It isn’t a popular thought, but I believe last year was a major aberration for the Nationals. I think with better health they would have been a 70-win team, maybe a little less.
This year, I expect the Nationals to a much better team overall. The lineup is much more potent with LF/1B Adam Dunn in it even though he will probably fall short of 40 homers. Dunn will give some protection to 3B Ryan Zimmerman, whom I expect to have a strong season with 25-30 home runs and a .285 average. Maybe he will finally win the Gold Glove too. I expect Cristian Guzman to regress to the mean a bit this year. I doubt 1B Nick Johnson will play 100 games, so the outfield log-jam won’t be too bad with Dunn and Josh Willingham getting some time in at first base, though I still expect someone to get traded by end of May. I am not sure if we will see much improvement from Lastings Milledge or Elijah Dukes, though I think the latter has better odds.
I think the pitching will be good at times and pretty bad other times. I don’t expect much out of Daniel Cabrera other than frustration. Scott Olsen is probably going to be mediocre. I expect John Lannan to have about 12 wins, but a higher ERA than last year. I don’t thik Shairon Martis and Jordan Zimmermann will stay up the whole year, but will be decent for rookies. Jason Bergmann probably gets a few starts as well. Overall, I expect the starting pitching to be a little better. I think the bullpen will be okay if they can get to the seventh inning with Saul Rivera, Joe Beimel and Joel Hanrahan.
My prediction — 74-88. If pitching is better than expected, they can flirt with .500. If worse, they probably lose about 92 games. Attendance will be about 2 million, give or take 100,000. Ryan Zimmerman is MVP, Scott Olsen leads with 13 wins.
