Nationals minor league affiliate might be the worst minor league team of all-time

The Washington Nationals aren’t off to a great start this year, but their affiliate in the low minors looks to be all-time bad.

Entering Friday, the Washington Nationals are 14-19 and in last place in the National League East. Optimists will point to their turnaround from a similarly bad start in 2019, which ended in winning the World Series. And yes it is still pretty early, a little more than 20 percent into a 162-game run.

The Nationals may become a trade deadline seller if they can’t get things turned around in the next two months. Years of being in win-now mode, especially 2019, has helped yield the worst farm system in baseball entering this year as ranked by MLB.com. So trading off some veterans would help restock their minor league pipeline, if nothing else. One of their lower-level affiliates could sure use the help.

The Nationals’ Low-A affiliate is off to a horrific start

On Thursday night, the low Single-A Fredericksburg Nationals lost to the Delmarva Shorebirds (the Baltimore Orioles’ low-A affiliate) 7-3. That dropped them to 0-9 on the season, which is bad enough. But Mark Zuckerman of MASN Sports dropped a more dire statistical nugget.

Fredericksburg has been outscored by nearly eight runs per game on average thus far. They were outscored 35-6 in their first two games of the season, with a17-3 drubbing by Delmarva on Wednesday night as the most recent one-sided result to skew their run differential. That said, they have lost by less than four runs just once in their nine games with less than four runs scored seven times. This might be an all-time bad start by a minor league team at any level, and if not it’s surely among the worst.

The Low-A Nationals will have their next opportunity to finally get in the win column Friday night against Delmarva. The excuse of it being all about development at that low a level is easy, but it’s nice to win some games and at least be competitive.