL and go on hot streaks while others take a week or two to get up to game speed. Werth, Rendon and Zimmerman have all hit their stride in the last couple of weeks, but it took a month of struggles for them to do it, and the Nats' position in the standings suffered for it.

The defensive inefficiency of having Escobar at third and Rendon at second isn't the only byproduct of the Nats' injuries. As it turns out, the Nats could have used another outfielder, but as the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline was approaching, Werth, Zimmerman and Rendon were already off the DL and Denard Span was starting a rehab assignment. If Mike Rizzo had known what was to follow, it's certain he would have pushed harder to acquire a starting-level outfielder, but with three of the four players back and the fourth close at hand, he did nothing.

In 2014 the Washington Nationals played seventeen games with their projected opening day lineup. Seventeen sounds like an absurdly low number, but the 2015 Washington Nationals played all of two games with their projected opening day lineup. And when you look back at the 2015 season of the Washington Nationals, it is just one of the many things that put the team in the position they are. The front office, the manager, the bullpen and the starting pitchers have all failed this organization at times throughout the year. No one can look at the story of the 2015 Washington Nationals and not say it's been a cruel summer.

David Huzzard blogs about the Nationals at Citizens of Natstown. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidHuzzard. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our regular roster of writers.