Why this is an important year for the Nationals

The 2024 season, as has been mentioned before, is a big one for the Nationals. After tearing down the last vestiges of a championship roster in 2021 and 2022, then starting to see a new group of young players come together in 2023, there is legitimate reason for optimism heading into the new year.

There’s another reason why this upcoming season is really important for the Nats, though. It’s time for the organization to win back a fan base that has willingly remained patient through the first 2 1/2 years of a rebuild but is now itching to see actual positive results on the field.

That fan base has done a pretty impressive job sticking with the club through a turbulent time. Hardly anything has gone right since the night of the 2019 World Series parade, when Stephen Strasburg opted out of his previous contract and set in motion a chain of dominoes that could not be stopped until every last one fell, at which point the Nationals could only pick up the pieces and try to build a new, sturdier track.

To the immense credit of the fan base, attendance at Nationals Park hasn’t been that bad. Yes, it went down in 2022, but it still topped the 2 million mark for the ninth consecutive non-COVID-impacted season. And though that streak finally ended last season, a total attendance figure of 1.865 million for a team coming off a 107-loss showing and featuring few known marketable players was still respectable.

But eventually, it takes more wins than losses to keep the turnstiles moving. And it’s going to take more than 71 wins this year to flip the attendance trend back in an upward line.

The projected debuts of Dylan Crews, James Wood and Brady House should help. The continued improvement of CJ Abrams, Keibert Ruiz, MacKenzie Gore, Josiah Gray and a healthy Cade Cavalli should also make a difference.

But above all else, fans just want to feel like there’s reason to hope again. And not to hope for good things three years down the road but hope for good things right now.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of buzz on South Capitol Street the last few seasons. Given what the Nats went through, that’s understandable. But this franchise needs to generate some interest again, whether that comes in the form of a surprise wild card run or the excitement of a crop of star rookies bursting onto the scene together.

Here’s another reason why it would behoove the Nationals to generate that kind of buzz in 2024: The window of opportunity to seize back control of this town’s sporting interest may close by year’s end.

It’s a pretty dismal time to be a Washington sports fan. The Nats, as stated, have endured through a never-ending string of bad news for four years now. The Capitals, while trying to climb their way back into the playoffs, are really more about Alex Ovechkin’s pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s goal-scoring record than anything else at the moment. The Wizards are perhaps at their lowest point in decades, and that’s saying something.

And then there are the Commanders. Their just-completed season was a disaster, even by that franchise’s recent low standards. But their coming offseason is going to provide fans with as much hope as they’ve felt in a long time.

New owner Josh Harris is going to clean house and rebuild the organization in his own image. There will be a new general manager. There will be a new head coach. And there will probably be a new quarterback acquired with the No. 2 pick in this spring’s draft.

All of that together is going to give local football fans plenty of reason to be excited come August and September, way more excited than most fans whose team just went 4-13 should get to be. Maybe that enthusiasm won’t be rewarded with actual on-field improvement. But no matter what, the sports attention in this town later this summer is going to be fully focused on Ashburn and Landover.

Unless, of course, the guys who play on South Capitol Street give everyone reason to notice them first.

June and July are reserved for baseball around here, and that’s right about the time the Nationals ideally should be bolstering their major-league roster with the aforementioned top prospects. In a perfect world, Crews, Wood and House would join a team already flirting with a .500 record and help lift it into actual postseason contention before the first two-a-day takes place in Ashburn.

No, baseball isn’t going to overtake football as the No. 1 sport in D.C. Good luck finding many towns across America that can make that claim. (St. Louis doesn’t have the NFL anymore, so the only possibilities might be Los Angeles and New York.)

But there is an opportunity for the Nationals to take advantage of the current state of things and recapture what they were starting to enjoy in 2019.

Maybe it won’t happen this year. But if it does, it sure would go a long way toward solidifying the franchise’s status in a town that desperately wants a consistent winner again.