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One year after being traded to the Washington Nationals, right-handed pitcher Doug Fister could be on the move yet again. 

According to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, the Nationals would be inclined to deal Fister under the right circumstances:

Whatever deal that could be is up to Washington’s front office, though it would likely take a lot for Fister to be traded. He’s going to make a reasonable salary, by most pitching standards, in his final year of arbitration. The Nationals are built to win now, which is easier to do with the right-hander in their rotation. 

Fister has gotten lost at times in star-studded rotations with Detroit and Washington, though he’s turned into one of the best and most consistent pitchers in baseball. He had his best ERA in 2014 (2.41) and is one of the best control pitchers in the league with a career walk rate of 1.73, per FanGraphs. 

Given the premium on top-level starting pitching, as well as the low financial cost, the Nationals can ask for a hefty return if they decide to start engaging teams in discussions for Fister. 

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You’re a fan without a nation. 

The 2014 MLB Playoff field is set, and while you mourn your beloved New York Yankees from your home probably nowhere near New York, you need a surrogate team. Well, the Washington Nationals bandwagon is accepting applications, and no other franchise makes a better case for your temporary affection. 

The single biggest selling point for Washington isn’t its National League-best 96-66 record, but the way in which those 96 games were won. 

And the only way to truly understand the grit that defines the Nationals is to take an uncomfortable trip down memory lane.

The Nationals don’t play with a chip on their shoulder, they carry around a family-sized bag that they picked up from a 2013 season that can only be qualified as an abject failure.

Washington was coming off a 2012 campaign that saw them earn the best record in baseball, and the core of that season’s roster was still intact for 2013. But the Nationals under-performed from the get go, finding themselves in the conversation for “baseball’s most disappointing team,” according to an article by SportingNews’s Justin McGuire that year. 

The individual parts were a disappointment – i.e. Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg – and their sum was a disappointment. 

It is for that reason that Washington is taking nothing for granted this year, and it’s made the Nationals the most fun team in baseball to watch. And from top to bottom, every member of Washington’s roster wants to win every game. 

And they want it bad.

In a season that spans 162 games across five-plus months, two distinct moments during the summer of 2014 can be pointed to as evidence of that spirit. 

In middle-to-late August, Washington matched its franchise-record win streak of 10 games. 

That’s not the impressive part. 

Half of those games were won in walk-off fashion. The Washington Post’s Neil Greenberg calculated the likelihood of a run like that to be around 0.0977 percent. 

That’s the kind of season 2014 has been for Washington. The Nationals are extremely talented, and they’ve won the games they’re supposed to win, which should have been good for six or seven of those 10 games. 

The remaining wins in the streak? Baseball giveth and baseball taketh away, and the Nationals have made good on the former this year.

The other instance that encapsulated what Washington has been able to do this year fell on the very last day of the season.

Jordan Zimmerman’s no-hitter in game No. 162 of the year saw him exercise complete dominance over helpless Marlins hitters, until the very last out. 

Steven Souza Jr. took over in left field before the start of the ninth inning, making just his 21st big-league appearance of the season, and made arguably the catch of the season to preserve the first no-hitter in franchise history.

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Washington Nationals shortstop Ian Desmond exited Tuesday night’s 6-4 win over the Atlanta Braves after the fifth inning with what’s currently being described as back tightness.

Desmond, 28, told reporters he was dealing with the issue before the game and does not anticipate being in the lineup on Wednesday, per James Wagner of the Washington Post:

Danny Espinosa entered at shortstop for the last four innings and will likely be the interim starter. Desmond went 1-for-3 before exiting Tuesday, hitting an RBI single in the first inning and scoring a run as the Nationals raced out to an early 5-0 lead.

The back injury became more apparent as the game went along. Desmond committed a throwing error in the fourth inning and struck out wildly in his next two at-bats.

After fanning in the bottom of the fourth and playing the fifth inning in discomfort, he was removed from the game.

Manager Matt Williams indicated he does not expect the issue to linger very long:

Washington’s win extended its advantage to nine games over Atlanta. Regardless of Desmond’s prognosis, the Nationals should run away with their second National League East title in three seasons.

The two-time Silver Slugger is batting .248/.303/.415 with 22 home runs and 83 RBI thus far. He’s also added 18 stolen bases.

Follow Tyler Conway on Twitter @tylerconway22.

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Ryan Zimmerman is nearing recovery from his hamstring injury just in time for the Washington Nationals‘ foray into October baseball. 

The Washington Post‘s Adam Kilgore provided an encouraging update on the 29-year-old third baseman’s rehab:

As Comcast SportsNet’s Mark Zuckerman added, he was looking good during batting practice, as well:

The Nationals provided a picture of Zimmerman in the cage: 

Zimmerman, who has been sidelined since late July with the injury, is hitting .282/.345/.456 in 53 games this season. His OPS (.802) is the second-lowest it has been in the last six seasons, but as you may remember, after missing a chunk of April and all of May with a broken thumb, he was beginning to rake in July, hitting .362/.418/.569. 

If he is able to get healthy and back into that kind of rhythm in time for the postseason, it will be a major boost to the Nats, who have the best record in the National League at 81-61 and have been playing .639 baseball (23-13) since the start of August.

Manager Matt Williams recently talked about Zimmerman’s potential role upon his return, via Kilgore:

He’s certainly got the ability to play three positions for us. He can play third. He can play left. He can play first, depending on where the need is. That being said, I want to make sure we’re not throwing him in there every day, to make sure that he’s good to go. I would imagine he’ll play all three of those, on any given day. There’s no real set plan where he’s going to play third every day or he’s going to play left every day, or he’s going to play first every day. He’s probably going to play all of them.

Washington is seventh in the majors in slugging percentage over the second half of the season, and if Williams can slot Zimmerman back into the middle of the lineup, it’ll be a scary thought for the rest of the NL. 

Clearly already a World Series contender without him, the Nationals’ postseason outlook continues to get brighter as Zimmerman’s hammy improves. 

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The critics have always been there, picking, prodding, scoffing.

They started making their case when he was a teenager, not old enough to legally operate a motor vehicle but good enough to be dubbed baseball’s LeBron James. That sparked it all. The detractors pounced on everything from a junior college ejection to him playing too hard to him not playing hard enough.

Bryce Harper, in part because of his own doing and in part because he was a lightning rod, was lit up no matter what he did. And this season it hit another level when his midsummer struggles led to talks about him being demoted to the minors and even the idea that, at 21 years old, he could be traded for pitching.

Well, Harper is now shutting up everyone who questioned his on-field talent and off-the-field life with the most impressive and impactful offensive stretch of his young major league career. Since the early part of August, Harper has wrecked the ball and been a huge reason why the Washington Nationals have gone 20-10 in their last 30 games and surged to the best record in the National League.

Since Aug. 7 and through this past weekend, Harper hit .306/.356/.537 with an .893 OPS, eight home runs, 15 RBI and 33 total hits. At the start of that stretch, Harper hit a walk-off home run a day after the dust-up about the possibility of him being optioned to the minors because he was hitting .250 with three home runs through his first 53 games of the season.

“He needed that probably more than any hitter in the big leagues,” Washington reliever Craig Stammen told The Washington Post after that walk-off shot.

In that same Adam Kilgore story, Denard Span elaborated on how important Harper is to the team’s success.

“We need to get him going,” Span said. “When he’s hitting it makes us 10 times more dangerous. It makes the lineup obviously deeper. Hopefully he takes that and builds off of it and keeps it going.”

He has done exactly that. Harper, one of Major League Baseball’s most recognizable stars, is now in position to lead the Nationals into October, and if his hot run continues through autumn and the Nats are playing deep into next month, critics will be forced to zip their lips.

Harper’s teammates have plenty to do with how far this team goes, obviously. The club was built on starting pitching, and that group has been lights out since the All-Star break. The rotation had a 3.08 ERA with a 4.4 wins above replacement (WAR) mark in the second part of the season through Sunday. Both numbers were the best in the league in that time.

And their other superstar, Stephen Strasburg, is rebounding in the way Harper has. Strasburg has been flat-out ace-like in his last eight starts dating back to July 29. That is right around the time Harper got hot and the Nationals started to push their lead in the NL East to the current eight games. In those eight starts, Strasburg has a 2.79 ERA and opponents are hitting .208 against him.

As for as the others in the lineup with Harper, they have helped this surge by leading the league with 40 home runs in August while coming in second in slugging percentage and OPS. They’ve continued to hit in September, putting up 10 homers.

The Nationals are healthy now, something they waited to say for the first four months of the season when nicks and bruises and strains and tightness threatened their place in the playoff hunt. If they can stay mostly in one piece, they have the parts to be the best team in baseball. 

If Harper is on, he has the talent to be one of the best hitters.

Clearly Harper doesn’t have this all figured out yet. He still makes mistakes on the field, like colliding with a teammate at a critical juncture of a game, and the ones off the field, like snapping at a respected baseball writer for asking about a hitting slump two years ago. Those miscues are likely to continue as long as the spotlight is shining on him.

Bryce Harper walks over to Denard Span during the pitching change. Span doesn‘t budge, looks like he wants Harper to die in a fire.

— Dennis Deitch (@DennisDeitch) September 6, 2014

He is also still 21, and won’t be 22 until Oct. 16. So maturity will come with age.

But Harper’s age does not mean he isn’t a critical fixture in the Nationals lineup. They really do need him hitting. He has an offensive skill set that can change a lineup and how opponents approach it. He has speed, power and the ability to hit the ball to the opposite field, and that kind of combination, when utilized, can carry a team for a month.

The month we are talking about is October, and Harper has his swing back just in time to give it a run.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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The Washington Nationals won a 10th consecutive game Thursday, matching the franchise record for longest winning streak, per ESPN Stats & Info.

As has become the custom during their recent run, the Nationals won Thursday’s game in dramatic fashion, downing the Arizona Diamondbacks 1-0 on a walk-off error by Arizona third baseman Jordan Pacheco in the ninth inning. The walk-off victory was Washington’s fifth in a span of six games, something no team has done since the Houston Astros in 1986, according to ESPN Stats & Info.

Dating back to their time in Montreal, the Nationals/Expos have compiled five winning streaks of exactly 10 games, most recently—besides the current one—from June 2-12, 2005, per MLB.com. Each of the preceding four streaks ended at exactly 10 games, as the franchise has never put together an 11-game run in its 46-year history.

Among active major league franchises, only the Nationals/Expos and Miami Marlins have failed to compile a winning streak longer than 10 games. The Marlins have won nine in a row on four separate occasions but have yet to hit the 10-game mark in their 22-year history.

The Nationals head into Friday evening’s game against the San Francisco Giants favored to take sole possession of the franchise record for longest winning streak. Playing at home for a seventh consecutive game, the Nationals will toss a red-hot Doug Fister against Giants right-hander Tim Hudson.

Fister, who owns a 12-3 record and 2.20 ERA this season, has not given up more than two runs in a start since July 2, with the streak spanning seven outings. He’s held his opponent to three earned runs or fewer in 16 of his 18 starts this year.

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In the immediate aftermath of Thursday evening’s team-record-tying 10th straight victory, it’s apparent that the Washington Nationals are finally living up to their potential and putting the rest of the National League, if not all of baseball, on notice. Better yet, they’ve been doing it lately in dramatic—and eerily similar—fashion.

The Nationals beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 1-0 when third baseman Jordan Pacheco’s throw skipped past first baseman Mark Trumbo and into the camera well next to Washington’s dugout, allowing leadoff hitter Denard Span to score the deciding run.

The final play at Nationals Park looked like this:

The drama? Well, aside from the scoreless eight-and-a-half innings, Thursday’s win was the Nationals’ second consecutive of the walk-off variety and—get this—their fifth in six games.

The eerie similarity? For the second straight day, the game ended with reliever Evan Marshall on the mound for Arizona and Anthony Rendon hitting a ball toward third base to plate the winning run.

On Wednesday, Rendon—out of the starting lineup for the first time since June 10—came up as a pinch hitter in the bottom of the ninth and knocked the game-winning RBI single to score Bryce Harper.

Keep an eye out for the similarities in the highlight of that walk-off:

“We just feel confident,” Span said via Adam Kilgore of The Washington Post, “that somehow, someway, we’re going to find a way to inch off a victory.”

With the win, the Nationals are now a season-high 20 games above .500 at 73-53. Not only that, but they also have the best record in the Senior Circuit, and it’s starting to feel like this club isn’t going to give up that throne any time soon. Especially after how things played out last season.

The 2013 campaign was an outright disappointment, as Washington fell behind the Atlanta Braves in the NL East very early and didn’t really hit its stride until mid-August, by which point it was far too late. To wit, exactly a year ago, on Aug. 21, the Nats, who finished just 86-76 amid sky-high expectations, were 15.0 games behind Atlanta.

This year? It’s the Braves who entered Thursday seven games back.

Still, as utility man Kevin Frandsen told Bill Ladson of MLB.com after Wednesday’s walk-off:

It’s the middle of August. We have to continue to play good baseball. The Braves are not going to give in. The Marlins are not going to give in. People are sleeping on other teams, you can’t do that. We have to keep playing good baseball, continue to hit the baseball the way we do, pitch the ball, catch the ball and do all that.

The Nationals certainly have been doing “all that” over the past 10 games. In fact, they’ve been doing a lot of that for most of the season.

They have a 3.03 team ERA, the second-lowest overall and best in the NL. That’s been achieved through both the rotation and the bullpen.

With the explosive Stephen Strasburg (3.41 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, NL-best 198 strikeouts), steady Jordan Zimmermann (2.97, 1.15), underrated Doug Fister (2.20, 1.05), unheralded Tanner Roark (2.80, 1.09) and lone lefty Gio Gonzalez, Washington’s rotation is among the best and deepest in baseball.

The relief corps features two of the best setup men in the business in Tyler Clippard (1.95) and Drew Storen (1.54) in front of closer Rafael Soriano (2.49, 29 SV).

As if proving the prowess of the pitching staff, Gonzalez, who has been inconsistent since returning from a midseason stint on the disabled list, fired seven scoreless innings with seven strikeouts Thursday. The effort lowered his ERA to 3.83 and his WHIP to 1.31.

Meanwhile, the offense has also been firing on all cylinders, especially since the All-Star break.

Led by Span (.388 average since the break), Rendon (MLB-best 88 runs), Ian Desmond (team highs of 20 homers and 77 RBI), Jayson Werth (.283/.375/.434) and Adam LaRoche (team-topping .838 OPS), Washington checks in with the second-most runs scored in the sport (144) over the second half so far.

And that’s without much in the way of production from Harper, as the 21-year-old is still trying to get himself going after missing a chunk of the year with a torn thumb ligament. He does, though, sport a .375 on-base percentage since the break. If he and Ryan Zimmerman, who remains on the disabled list with a hamstring injury, can find their form down the stretch, Washington will be even better.

Not that they aren’t already the best in the NL.

The Milwaukee Brewers have been in first in the NL Central for all but three days this season, but they’re up there with the Kansas City Royals as the two most surprising division leaders. Claiming they are better than the Nationals is taking things a bit too far.

And all of the sudden, the NL West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers are looking less vaunted and more vulnerable. The big names are there and performing, but a few of them are battling injuries: shortstop Hanley Ramirez is on the DL with a strained oblique; lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu is on the shelf with a glut strain; and right-hander Zack Greinke is having his start pushed back due to elbow soreness, per Ken Gurnick of MLB.com.

The Nationals’ luck, on the other hand, appears to be turning—finally—as Kilgore writes:

The 2014 Nationals have been a dominant team all season long. It took the magic of the past 10 days for their record to reflect it, for their luck to catch up to their NL-best, plus-102 run differential. The Nationals…have won twice in extra innings and seven games by one run over their winning streak. Before it, they had gone 5-8 and 13-18 in such coin-flip contests. A prolonged run of success was probably inevitable. It didn’t have to be such a giddily fun ride.

The way things are shaping up now—not to mention, the way they’re playing lately—the Nationals are making good on all those expectations. They’re just doing it a year later than expected.

Statistics are accurate as of Aug. 21 and come from MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs.com, except where otherwise noted.

To talk baseball or fantasy baseball, check in with me on Twitter: @JayCat11

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Things were looking up for Stephen Strasburg headed into his start on Friday night against the Atlanta Braves. At least that’s how it seemed.

After posting a 3.18 ERA with 44 strikeouts over 39.2 innings in July, Strasburg kicked off August with his best start of the season, striking out 10 batters and scattering three hits over seven shutout innings versus the Phillies.

And considering he was scheduled to face a Braves squad mired in an eight-game losing streak, all signs pointed to the 26-year-old right-hander having another strong outing.

However, Strasburg was anything but dominant Friday night, allowing seven runs on seven hits in five innings. The Nats mounted a valiant comeback late in the game, but ultimately fell to the Braves 7-6.

It was the second time this season and third time in his career that he gave up seven earned runs in a start. To make matters worse, four of the seven hits against Strasburg were home runs, which represents the most he’s allowed in a game over 100 starts in the major leagues. Basically, the only good news to emerge from the outing was Strasburg struck out nine batters.

Overall, Strasburg’s season has been as inconsistent as his past two starts suggest, with his performance varying from month to month and start to start.

Strasburg has shown glimpses of putting everything together all year, but the reality is that he’s posted an ERA above 5.00 twice (June and so far August) and has one month with a sub-3.00 ERA (May).

So what’s to make of Strasburg’s inconsistent season?

Here are some possible explanations for the right-hander’s struggles.

Early-Inning Woes

One of Strasburg’s biggest issues this season has been his pitch execution early in games, as he has a tendency to struggle through the first few innings before finally settling in around the third or fourth.

Unfortunately, Strasburg’s struggles were on full display Friday, as he yielded a pair of runs with two outs in the first inning on a home run by Justin Upton. He also had trouble getting the third out in the second inning too, as he surrendered two more two-run shots to B.J. Upton and Freddie Freeman, respectively.

However, after a disastrous first two innings, Strasburg bounced back to retire the next seven batters, five via strikeout, before Tommy La Stella opened the fifth inning with a solo home run, his first big league homer. Strasburg went on to finish the inning and outing with swinging strikeouts of Justin Upton and Evan Gattis.

Though frustrating, Strasburg’s struggles during the first and second innings aren’t overly concerning in terms of his performance over the duration of the regular season; the right-hander has proved he can still miss bats and hang around for at least five innings when he’s at his worst, which is still better than 90 percent of all big league starters.

That being said, Strasburg’s situation will be discussed more and more leading up the postseason, as a rough start in game one or two of a five- or seven-game series could potentially crush the Nats’ World Series dreams in a hurry.

Home/Road Splits

Strasburg really, really likes pitching at Nationals Park.

In his 13 home starts this season, Strasburg has pitched to a 7-2 record, 2.41 ERA and 112/14 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 86 innings while also holding opposing hitters to a .234 batting average

In general, the 26-year-old has always pitched better at home, though he’s also never struggled as badly on the road than he is this season. However, that’s not completely his fault.

Opposing hitters have an unsustainable .361 batting average on balls put in play against Strasburg this year over his 12 road starts, meaning that his unattractive stat line is at least partially driven by poor luck.

Yet, Strasburg’s road walk rate this year is actually better than his career average, but he’s striking out roughly two less batters per nine innings and getting hit around more often.

Fastball Velocity and Effectiveness

Strasburg’s fastball velocity has been declining over the last three seasons, as he’s averaging 95.59 mph with the pitch this year after sitting at 96.32 mph in 2013 and 96.77 mph in 2012. It’s not a significant or particularly concerning dip in velocity, but still a dip nonetheless.

However, part of that simply could be Strasburg sacrificing power for command, which makes sense considering the right-hander also has spent time this season adjusting his setup on the rubber.

Via Adam Kilgore the Washington Post:

“It just kind of dawned on me,” Strasburg said. “I was talking to [pitching coach Steve McCatty] about it. I was like, ‘I’ve done this for such a long time. It was like, will this help things if I make the adjustment?’ I’m seeing a bunch of other great pitchers do that. A lot of the control pitchers and a lot of the elite pitchers in the game — I’d say the majority of them — don’t have their foot on top of the rubber.”

[…]

“It’s just little things like that,” Strasburg said. “I noticed a lot of the command pitchers, they’re able to control their delivery down the hill, and they get to a better balance point. In the past, for the longest time, when my foot’s on the rubber, it’s harder for me to control the delivery and have the same tempo.”

While it’s hard to say with any sense of certainty whether Strasburg’s mechanical and/or philosophical adjustments have affected his fastball, it is clear that his heater has become increasingly hittable over the last year, and more and more players are driving the pitch for extra bases.

Final Thoughts

The only reason we scrutinize Stephen Strasburg’s every pitch is because we all recognize his potential to be the best pitcher in baseball. It might seem like he’s having a down season—if only because his career-worst outing on Friday is still fresh on everyone’s minds—but Strasburg actually ranks among the MLB leaders in numerous categories.

Per FanGraphs, the right-hander’s 10.71 K/9 ranks third among all qualified starters behind Yu Darvish and Clayton Kershaw; his 2.53 xFIP ranks third behind Kershaw and Felix Hernandez; and his .341 BABIP is the highest among all starting pitchers with at least 150 IP.

Additionally, Strasburg’s 23 percent K%-BB% is the highest rate of his career and ranks fifth in all of baseball, per FanGraphs, while his 36 percent OSwing% (pitches swung at outside the strike zone) and 11.9 percent SwSTR% (swinging strike rate) rank fifth and seventh, respectively.

And I’d be remiss not to mention that Strasburg has 11 outings this season with nine-plus strikeouts, and he’s yet to unintentionally walk more than three batters in a game.

Strasburg already has put together a great season, but the next two months will determine whether he’s a front-of-the-rotation arm or a legitimate ace.

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Sixth in an 11-part series examining the vagaries of awards voting.

Never a superstar, Joe Judge spent 20 years as a solid, dependable first baseman. Still in the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins top 10 of most batting categories more than eight decades after last playing in the nation’s capital, he has remained in the shadows not only of Hall of Fame teammates Goose Goslin and Sam Rice but of the heavy-hitting behemoths who shared the same position—George Sisler, Lou Gehrig and, later, Jimmie Foxx.

Even away from cavernous Griffith Stadium, the smallish Judge was not a prototypical first baseman (to this day, he holds the franchise mark for sacrifice bunts—a tactic virtually unthinkable for a first sacker since the live-ball era); Judge belted only 57 home runs in more than 1,000 road games.

Yet, like many Senators players, he took advantage of his home park’s deep alleys, legging out 157 triples. And Judge was swift enough to swipe 213 bases during his career.

A lifetime .298 hitter, Judge exercised excellent bat control, drawing twice as many bases on balls as he struck out, giving him a healthy on-base percentage of .378. Judge helped his perennially also-ran Senators to consecutive pennants, spearheading Washington to its lone championship, in 1924, with a .385 average in the World Series—where, as usual, he was overshadowed, this time by the great Walter Johnson.

After 18 years in the nation’s capital, the Brooklyn native went home and put in 42 ineffective games with the Dodgers before being released. Quickly signing with the Boston Red Sox, he eked out another 45 games over two seasons, ending his career with 2,352 hits, 1,184 runs scored and 1,034 RBI.

Despite ranking, upon retirement, seventh all-time in putouts, fourth in assists and holding the highest fielding percentage for a first baseman in baseball history, Judge may be best remembered as the man who hastened the end of Walter Johnson’s career, when he smashed a line drive off The Big Train’s ankle in spring training of 1927.

This is an unfair label for Judge, as the 40-year-old Johnson recovered from the fracture to pitch 107.2 innings, although he was no longer effective—which one would expect of even a healthy 40-year-old.

Judge’s worth was recognized in his own time, collecting MVP votes in four seasons. Yet the fourth of those seasons rings peculiarly. In 1928, Judge tied for third with Tony Lazzeri in the AL MVP vote—well ahead of some big-name players.

That Lazzeri placed third is, in itself, a surprise—although a key member of Murderers’ Row, injuries limited him to 116 games. Why writers shunned George Pipgras (a league-high 24 wins and 300.2 innings) is a mystery.

Perhaps they figured Pinstripes pitching coasted on New York’s battering-ram offense. (It didn’t—New York owned the second-best team ERA in addition to the AL’s best offense.)

Judge came in far ahead of the only two other Yankees to garner MVP votes: Earle Combs (118 runs scored, an AL-high 21 triples) and Waite Hoyt (23-7, 3.36 ERA). (At the time, any American League player who had already won the MVP since its inception in 1922 was not eligible for future MVP awards. This eliminated Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, who, between them would have carted off the lion’s share of MVPs during the decade.)

One wonders what voters were thinking in 1928—the 98-win Philadelphia Athletics saw only two of their players make the ballot. And although the A’s Mickey Cochrane took home the MVP (just edging out Heinie Manush and his 241 hits), Lefty Grove and his Pipgras-tying 24 wins did not earn a single vote. (Incredibly, neither did Grove in 1930, when he won the pitching triple crown.)

With the Senators finishing a remote fourth—Washington was out of the pennant race before summer began—it’s hard to comprehend how a player from a team with a 75-79 record outpolled so many players from the contenders. (For the 1928 vote, only Ruth and Gehrig, among the Yankees and Athletics, were ineligible.)

Yes, Judge finished in the top 10 in walks, RBI, on-base percentage and stolen bases—yet he didn’t come close to leading in any of them.

And although he enjoyed another sterling year in the field, Judge hit a relatively pedestrian .306, with only 44 extra-base hits and 78 runs scored (trailing even such renowned table setters as Earle Combs and Joe Sewell in slugging percentage).

Judge did put together a strong second half, batting .336 and racking up an OPS of .896, but Washington fell 20 games off the lead before July. If anyone from the mediocre Senators deserved to scale the MVP vote so high, it was Goose Goslin, who snared the batting crown with a .379 average and slugged a mighty .614.

With the possible exception of Manush, Goslin was the most dangerous AL hitter after the MVP-ineligible Ruth and Gehrig (he led all vote-getters in WAR). Yet, enigmatically, Goose collected fewer than half the votes as did Judge.

Likewise, it’s outright baffling that no St. Louis Brown besides Manush made an appearance on the ballot. St. Louis improved by 23 victories over the previous season, yet voters completely ignored General Crowder, whose 21-5 record on a club that played only .532 ball should have put him right in the thick of the award race with Cochrane and Manush. 

Freshly traded from the ascendant Athletics, first-year Brownie Sam Gray, who fashioned a 20-12 record and a fine 3.19 ERA, also should have gotten votes. Didn’t any of those writers pay attention?

For all I know, Joe may have been thoroughly popular throughout the league with beat writers looking for quotes—which could have served him well come voting time. Yet considering that, in 1924, Judge received nary a vote despite hitting .324 while helping Washington to its first pennant (nor did Goslin, despite an AL-high 129 RBI—go figure), finishing third in the MVP race during a lost season is more than a little hard to fathom.

Ironically, Judge may well have been earmarked for a trade that season. The previous December, Washington owner Clark Griffith had bought George Sisler, St. Louis’ slowly fading superstar of a first baseman, for a pricey $25,000.

No longer the batting wizard he had been before losing a full season to sinusitis in the early part of the decade, Sisler was still a productive hitter—and a better one than Judge. Coming off a 200-hit campaign, his acquisition could only have meant that Griffith was looking to move the longtime Senator.

Calls for action about the logjam at first base became an open matter as early as two weeks into the season, even though Sisler had barely left the bench. Yet, strangely, Sisler never got a chance in Washington, pinch-hitting sporadically for a month before Griffith sold him to the Boston Braves at a $17,500 loss, while Judge went on to play all but one of Washington’s games that season.

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Third in an 11-part series examining the vagaries of awards voting.

Just as performing marginally on a pennant winner still can earn accolades in the MVP vote (see my Elston Howard article), a team’s last-place finish can make a valiant individual performance nigh unto invisible. Rusty Staub had just such a season in the Montreal Expos’ inaugural year of 1969.

Led by the most generous pitching staff in the Senior Circuit (4.33 team ERA), Montreal tied fellow National League newbies, the San Diego Padres, in bringing up the rear in their respective divisions, with identical 52-110 records.

But Expos hurlers hardly shouldered the blame by themselves. Like most expansion clubs, Montreal was deficient in all areas of the game. It led the league in errors and fielding percentage, and the only reason Montreal managed to turn the most double plays was because it allowed so many baserunners (Expos pitchers issued nearly 100 more walks than the next-highest team).

At the plate, only San Diego kept the Expos from scoring the fewest runs and registering the lowest on-base percentage. When Expos were fortunate enough to reach base, Montreal batters proved more adept than any other NL team in killing rallies, leading the league in double plays grounded into.

Little wonder Montreal fell into the National League basement by April 29 and never emerged.

But Montreal had itself a genuine star in Rusty Staub—and Rusty had a season in 1969 that was lost in the painful glare of 110 losses and a team more Canadian curiosity than contender.  

Montreal acquired Staub from the Houston Astros 11 weeks before Opening Day. The fledgling franchise had plucked Donn Clendenon from the Pittsburgh Pirates and Jesus Alou from the San Francisco Giants during the previous October’s expansion draft and then shrewdly swapped them to Houston for Staub.

Already a two-time All Star who had hit .333 and led the NL in doubles in 1967, Rusty not only brought cachet to Parc Jarry but endeared himself to Montrealers by learning French and becoming a member of the Quebecois community.

In his trade to Montreal, Le Grand Orange, as hometown fans anointed the personable redhead, indirectly figured in the king-making of several World Series champions.

Clendenon refused to report to Houston, so along with Alou, Montreal sent two pitchers and $100,000. Now persona non grata to Montreal management, Clendenon played 38 ineffectual games for the Expos before being swapped to the New York Mets in mid-June. Clendenon helped the soon-to-be Amazins into the playoffs and then exploded in the Fall Classic, slamming three home runs and winning the World Series MVP.

One of the pitchers packed off to Houston in Clendenon’s stead was Jack Billingham, himself snared from the Los Angeles Dodgers in the expansion draft but never to pitch for the Expos. Two-and-a-half years later, Billingham was part of the blockbuster deal that also sent Joe Morgan, Cesar Geronimo, Denis Menke and Ed Armbrister to the Cincinnati Reds.

Billingham became the ace of the new-and-improved Big Red Machine and led it to two consecutive championships and a third pennant, logging an all-time Series best 0.36 ERA in 25.1 innings.

Back in Montreal, batting third in front of powerful left fielder Mack Jones, Rusty hit .302, including 29 home runs—as many as bona fide sluggers Willie Stargell and Ron Santo. Staub should have collected more than 79 RBIs, but Montreal’s leadoff and No. 2 hitters did a poor job all season of getting on base for the heart of the order. 

Perhaps most impressively, Rusty fashioned a .426 on-base percentage, fourth-best in the league and a hair less than batting champion Pete Rose, who had outhit Staub by 46 points. Rusty’s 110 walks, tied for third with ex-teammate Joe Morgan, combined with robust .526 slugging to notch an OPS of .952, also fourth-best in the NL. Staub also ranked 10th in total bases.

This all added up to a WAR of 6.2, tied for seventh-best among position players in the National League and surpassing, among others, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Stargell and Santo—the latter of whom finished fifth in MVP voting.

Staub’s are not numbers to sneeze at—but they were sneezed at because he played on a 110-loss expansion club that voters likely thought couldn’t have gotten much worse. Yet without Staub, Montreal might have approached the 1962 New York Mets’ legendary futility. Had Rusty worn a Mets or Atlanta Braves uniform that season, he would have garnered serious MVP consideration.

As it was, Rusty earned a single 10th-place vote, tied for last place in the MVP race (he was the only member of either NL expansion squad to appear on any ballot, not counting Tony González, whose MVP votes were unquestionably earned after his June 13 trade from dead-in-the-water San Diego to first-place Atlanta).

I’m not going to make the Andre Dawson argument that, despite playing for a last-place squad, Staub should have finished at or near the top of the voting. I don’t believe Andre Dawson should have gotten anywhere near the 1987 NL MVP—the bottom half of the top 10 would have sufficed.

Which is where Rusty Staub should have finished.       

Perhaps a particular game early in the 1969 schedule epitomized Staub’s intrepid season: On April 17, Rusty was a one-man wrecking crew against the Philadelphia Phillies, smashing three doubles, homering and driving in three runs in a 7-0 whitewashing of the Expos’ NL East rivals.

As fate would have it, Rusty’s awesome performance was rendered an afterthought by teammate Bill Stoneman, who—in just the ninth game of the Expos’ existence and the fifth start of his career—twirled a no-hitter (the hard-throwing, hard-luck Stoneman pitched a second 7-0 no-hitter in 1972 before arm trouble short-circuited his career).

It was just an under-the-radar kind of season for Rusty.

Staub had two more excellent campaigns in Montreal before saying au revoir for greener pastures in New York and Detroit. And perhaps Rusty enjoyed some karma in 1978 when he finished fifth in the AL MVP vote by driving in 121 runs, bettered only by Jim Rice. Appearing as the designated hitter in every one of the Tigers’ games, Staub became the first player ever to appear solely as a DH and finish in the top 10 in MVP voting.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

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