To finish the season, the Washington Nationals went 39-42 at home and 38-43 on the road. Those are similar numbers and on the surface, there does not seem like much to talk about here. However, when you dive deeper, these splits actually become quite fascinating. It was a tale of two halves for the Nationals.
At the start of the season, the Nationals were a very bad home team. Since the Nats were in the Wild Card mix and above .500, we tend to look back at the first 4 months of the season with rose
tinted glasses. However, the Nats really struggled at home during that time.
On July 24th, the Nats fell to 20-32 at Nationals Park, the worst home record in all of baseball at the time. Yet, they were still a .500 team because of what they did on the road. For a large portion of the season, the Nationals were road warriors.
The start of the season was even more brutal. In April, it felt like they could not buy a win at home. On May 2nd, they dropped to 3-12 at Nationals Park. Whenever the Nats got momentum from a strong road trip, it felt like that would all be squandered with flat performances at home.
However, at the end of the season, the Nats finished with a better record at home than on the road. So what on earth happened here? That is what I want to explore. I am going to look at the data and come up with some potential reasons.
Before the All-Star break, the Nats were 28-18 on the road and 20-31 at home. That totally flipped in the second half, where the Nats went 19-11 at home and a miserable 10-25 away from Nationals Park.
The most obvious explanation for me is just variance. In a 162 game season, there is a lot of noise, but at the end of the day, things tend to even out. Whenever I asked Blake Butera about the poor home record at the beginning of the season, he was not happy about it, but he did not think there was some major underlying issue. Now that the season is over, it looks like things just balanced out.
However, the huge swings were very strange to watch. There was a stretch in the second half where the Nats went 2-21 on the road. We can talk about variance all we want, but something like that cannot happen again. In August and early September, the team just looked totally lifeless away from home.
It should be mentioned that they did face a lot of tough road competition in that stretch. That west coast trip against the Dodgers and Padres was brutal. The Nats lost 7 straight, and it felt like rock bottom. However, I did not think the Nats were playing awful baseball in most of those games.
Those were just two of the hottest teams in baseball playing at home. They took advantage of the Nats weak bullpen and staged a lot of comebacks. It did not look like August where the team was totally lifeless. At the end of the day, it was 7 L’s though. In the first half, the Nats found a way to win road games, but not so much after the break.
On the flip side, the Nationals really found their footing in front of the home crowd down the stretch. In my opinion, the biggest reason for that was improved clutch hitting. One of the major storylines for most of the season was the Nats inability to get a walkoff.
For such a potent offense, the Nats were weirdly feeble late in the game at home. There were a lot of times where the Nats just rolled over after a lead was blown. They did not get the first walk-off of the season until August 29th when Dylan Crews smacked a single into right to send the fans home happy.
After that moment, it felt like the Nats had a lot of big hits late in games at home. Harry Ford got a walk-off hit of his own a couple weeks later. However, it was more than just walk-offs. When the Nats fell behind, the offense was ready to answer.
Even though the Nats actually did not score a ton of runs in September, they were able to get the big hit. That series against the Angels saw the Nats answer over and over. Blake Butera talked a lot about how resilient his team was, and that was an example.
For most of the season, the Nats were resilient, but usually not within games. The way Butera’s team showed resilience was coming back from brutal losses like nothing happened the next day. However, for a lot of the season, they were shellshocked while the blown lead was happening, especially at home.
Heading into next season, I hope the Nats show that in game resilience we saw in September. If they are able to do that, it will go a long way. Winning on the margins is how the Nats will be able to take that next step. We saw that on the road in the first half and at home in the second.
The goal for 2027 should be to string that together and find true consistency. I think this rollercoaster season will be a good learning experience for the guys. They are now battle tested and ready to become a more stable team moving forward. There were a lot of volatile swings this year. In order to take the next step, we will need to see less volatility and more consistency.
