When the book closes on the 2015 season for the Washington Nationals, fans and analysts will attach several narratives to the team’s once promising but ultimately disappointing campaign. For some, they’ll be the team that couldn’t close down games in the second half. For others, they’ll be the team with the inconsistent starting rotation, endless injuries and questionable management.
But, in the end, an easy and all-too-simplified narrative will be that the 2015 season was one of missed opportunities for the Nationals—missed opportunities to win games, and missed opportunities to gain ground in the NL East. Wednesday night was yet another perfect example of this, as the Nationals lost to the Orioles, 4-3, and failed to take advantage of another loss by the first-place Mets.