Upstart Washington Nationals Look To Prove Latest Win Projection Wrong

The consensus around the 2025 Washington Nationals seems generally to be one of optimism.

The franchise has finally built up a young core with some talented veteran contributors, and it feels like the organization has turned the page to push back toward contention.

To put it lightly, the win projection models for the 2025 season that have been released to this point do not see things that way.

The Nationals were the prototypical scrappy team that stayed afloat for the first half of last year before fading down the stretch.

The club was only five games under .500 through June with a respectable run differential to boot, but 10-16 records in both July and September capped Washington at 71 wins and fourth place in the National League East.

Despite likely growth from young players like CJ Abrams, James Wood, Mackenzie Gore and Luis Garcia Jr., even a repeat of last season's outcome is considerably too optimistic according to these models.

PECOTA was the first major shoe to drop, and the popular model pegged the Nationals as a 67.3-win team with a 0.3% chance to make the playoffs.

ESPN also recently dropped its projections, which are similarly negative on the outlook of the team from the nation's capital. According to these, Washington will be 27th out of the 30 MLB teams with an average win total of 68.8 and a 2.7% chance to qualify for the postseason.

"The new era of the Nationals is largely at hand," Bradford Doolittle wrote. "CJ Abrams is established, though he still needs to stack two halves of baseball together in the same season. James Wood has arrived and should be joined in this year's outfield by Dylan Crews ... The future looks good, but 2019 is well in the rearview mirror by now and Washington needs to start winning big league games, and soon. A climb into the mid-70s is a realistic win goal."

While there is quite a lot to be excited about in terms of the present and future of Washington's lineup, plenty of reasons for reservation reside in the pitching staff.

Behind Gore as the ace, which may be an overslotting to begin with, the rotation is entirely comprised of either unproven or outright shaky options, with Jake Irvin, Trevor Williams, Mitchell Parker and Michael Soroka expected to handle major roles.

There's also the unfriendly neighborhood in which this team lives, since the Nationals will have to compete with legitimate World Series contenders in the Atlanta Braves, New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies within their own division.

All that being said, a final win total in the high 60s would be a letdown for this year's club.

This young, exciting offense should be able to come together to outperform these pessimistic projections.

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