FWIW, the mouthpieces always used to praise Zimmerman as a baserunner. He's gone. I think some of the guys with less speed like Schwarber and Gomes (and before that Kendrick) at least knew they had less speed and didn't do stupid things. It might be a function of less veteraniness on the roster. As for the team's overall ratings on FG, don't forget we had a super=skilled baserunner in Trea prior to this year, so that probably helped our overall rating in the past. TBH, now more than a few guys are pick ups from other systems with ingrained habits (Cesar, Franco, Thomas, Alcides and Gordon when they were with the team) so it is hard to pin the boneheadedness and the not picking up the 3rd base coach on the Davey and Disarscina. That said, we own Robles, Garcia, and used to own Soto's mistakes.
But if you pull the 2018 and 2019 Nationals stats, the baserunning and defense numbers pretty good. I don't think Martinez woke up in 2020 and said forget baserunning and defense.
I'm not certain what happened. Not to sound like some SABRmetrics dork, but instead of asking how we replace Barry Bonds in the middle of the lineup, we could ask the much easier question of how to get this team back to major league average on the basepaths and defensively.
