How is it Martinez fault that Stras and Zim missed time? Was he not supposed to play them because they might get hurt?
AAV is irrelevant if the players aren't playing. Red Sox had the highest payroll in baseball last season. Do you think they're making the playoffs if Mookie Betts hits ~.250, JD Martinez only gets 320 plate appearances, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Xander Bogaerts play in less than 100 games, David Price starts ten fewer games, and Joe Kelley or Matt Barnes blew out their achilles in August?
The defense of any manager is that they need a relatively uninjured team. No one was winning with those injuries last season. No one.
Didn’t the Nats have a lot of injuries the year before. Maybe not quite as many, but 15 wins worth?
Strasburg started 26games in 2017 vs 22 games in 2018
Harper started 111 games in 2017 vs 159 in 2018
Turner started 98 games in 2017 vs 162 in 2018
Eaton started 23 games in 2017 vs 95 in 2018
Zimmerman started 144 games in 2017 vs 85 in 2018
Doolittle pitched 30 games in 2017 for the Nats vs 43 in 2018
Madson pitched 20 games for the Nats in 2017 vs 49 in 2018
Kendrick played 52 games for the Nats in 2017 vs 40 in 2018
Wieters played 123 games in 2017 vs 76 in 2018
Murphy played 144 games for the Nats in 2017 vs 56 in 2018
Juan Soto played *zero* games in 2017 vs 116 games in 2018
I think I hit all the major differences. Apologies if I missed something . Does less Murphy and Zimmerman and Kendrick make up for Less Turner and Harper and Eaton? And more importantly how much does
Soto offset the injuries. His emergence was totally found money.
I don’t think the above differences account for 15 wins.