President Day, you know, if George Washington were alive today, he'd probably say,

good God, I'm 281 years old, why can't I die?

Good morning and welcome to episode 142 of Effectively Wild, the Daily Podcast from Baseball

Perspectives. In New York, New York, I am Ben Lindbergh, not in Long Beach, California,

St. Miller is off the grid for President Day. St. Miller is a big fan of presidents

and recognizing their achievements. So he will be back tomorrow. I am joined today to talk

about the Nationals. We've finally gotten to the National League. We are over halfway through

this thing by Paul Sporer again and Daniel Rathman. Hello, Dan and Paul. And Pete Barrett will be

talking to Adam Kilgore from the Washington Post after we wrap up. So the Nationals had the

best record last year. They had the best run differential last year. The consensus seems to be that

they had a successful offseason, maybe one of the better off seasons and got better this winter.

Do you agree with that consensus? And if so, do you think the Nationals are the best team in

Baseball at this point? Pacota would not agree with that statement, I guess, but a lot of

mainstream writers certainly would you agree with that? Do you think they have gotten better?

I'll go first, I guess, and talk about the hitting side. I absolutely think they had an

amazing offseason. When you consider going ahead, resigning La Roche, moving more out to cover

that, obviously, because then you would have had a log jam there between the left field area

and first base. And the fact that there is no DH, of course, hurts. But the trade for

Denard Span, I thought, was excellent. Now, they don't have a lot of fly ball guys. So even

those defense is awesome. It's not a major help. When you look at their guys, they've actually

got a lot of good, heavy ground ball guys. Geo Gonzalez was near 50 percent. Jordan Zimmerman

can be very high. He kind of split his season in half. Ross Dettweiler is Steven Straussberg's

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