Lane & Simple

 

The Washington Nationals are, at the very least, an interesting bad team. They have two players above 2.0 WAR right now. The Pirates can't say that. The Mets can't say that. Not even the defending NL champion Philadelphia Phillies can say that.

And it's odd that both of those players for the Nats are Jeimer Candelario and Lane Thomas, two guys I've considered one-dimensional in the past. Candelario has never been especially good defensively, but he's been known to attack at any point, and his hitting numbers have been pretty cool on occasion. Right now he's only hitting .254, but his 8 homers and 32 RBIs are strong numbers for this team. The Nats, with Candelario, has netted a trusted veteran that's still young, can hit somewhat consistently and can work with the new pieces. It's exactly the kind of guy they've needed since Soto left. 

And then there's Lane Thomas, who's been slowly coming into his own since coming over in the Jon Lester deal. Like Candelario, Thomas has been a consistent force of hitting, which distracts from his passable defense. He's been starting more often in the past year, and this year he's leading the team in RBIs with 37, as well as home runs with 12. Far cry from Josh Bell and Juan Soto chasing the 20s around this time of year, but Thomas has been a consistent source of power hitting. And he's been very hot lately, hitting .290 right now and .307 in June. This is someone who can focus on contact as well as power, and he's been coming into his own as one of the stars in Washington, which they must be very happy with.

These are the two pieces that are working the best for this Nats team, mostly because Josiah Gray and MacKenzie Gore would be doing better if this team gave them more run support. Maybe I'm asking too much for people like Keibert Ruiz and C.J. Abrams to have things together at this point, they're still young, the team's still developing.  There's still a lot of replacement pieces holding things down. Good pieces as well, Joey Meneses and Stone Garrett have impressed, but I don't know if they'll last long enough to see this team compete.

The Nationals, at the very least, have pieces working and moving this team in the correct direction. But at the moment they're playing the Padres, who still have Juan Soto to wield right now, and it's currently not going well at all for them. Eventually they'll be able to completely rebut San Diego, but it's gonna take more than just two flourishing pieces.

Coming Tomorrow- A sophomore who's certainly figured out the base-stealing aspect of his supposed five-tools.