Mike Rizzo has repeated several times during his conversations with The Sports Junkies the importance of his young baseball players doing the little things right. That, he has said over and over again, is the difference at this level.
When discussing the Nats' recent nine-game road trip that saw them go 4-5, Washington's general manager had some good things to say about pitching – especially a stellar outing from MacKenzie Gore – and the hitting – James Wood continued to impress and even had a game in which he was intentionally walked four times. But the defense and baserunning lapses clearly had the baseball man's blood pressure higher than average.
"We swung the bats pretty well, I think we played better offensively, period," Rizzo told The Junkies on Wednesady about the trip. "Baserunning's been a big bagaboo of ours, man. We just run into way too many outs and we have to, we have to get better instinctually, on the bases. And I think that we did a little bit better job of that on the West Coast."
Out of 18 players, Statcast has seven Nationals as costing the team runs, seven as neither gaining them any or losing them any, and just four giving them. And the three worst runners (Nathaniel Lowe, Josh Bell, Keibert Ruiz) are all as bad (-3) as the best runner is good (CJ Abrams, +3).
While the hitting can ebb and flow throughout the year, the little things – in addition to that one big thing in pitching – have to stay constant, Rizzo told The Junks.
"Your defense has to be consistent," Rizzo said. "You can't give away extra outs, you can't run into outs, and I think that's how you win those two and one run games that we didn't win in June.
"[You do that] by playing better defense, don't give away extra outs, double-play balls have to be two outs and double-plays. You have to hit the cutoff man, you can't air-mail balls to the plate and have guys take extra bases. These are the things that we've been working on diligently, pregame all season long."
Nine Nationals who have played over 100 innings have a negative fielding run value. Only four of the 16 are positive defenders by that metric, led by Jacob Young (6 in 452 innings). The outfielder also leads the club with six outs above average and is one of six fielders who aren't costing the Nats outs with their defense. Seven of 14 fielders with at least 25 attempts are.
As a team, Washington's -17 defensive runs saved has them as the 8th worst in baseball. For outs above average, their -19 ranks them just one ahead of the worst team in all of baseball. And the cumulative -27 fielding run value is the worst in the game.
"These young players have to get better at the fundamental side of playing the game," Rizzo added.
Listen to the complete conversation, which included an answer about the Nationals being only one of five MLB clubs without a Trajekt Arc machine and talk about Washington having the No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming draft, on the audio player above.