The Nationals had a rough 2021 season. They finished with a 65-97 record, their worst in over a decade. To start the season, the Nationals were a team with playoff hopes. They signed Kyle Schwarber and Brad Hand, traded for Josh Bell, and still had one of the best rotations in baseball: Trea Turner and Juan Soto. However, the Nationals still fell short. They were officially eliminated from the playoffs and most fans would consider this season to be a massive failure. Me? I think it was a massive success.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the Nationals were never going to be a playoff team in 2021. MLB’s annual PECOTA projections gave the Nationals a 10% chance of winning the division. ESPN gave Washington a 28.4% chance of just making the playoffs. And, the icing on the cake, out of five CBS baseball ‘experts’, who projected how each division in baseball would pan out: one had the Nationals finishing third in their division, three had them finishing fourth in their division, and one had them finishing dead last in their division. Even though the team might have looked decent on paper, the odds were clearly not in their favor to have much success to begin with.

Then the season started, and almost everyone’s performances were below what was expected. Through the first two months of the season, Patrick Corbin had an ERA of 6.23, Stephen Strasburg managed to get hurt twice and ended his season after racking up a 4.57 ERA, and the bullpen was perhaps even worse. Tanner Rainey put up a 8.78 ERA in that time frame, Brad Hand had an ERA of 3.72 (his highest in 6 years), Will Harris put up an ERA of 9.00 and was hurt for the year, Luis Avilan put up an even worse 12.60 ERA and was hurt for the year, and the list keeps going. Somehow, that is only the pitching side of things. Juan Soto was performing worse than he ever had before at the plate, providing almost no power. The new additions of Josh Bell and Kyle Schwarber were doing nothing too, putting up batting averages of .206 and .236. That’s only the star hitters. Starlin Castro and Victor Robles were putting up dreadful numbers at the plate too. All of this led to a 21-29 record after their first two months of the season.

All signs pointed to the Nationals selling at the trade deadline, well… until June. From June 9th to June 30th, the Nationals went 16-5 and bumped their record up to 40-38. That’s when rumors of star players like Cubs utility man Kris Bryant being traded to Washington started. The Nationals trading for Bryant or any other star on the market during the deadline would’ve been a deadly blow to Washington and here’s why: First off, they had one of the worst minor league systems in all of baseball. They had one prospect in MLB Pipeline’s top 100, one who was close to the top 100, and really not much after that. That is a big deal for Washington because they would have to further deplete that minor league system to pull off a trade. Secondly is that it would kill their future. The Nationals are a team that may be known for starting pitching, but is and will be built around the 22 year old phenom known as Juan Soto. And the main goal for Juan Soto’s tenure in DC, whether that be eight seasons or his whole career, is to win. To further deplete the minor leagues would be pushing all of the team’s championship aspirations to the present while taking away all of them from the future. And stripping those aspirations down the line only causes more problems with Juan Soto than stripping current, very slim, aspirations.

Then the weekend of July 23rd through July 25th rolled around and completely flipped the script. The Nationals took a trip up the beltway and faced off against the Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park. The Nationals came into that weekend with a 45-50 record and were already 6.5 games out of first place in the NL East. Then they lost that Friday 6-1, then Saturday 5-3, and by Sunday’s end, they had been swept by Baltimore and had fallen to 8.5 games out of first place in the NL East. That’s when Mike Rizzo (the Nationals’ General Manager) came out and publicly stated that the team would be looking to sell off veterans at the trade deadline. A major step in the right direction.

Then, on the night of July 29th, news dropped that shook the entire baseball world. Nationals superstars Trea Turner and Max Scherzer were heading to the Los Angeles Dodgers for a return of four prospects. Those four prospects being catcher Keibert Ruiz, pitcher Josiah Gray, pitcher Gerrardo Carillo, and outfielder Donovan Casey. In that period of time, from July 29th to July 31st, the Nationals traded away Max Scherzer, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, Brad Hand, Daniel Hudson, Yan Gomes, and Josh Harrison. In return, the Nationals got 12 players, 11 of them being prospects. A complete shift in talent occurred in D.C, but it was a shift for the better.

This trade deadline made the entire Nationals season a massive success. Dating back to 2018, the Nationals front office has been extremely stubborn about selling off veterans for prospects in the future. Back in that 2018 season, the Nationals were right around .500 heading into the trade deadline. They were six games out of first place in the NL East and had Bryce Harper’s free agency looming at the season’s end. The Nationals received strong interest from the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers about the superstar, but ended up turning both down. The offer they accepted? None. But what makes that decision a bit more puzzling is the fact that they didn’t buy. In fact, they sold. Starting pitcher Gio Gonzalez, second baseman Daniel Murphy, and first baseman Matt Adams all shipped off to other teams. The Nats ended up finishing the 2018 season 82-80 and lost Bryce Harper to the Philadelphia Phillies in that offseason. Harper was gone and they hadn’t got a playoff appearance or a prospect return for him in his final season. In 2019, the Nationals bought at the deadline (for obvious reasons) and that was the right decision, but in 2020, they were struggling heading into the deadline and did nothing. Not a single move was made. Missing out on opportunities to trade veteran players for minor prospect returns or to try to heave themselves into the playoff mix. Nothing.

The Nationals’ 2021 season may be viewed as a massive failure due to their lack of success on the field. However, I view this season quite differently. I believe this season is a huge success because they picked a direction, a direction I think will lead to their brightest future. Additionally, this season was a success for the Nationals because they escaped their old, stubborn views on winning, and accepted the fact that their current championship window has closed. Though their previous decade of winning has come to an end, a whole new decade has arrived. A decade in which there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.