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Just to be clear from the outset: Daylen Lile will not be named National League Rookie of the Year tonight. We already know the 22-year-old outfielder didn’t finish among the top three vote getters. Either Braves catcher Drake Baldwin, Cubs right-hander Cade Horton or Brewers third baseman Caleb Durbin will receive the award when the results are announced this evening.
But Lile’s name will show up somewhere on the ballot below those three. He actually far outperformed both Baldwin and Durbin in batting average (.299), slugging percentage (.845) and triples (11).
The two reasons Lile didn’t at least finish in the top three: 1) He wasn’t in the majors as long as those other guys, with 95 fewer plate appearances than Baldwin and 155 fewer than Durbin, and 2) His poor defensive play left him trailing everyone else in WAR by a healthy margin.
In the end, it’s a shame Lile didn’t spend more time with the Nationals than he did, because who knows how much more he could’ve produced at the plate with, say, 451 big league plate appearances than 351. We do know nobody in the league was better down the stretch, because Lile won not only NL Rookie of the Month for September but NL Player of the Month as well.
The fact Lile will even appear on the ballot tonight is noteworthy on its own. Because it’s been a while since anybody in a Nationals uniform accomplished that.
The Baseball Writers’ Association of America hands out four awards for each league every November: MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and Manager of the Year. You used to find the names of Nats littered all over those ballots, but not in recent times.
The last National to receive votes for any of those prestige awards was Juan Soto, who finished runner-up to Bryce Harper for NL MVP in 2021. That, of course, was Soto’s final full season in D.C., the rebuild commencing that July with the trades of Max Scherzer and Trea Turner, then the even bigger move made in August 2022 when Soto was dealt as well.
Soto finished top-10 in MVP three straight seasons, also finishing fifth in 2020 and ninth in 2019. Turner finished seventh during the abbreviated 2020 season. Anthony Rendon (third), Stephen Strasburg (15th) and Scherzer (22nd) all appeared on the 2019 MVP ballot as well.
That 2019 awards cycle was overloaded with Nationals, as you might expect. Scherzer (third), Strasburg (fifth) and Patrick Corbin (11th) all received Cy Young Award votes. Victor Robles finished sixth for NL Rookie of the Year (the last Nats rookie to receive votes). And Davey Martinez finished fifth for NL Manager of the Year (he would’ve finished even higher had voting taken place after the postseason instead of before it).
It feels like so long ago. And, indeed, six years is a long time. The last vestiges of those championship-caliber teams are now gone, including the manager and general manager. It’s an entirely new roster and coaching staff, not to mention an overhauled front office, now in place.
There are many ways to evaluate a franchise’s level of success, and award voting shouldn’t be high on the list. But it can be telling in some ways. The complete lack of any mention of the Nationals since 2021 coincides with the lack of wins on the field for the organization since then. Winning teams tend to produce more award winners than losing teams.
Perhaps tonight will finally signal the beginning of the end of that drought. Lile won’t win Rookie of the Year, but he surely received some down-ballot votes. And if you’re looking for potential signs of progress for a franchise that sorely needs them, ideally one year from now we’re talking about multiple people who wear Nationals uniforms getting votes for multiple BBWAA awards.
And then, one of these years, someone actually winning one again.
(Note: I had an NL Rookie of the Year vote this season, and I’ll update this post with my ballot and the full results once the winner is announced this evening.)
