Wondering how the Nats' season might have been playing out

The Nationals are wrapping up a homestand this afternoon, with the fourth and final game of their series against the Mets on tap, a marquee pitching matchup between Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom set for this warm afternoon on South Capitol Street.

This is an important stretch of the season to date for the Nats, who through 64 games find themselves in the driver's seat of a competitive race in the National League East. They're in first place at 39-25, with the Braves trying to catch them at 35-30, while the Phillies (29-34) and Mets (28-36) try to make a push before midsummer.

After today's game, the team boards its charter for Atlanta and surprisingly its first meeting of the season with the Braves. The division might well be decided by the 19 head-to-head showdowns between the two rivals, who will play approximately 20 percent of their remaining games this year against each other.

The Nationals have avoided the World Series hangover so far, getting off to a fast start in late March and early April and setting the pace for the rest of the National League East. Oh, they're far from perfect. The bullpen, while better than last season's atrocious group, still is wildly inconsistent, with Sean Doolittle and Daniel Hudson seeing a lot of action and looking quite human. New acquisition Will Harris got off to a slow start after missing much of spring training with an abdominal strain, but Tanner Rainey continues to develop into a quality setup man and sports a 2.52 ERA in 28 appearances.

The rotation has been good, but not great as a whole. Scherzer (7-2, 2.57 ERA) and Stephen Strasburg (6-5, 3.57) have stayed healthy and are making cases for All-Star bids. Patrick Corbin (5-3, 4.23) and Aníbal Sánchez (5-5, 4.09) have been less consistent but still give their team a chance to win most times out. But the real revelation has been Joe Ross, who is finally seizing his opportunity to pitch every fifth day as a starter and has gone 7-1 with a 3.22 ERA.

The lineup has more than held its own, averaging a tick more than five runs per game, third-best in the NL behind the Rockies and Dodgers. This despite Juan Soto batting a shocking .199 (though with 10 homers, 30 RBIs and a .340 on-base percentage).

How have the Nats made up for Soto's struggles and the departure of Anthony Rendon (who's hitting a cool .310/.393/.540 for the 32-32 Angels)? Give general manager Mike Rizzo credit once again for a couple of under-the-radar offseason acquisitions who are paying huge dividends. Starlin Castro (.320 average, team-high 41 RBIs) and Eric Thames (.325 average, team-high 12 homers despite only 132 plate appearances) have been invaluable producers at the plate.

Trea Turner (.312/.368/.482, 17 stolen bases) is really putting it all together, and Victor Robles (.289/.344/.456) is taking that all-important big step up in his sophomore season. Carter Kieboom, meanwhile, is more than holding his own as the starting third baseman, batting .285 while committing only three errors in 49 games.

All in all, it's been a fun 2 1/2 months to start this season, the Nationals proving last year was no fluke and they are viable contenders to repeat as World Series champs.

If only any of this was reality. Of course, it's not.

This is how the Nats are doing in Strat-O-Matic's simulation of the nonexistent 2020 season. Maybe real life would've played out like this if baseball was really being played right now. Or maybe things would be going very differently, with injuries and the hangover from last fall turning this club into an underachieving disappointment.

We'll never know, because those 64 games that have been played by a computer will never be played by real humans. And if the fine folks at Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association refuse to care about something other than winning the economic battle they've been gearing up to fight for several years now, there may be zero games played for real this year.

Even in a best-case scenario, the 2020 season won't resemble a normal MLB season. Not even close. Of course, a non-normal MLB season would be leaps and bounds better than no MLB season. (You really, really, really want to believe the decision-makers on both sides recognize this and ultimately will do something about it.)

Until something happens, though, we're left to wonder what if. We're left to scour the box scores and stat lines from a computer simulation and question whether reality would bear any resemblance to fiction.

This is what it's come to. And at this point, all we can do is hope it's not all we get in 2020.