David Huzzard: Nats' new magic number is 11

Eleven wins. That is what it will take for the Nationals to win the World Series. Sounds doable, right? All they need to do is go 11-8 in the month of October and they are not just the champions of the National League East, but the champions of the world. Winning 11 games in a month, playing three games over .500 - neither sounds too difficult for a team like the Nationals.

Then you start looking at stats. The Nationals are second in the National League in runs scored with the only team in front of them playing their home games on the moon, and they are the best team in the National League at preventing runs, having allowing just 3.47 a game. The worst hitter in their lineup is Wilson Ramos, their catcher, with a wRC+ of 99. The Nationals trot out a lineup eight deep every night with their worst hitter being 1 percent bellow league average and above average for his position.

The Nationals are going to be favorites against whomever they face from the NL. Get to the World Series, and if pitching wins in the playoffs, the Nationals are going to have a shot against any team from the American League. Eleven wins are all it will take. The Nationals are going to be favored to represent the NL in the World Series and once there, anything can happen, and with the Nationals' pitching, they could be favored in that series, as well.

It is far from over and there is no easy path to the championship, but the Nationals took the first step Tuesday evening when they clinched their second division title in three years. Now it is all about those 11 wins.

The Nationals are 15-12 against the teams currently slated to be in the playoffs, but those numbers are meaningless. Baseball is played three different ways over the course of the season. There is spring training, where pitchers go out and throw a certain number of pitches and getting to that number is more important than the results and after a few innings, plus all of the position players are replaced. In the regular season, the pitcher pitches as long as he is producing results and the position players play all nine innings, but who that starting pitcher is depends on what day of the week it is. In the playoffs, it's your best against their best. It's the only time a No. 1 is guaranteed to face a No. 1, a No. 2 a No. 2 and so on down the line.

Here is the other thing about those head-to-head records: When the Nationals played the Pirates in Pittsburgh in May, they were without Adam LaRoche, Bryce Harper, and Ryan Zimmerman. Gregg Dobbs, Nate McLouth, and Danny Espinosa started in their place. Unless an absolute tragedy befalls the Nationals, that won't be happening in the postseason. But on the flip side of that is in the series in D.C (the one the Nationals won), where the Pirates were without Andrew McCutchen. The Nationals and Pirates never once played each other when both teams were at their best.

Since the low-water mark of May 28, the Nationals stormed through baseball, going 62-37, a .626 winning percentage and a 101-win pace. They have played like the team people thought they were. Since the All-Star break, Jayson Werth, Bryce Harper, Anthony Rendon and Denard Span all have an OPS over .800. Zimmerman and his career .828 OPS will be added back into the mix in some capacity. The pitching has been lights out of late and since a dreadful five-inning, seven-run outing against the Braves, Stephen Strasburg has pitched 45 2/3 innings with a 2.17 ERA, including two quality starts against the Braves.

Slow, steady, consistent and even is how the Nationals appear. It is how they are painted in the media, but all the right pieces have gotten hot in the second half of the season, and if they stay that way for just another month and a half, the 11 wins the Nationals need turn from a distinct possibility into a reality.

David Huzzard blogs about the Nationals at Citizens of Natstown. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidHuzzard. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our regular roster of writers.