The Washington Nationals won the National League East division each of the last two seasons and four of the last six seasons. The New York Mets and Atlanta Braves each won the division in the other two years. Prior to Washington’s divisional dominance, it was the Philadelphia Phillies who owned the NL East. In the last seven seasons, four of the NL East’s five teams won the division; the only exception: the Miami Marlins.
While the division has generally been a good competition, the Nationals won the NL East handily in 2017 with 20 more wins than the second place Marlins. Washington will enter 2018 as the heavy favorites again as the Nats appear to be near-locks for the postseason while the division’s other teams will need quite a few things to go right to get to October baseball.
While baseball is a game of inches and often yields surprises year after year, the division—on paper—looks pretty much set. Did the Mets do enough in the offseason to get back into competition? Are the Phillies or Braves positioned to take a significant step forward?
ODDS ANALYSIS
Nothing in baseball is a sure thing. Injuries happen. Disappointments happen. Surprises happen. Still, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the Nationals don’t win the NL East. As a result, the Nationals are the biggest division favorites in the National League.
Washington is the easy odds-on favorite to win the division at -420. The odds put the Mets in second at +340 and the Phillies in third at +950. While the Braves, like the Phillies, are on the upside of a rebuild with several graduating prospects in the pipeline, they aren’t getting nearly as much love by the odds makers at +1700. The Miami Marlins, meanwhile, are the biggest longshots of the division at +7000.
It’s no surprise that the Marlins are so heavily disregarded by oddsmakers and bettors alike. While they finished second in the NL East last year, the new ownership team headed by Derek Jeter opted to sell-off most of the team’s best assets in a cost cutting measure. The Marlins are in full-on rebuilding mode once again. Gone are Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna, Christian Yelich and Dee Gordon, four of the five best players on the 2017 Marlins based on WAR.
The Marlins lacked pitching last year. In 2018, they’ll have the same problem while also being without much of the offense. The Fish’s chances at +7000 is even generous.
As for the rest of the odds, it’s rather straight forward. The Nationals are supposed to win the division handily with the Mets the most likely contender and the Phillies and Braves better than last year, but still a couple years away and amid their respective rebuilds. The Marlins just tore it down. The Phillies and Braves did that a couple years ago and are just now starting to see the fruits of their labor with some of the top prospects beginning to surface at the big-league level. Now those guys need to gain experience, take their lumps and learn how to win together at the highest level. That takes some time.
As for the Mets, New York lost more games than the Marlins and the Braves last year. While they’re introducing a few young faces to The Show, such as Ahmed Rosario, and dealt away several veterans at the deadline last year, they opted to retool this winter rather than rebuild. Given the slow market, the Mets did well to make themselves at least much more competitive than they were a year ago.
The team added to the heart of the order bringing back Jay Bruce and adding Todd Frazier and Adrian Gonzalez. They fortified the rotation with Jason Vargas and strengthened the pen with Anthony Swarzak.
These were all quality moves and could have an impact, but the Mets will still need to live and die by the young starting pitching. They need Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard to be healthy and they need Matt Harvey to be closer to the 2015 version rather than the one that pitched to a 6.70 ERA in 2017.
Even if everything goes right in New York, they’ll need some help from the Nationals. They’ll need things to go awry in the Nation’s Capital. This team is just too balanced. The offense ranked third in the NL in runs scored and third in team ERA. A flawed bullpen was fixed at the trade deadline and became a second half strength.
Washington’s window may be closing with Bryce Harper inching closer to free agency, but the 2018 team is stacked. Catcher is the only offensively weak position after a down year from Matt Wieters. The rest of the lineup is stacked though injuries to Adam Eaton and Daniel Murphy do weaken the order a bit. Both could miss the start of the season. Still, this offense is deep. Trea Turner is an exciting young player. Harper is one of the best in the game when healthy. Anthony Rendon dominated in 2017 as did Ryan Zimmerman.
On the mound, the Nats return three starters with sub-3 ERAs including a back-to-back Cy Young Award winner in Max Scherzer and a top-3 finisher for the same award in Stephen Strasburg. They have another that had 16 wins and a 2.83 ERA as recently as 2016 in Tanner Roark.
QUICK PICK
The investment is big and the return nominal given the -420 odds, but it’s almost foolish to bet on any other team outside of the Nationals to win the NL East.
Washington is deep with quality players like Matt Adams and Howie Kendrick serving as bench players. The pitching staff as four starters that have gotten Cy Young votes and have some solid depth in top prospects and proven veterans in the minors in case of injury.
The Nationals won the division by 20-games last year over a team that is clearly worse than they were last year. They did it with a terrible bullpen for the first four months of the season. This team, they go in with a quality pen filled with four former closers and Koda Glover, one of the closer candidates last spring, not even guaranteed to make the team.
If you’re set on throwing a few dollars on an underdog, you’d have to use some imagination to envision a scenario where the Nationals falter. The injuries to Eaton and Murphy need to bleed into the regular season. Zimmerman will need to turn back into a pumpkin after a Cinderella season while Harper goes down with an injury again. Even then, the pitching will be strong enough to allow Washington to compete. Still, there’s a way they’re not as dominate and, if that’s the case, another team could work their way into the mix.
If it’s going to be another team, the Mets make the most sense. They’re only a few years removed from a World Series appearance and have the same arms that took them there. Nevertheless, the true sleeper pick could be the Phillies.
Philadelphia finished dead last in the division last year, but Rhys Hoskins will be up for the full year as will Nick Williams, Jorge Alfaro and J.P. Crawford. It’s a lot to ask a bunch of youngsters to over-perform, but they’re the most likely to exceed expectations, not the proven, projectable Major Leaguers. The addition of Carlos Santana will help the offense and the pitching will be helped by the bullpen moves, adding Tommy Hunter, Pat Neshek and Fernando Abad to Hector Neris in the closer’s role.
The Phillies also remain a possible landing spot for one, or even two, of the top free agent starting pitchers still on the market. Adding a Jake Arrieta to Aaron Nola, Vince Velasquez, Jerad Eickhoff, Nick Pivetta and Ben Lively could really make a difference.
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