When looking for reasons to explain the Nationals’ more competitive play early this season, it was easy to point to the club’s improved defense as a significant factor.

After rating as the majors’ worst defensive team in 2022, the Nats ended April ranked 22nd with minus-4 Defensive Runs Saved. That’s far from excellent play in the field, but it did represent real improvement from the previous year.

When they take the field this afternoon, though, the Nationals find themselves back at the bottom of the list. They entered the day with minus-29 DRS, tied with the Athletics for worst in the sport.

Defensive metrics, of course, remain far from a perfect measurement of actual defensive play. But the eye test also seems to suggest the team’s performance has regressed in this area over the last month or so.

“I still feel like we’re playing pretty good defense,” manager Davey Martinez insisted today. “Look, you’ve got to remember we’ve got two guys that are really young in the middle of the field, and it’s going to be part of the process. But I think overall they’re doing well.”

Of the many aspects of baseball for which we can produce statistics, for me, defense is the hardest to quantify and hardest to find reliable stats. There may be some numbers – advanced or otherwise – that some fans swear by, but I have often struggled to find any to really suit myself.

Many defensive metrics are hard to understand and which one (s) should we rely on? That is not easy to determine either.

But one defensive stat that seems more in the norm now or one used more often now is Defensive Runs Saved (DRS). Maybe O’s fans will like this stat even more when they realize that while their team ranked among the worst in baseball in that stat in the most three recent full seasons, this year Baltimore ranked tied for ninth in team DRS in MLB.

Here are the top 10 teams in DRS from 2022:

129 – New York Yankees
84 – Los Angeles Dodgers
77 – Cleveland Guardians
70 – St. Louis Cardinals
67 – Houston Astros
55 – Arizona Diamondbacks
51 – Milwaukee Brewers
43 – Toronto Blue Jays
38 – Baltimore Orioles and Seattle Mariners

Davey Martinez knew what he was getting into during the 2022 season, his fifth as manager of the Nationals. In the first full year of the Nats’ rebuild, he wouldn’t have the most talented roster in the major leagues and they wouldn’t win a lot of games. But he at least expected his players to give their best efforts and make fundamental plays every night.

The effort was always there. The same cannot be said about the fundamentals.

It was a roster filled with inexperienced players and journeyman veterans during a season in which development was the focus. Still, it seemed like the Nationals too often had difficulty with even the most basic plays, especially on defense and on the basepaths. Common signs of a rebuilding team.

The Nationals finished the season with a -39 defensive rating and -47 defensive runs saved as a team, both second-worst in the majors per FanGraphs. However, they did fare slightly better in ultimate zone rating, another widely used defensive metric, at -8.8, which ranked 21st in the majors.

So how can the Nats improve defensively in 2023? Aside from the obvious solutions of practicing in spring training, making routine plays, acquiring better defenders to fill out the roster and perhaps even pitching better, they could benefit simply by players playing in their proper positions for the majority of the season.