Rizzo, Martinez vow to improve "attention to detail" next year

Shortly after noon on Sunday, Mike Rizzo stood in the dugout at Coors Field and gave his end-of-season assessment of the 2018 Nationals, a team that had received plenty of elite performances from individual stars, outscored the opposition by 89 runs and yet barely finished over .500.

What prevented the Nats from winning more games, Rizzo believes, was poor execution of "the little things" that make all the difference in a close contest.

"I think that we have to work on the small aspects of the game," the longtime general manager said. "The attention to detail. Really embracing and realizing every 90 feet is important, every base is crucial."

One hour later, rookie Victor Robles led off the Nationals' final game of the season with a single to center, then was picked off first base.

If every 90 feet indeed is so important, the Nats surely didn't treat them like they were this season. They were picked off 22 times, most in the majors. They took only 140 extra bases (via fly balls, passed balls, wild pitches, balks and defensive indifference), 25th out of 30 clubs. They made 54 outs on the bases, one more than league average.

And none of that takes into account what happened when the Nationals were in the field, not at the plate or on the bases. Washington pitchers picked off only nine opposing runners. Washington's position players combined for a defensive-runs-saved rating of -48, which ranked 25th in baseball. When playing with an infield shift, they actually had a -4 rating, third-worst in the majors and - theoretically - worse than they would have done had they simply played straight-up at all four positions all the time.

So while there are important roster moves that need to be made this winter, the Nationals also need to make sure the players they have returning are better at making fewer outs when they're batting or running and recording more outs when they're pitching or fielding.

And Davey Martinez knows it. He intends to run a different kind of spring training in his second year as manager, one that emphasizes aspects of the game that perhaps weren't emphasized enough in his first year.

"I'll have meetings this winter with the coaches," he said. "And we'll have a different approach to spring training as far as doing fundamentals and what I want to see."

Even if it means keeping everyone out of the batting cage for a day or two along the way.

"Hitting is huge. Everybody wants to hit, hit, hit, hit," Martinez said. "But I don't want to hit every day in spring training. So we're going to take a step back, and some days we won't hit at all. We're just going to work on defense: hitting the cutoff man, turning double plays, turning double plays from shifts positions, pickoff plays. Because I looked this year, and we could have got a lot more outs just by being more assertive with guys on base, picking guys off.

"We're going to do those little things and make sure when the season starts next year we're not going to second guess. We're going to identify guys that can't do it and guys that can."

All of this will be done in attempt to make the biggest bottom-line correction that came to define the 2018 Nationals from the 2017 Nationals: their records in close games.

In 2017, the Nats went 30-21 in one-run games, 7-4 in extra innings. They finished 97-65 overall.

In 2018, the Nats went 18-24 in one-run games, 4-10 in extra innings. They finished 82-80 overall.

Do the math. There's the 15-game difference in record from one season to the next.

"It's really shown us and our fan base and our ownership group and our front office that winning in the big leagues isn't easy," Rizzo said. "It's a difficult task. We've made it look pretty easy the last seven years, and that's a compliment to those guys in the clubhouse. The margin of error is razor thin, and you have to compete pitch to pitch, inning to inning, and really look at the game in such a microcosm that you can't give away outs. You can't give away 90 feet, because every one is crucial.

"Those small details, the attention to detail, turns into big things. Big things turn into losing streaks. Losing streaks turn into you go home at the end of the regular season."