WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – It’s easy to overlook just how much Keibert Ruiz had on his plate last season.

It’s tough enough for a young catcher – ostensibly a rookie, even though he no longer qualified by official standards – to learn how to lead a pitching staff through a full season. Now add the work required to become a productive big league hitter. From both sides of the plate. All while starting four or five times a week.

“Yeah, I wasn’t used to doing that in the minor leagues,” Ruiz said of the offensive-plus-defensive pressures he faced in 2022. “Like you said, a lot of responsibility. But I just learned from last year, and we keep going, keep doing my best. I feel that last year gave me a lot of confidence for this year.”

Despite the challenges he faced, Ruiz’s first full big league season was a resounding success in the Nationals’ eyes. He hit .251 with 22 doubles, seven homers, 36 RBIs and a .673 OPS. He threw out 22 baserunners, second-most among all major league catchers. And he learned how to be a leader behind the plate, taking charge of a pitching staff that endured through all kinds of troubles during a 107-loss season.

There is, however, more room to grow, everyone acknowledges. Ruiz was an above-average hitter in the Dodgers’ farm system before he was part of the Max Scherzer-Trea Turner trade. He hit 21 homers in 2021. He has the potential to be a true all-around catcher, maybe an All-Star.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – It’s been a long winter. And it may be a very long summer back home in D.C. as the Nationals navigate their way through another rebuilding season.

But if ever there’s a time for optimism, this is it. It’s the first day of spring training, and while there’s little reason to believe the 2023 Nationals are going to be dramatically better than the 2022 Nationals were, they begin today with a clean slate and at least the hope of better things to come.

There are six weeks to prepare for a March 30 Opening Day date with the Braves. Much can and will happen between now and then, some of it expected, some of it unexpected.

Here’s what to expect on day one …

With some pitchers and catchers still getting their physicals completed, the day actually will get off to a later start than usual. Most days, the team will take the back fields behind The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches a little after 9 a.m. for Davey Martinez’s “Circle of Trust” meeting, then stretch and workouts. But for day one, that meeting won’t begin until 12:45 p.m., so the first workout of the spring will be an afternoon affair.

It’s never easy trying to predict how any ballplayer is going to perform in the coming season, but it feels like an especially difficult task trying to guess how the members of the Nationals’ projected lineup will perform in 2023.

Seriously, is there one sure thing in the entire group? One guy you can definitively say will reach certain statistical mileposts? It sure doesn’t look like it.

On the bright side, there’s the possibility for a lot of these players to have big seasons, whether youngsters realizing their potential or experienced hitters finding the form they displayed only a few years ago. On the down side, there’s also the possibility of complete disaster, from flash-in-the-pan candidates to supposedly highly touted youngsters failing to take that critical next step and enjoy success in the majors.

There’s a wide variance of possibilities for the 2023 Nationals lineup. You can see that when running through each player’s potential best-case and worst-case scenario for the coming year …

KEIBERT RUIZ
Best case: Up to 120 games started, with a batting average over .275, an increase in power to get his slugging percentage over .400, one of the highest caught-stealing percentages in the league and his first career All-Star selection.
Worst case: Nagging injuries prevent him from catching 100 games, he makes too much weak contact and bats .250 again with a .360 slugging percentage. Loses his magic touch behind the plate and tries to compensate by throwing too many balls away for costly errors.

The Nationals were bad last year, but you already know that. They want to be better this year, and you probably do, too.

But will they be better? That’s what we’re going to attempt to predict the next two days.

Though there’s still a month to go until spring training, and more additions or subtractions are possible, the Nats have already assembled what looks like it could be their Opening Day roster. So, it’s not too early for this exercise.

We’ll look at position players today, running through each of the positions (included designated hitter). Then we’ll look at the pitching staff tomorrow. Will the 2023 Nationals be better, worse or the same as the 2022 Nationals? Here we go …

CATCHER: Moderately better
As a group, Nationals catchers posted a .223/.286/.330 offensive slash last season, with 26 doubles, 12 homers and 48 RBIs. Keibert Ruiz (.249/.313/.361) was better than that, and there’s good reason to believe he’ll improve as a hitter in his second full big league season. The Nats would love for his power production, in particular, to improve. Defensively, Ruiz already is solid, but there’s also room for improvement there with experience. The real issue comes on days when he doesn’t start. The team’s backup catchers were really bad last season, with Riley Adams, Tres Barrera and Israel Pineda batting a collective .198/.233/.273 over 215 plate appearances. Somebody from that group is going to have to be better this year.

It’s New Year’s Day, and you won’t find anybody associated with the Nationals not named Meneses who was disappointed to see 2022 come to an end.

It was a miserable year, arguably the most miserable year in club history.

But like Mark McGwire once tried to do in front of a congressional panel, let’s not talk about the past anymore. Let’s look ahead to the future.

What does 2023 have in store for the Nats? Optimism, obviously, isn’t going to be sky-high, but there are plenty of reasons to believe it will at least be better than the just-completed year was.

Here are some reasonable outcomes various members of the team should be hoping to achieve in 2023 …

The Nationals’ offseason moves to date have been, well, less than inspired.

They signed Jeimer Candelario for one year and $5 million, then Trevor Williams for two years and $13 million. They acquired, via the Rule 5 draft and the waiver wire, unproven players named Thad Ward, Stone Garrett and A.J. Alexy. They brought back sentimental favorites Sean Doolittle and Matt Adams on minor league deals. And they’re now on the verge of bringing back Erasmo Ramirez for one year and perhaps as much as $2 million if he hits all his incentives.

Not exactly a rousing Hot Stove League to date. Certainly not compared to the rest of the National League East, which has seen the Mets, Phillies and Braves continue to bolster what already were playoff rosters with even more talent and even more dollars devoted to payroll.

It’s frustrating, for fans and team employees alike who were hoping for a bit more financial commitment from ownership on the heels of a 107-loss season.

Are the 2023 Nationals as currently constructed any better than the 2022 Nationals were? It sure doesn’t look like it on paper. They might even be worse, hard as that is to believe.

We don’t really know yet what effect Major League Baseball’s ban on the infield shift will have on hitters next season, but teams are taking the change into consideration as they make roster decisions this winter.

That includes the Nationals, whose first offensive addition of the offseason could be among those who benefit from the lack of a shift.

Jeimer Candelario is coming off a down year in Detroit, one in which his batting average fell 54 points, his on-base percentage fell 79 points and his slugging percentage fell 82 points from the 2021 season, when he hit .271/.351/.443 and led the American League with 42 doubles.

So, why did the Nationals target the 29-year-old corner infielder after the Tigers didn’t tender him a contract last month? In part because they saw peripheral numbers this season that suggested he was especially hurt by the shift.

“We had a list of 9-10 guys that we thought could fit,” manager Davey Martinez said last week at the Winter Meetings. “And we looked at Jeimer and his numbers and the amount of ground balls he did hit to the pull side, and we thought: ‘Hey, it could definitely help him.’ ”

The Nationals were bad in a lot of ways this season. You don’t lose 107 games because of a deficiency in one single department. You lose that many games because of multiple problem areas.

And one of the Nats’ most notable problems in 2022 was a lack of power. Like, a complete lack of power.

They hit only 136 home runs, fewest in the National League. That represented the team’s lowest total for any scheduled 162-game season since 2008, when they finished with a league-worst 117 homers.

The Nationals hadn’t resided anywhere close to the bottom of the league in all the years since. Only once did they rank 10th in the NL, and that came during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. From 2011-19, they always ranked in the top half of the league in homers, and five times ranked among the top four power-hitting teams in the NL.

Suffice it to say, they’re going to need to improve in this area next season if they’re going to make some real strides in their rebuilding efforts.

As we wait for the Nationals to put their offseason plan – whatever that plan ends up being – into action, it’s probably instructive to take stock of what they already have in place.

The organizational depth chart looks a whole lot different today than it did one year ago, and it basically bears zero resemblance to the one that existed two years ago. Consider this: Only 22 players who were on the 40-man roster on Opening Day are still on the 40-man roster. And out of that group, only 10 were on the 40-man roster on Opening Day 2021.

That’s a lot of change.

So, what’s left? A roster that has more young talent than it did a year ago, though most of it has yet to reach the big leagues. And plenty of holes that still need to be filled.

As you can see when you break the depth chart down position by position, the Nationals still have some work to do, both when it comes to short-term and long-term roster construction. (Note: Players not currently on the 40-man roster have an asterisk after their names.) …

It’s no surprise a team that traded its top two power bats at the deadline finished the season as one of the worst power-hitting squads in the major leagues.

When the Nationals traded Juan Soto and Josh Bell to the Padres for six players, including five prospects, they were giving up the majority of the power produced by their lineup.

They did get Luke Voit in return, the lone veteran in the trade package coming back to Washington, to help supplant some of that power and fill Bell’s position at first base. But his nine home runs and 21 RBIs with the Nats were not enough to lift his new club from the bottom of the power barrel.

But he couldn’t have been expected to do it all by himself. Nor could he have been expected to do it when coupled with CJ Abrams, the speedy contact hitter who didn’t homer and posted a .327 slugging percentage in 159 at-bats for the Nationals.

A lack of power was already an issue for the Nats before Voit and Abrams arrived in Washington, even when they had Soto and Bell. And in this day and age of baseball when we’ve seen more homers hit than ever before (not to mention when Nats pitchers gave up the most home runs in the big leagues), that’s not a great recipe for success.

PLAYER REVIEW: KEIBERT RUIZ

Age on opening day 2023: 24

How acquired: Traded from Dodgers with Josiah Gray, Donovan Casey and Gerardo Carrillo for Max Scherzer and Trea Turner, July 2021

MLB service time: 1 year, 64 days

2022 salary: $701,300

NEW YORK – There is no way to sugarcoat a 55-107 season, no silver lining to setting a club record for losses, no justifying the worst record in baseball.

This was, undoubtedly, the worst of the Nationals’ 18 seasons since they arrived in the District in 2005. They lost more games than the awful 2008-09 teams. The rotation’s 5.97 ERA was far worse than the dreadful 2006 (5.37) or 2020 (5.38) starters’ numbers. Their 17-59 record and .224 winning percentage against the National League East was not only the worst in club history, it was the worst in major league history since divisional play began in 1969.

Oh, and they also traded away a 22-year-old generational star, not because they didn’t want him, but because they believed it was the only way they could restock a farm system that was barren because of their own inability to draft and develop future big leaguers over much of the last decade.

How could the Nationals try to claim the 2022 season was successful? They can’t.

What they can do, and what they are trying to do, is believe this rock-bottom season was a necessary step toward something better in the future. That by losing to this extent now and refocusing efforts on rebuilding that barren farm system, they will be in a better position to win again sooner than they would be if they didn’t take this drastic step backward.

ATLANTA - When the equipment truck loaded up in D.C. and prepared to drive to the Nationals' charter plane, it was crammed with more catching gear than usual.

A total of four catchers have spots in the visitors' clubhouse at Truist Park: Riley Adams, Tres Barrera, Israel Pineda and Keibert Ruiz. Adams starts tonight, catching starter Cory Abbott, while Barrera and Pineda will be on the bench. Ruiz is the surprise addition, as the 24-year-old has recently been cleared to travel with the team.

“He’s feeling better,” said manager Davey Martinez of Ruiz, who has been sidelined since Sept. 8 with a testicular contusion. “He’s still pretty sore, but he obviously is feeling better, he’s able to fly with us.”

Ruiz won’t appear in any more games in 2022, but the Nats have designs for him in the final two weeks of the season.

“We want to keep him around,” Martinez said before Monday’s series opener. “Before the season’s over, he can maybe just kinda work out light and get going so that when the time comes, we feel like he’s ready to get ready for the season, spring training next year.”

PHILADELPHIA – Some news and notes before the Nationals take on the Phillies in the second game of this weekend’s series at Citizens Bank Park …

* MacKenzie Gore is set to make a rehab start Sunday for Triple-A Rochester at Syracuse, his first game action since his acquisition from the Padres at the trade deadline.

Gore, who has been on the 15-day injured list with left elbow inflammation, is scheduled to throw three innings for the Red Wings, perhaps building up his pitch count to 45.

The Nationals are attempting to build Gore up enough to come off the IL before season’s end. Manager Davey Martinez said they’d ideally like for him to get up to five innings and 75 pitches, so that would suggest three minor league rehab starts and then at most two starts for the Nats in the season’s final days.

“The most exciting thing is that he’s throwing off the mound again. The ball’s coming out, and he looks like he’s good,” Martinez said. “Now it’s just a matter of facing hitters. We saw him do that a little bit, but now he gets to compete. I’m looking forward to watching him do that. My big thing is to make sure that when he leaves here this year, he’s healthy and he can go into the winter. And then we’ll build him up and get him ready for spring training.”

PHILADELPHIA – Keibert Ruiz’s season has likely come to an abrupt end after the Nationals placed their young catcher on the injured list with a testicular contusion that forced him to remain in a St. Louis hospital overnight after he was struck by a foul ball during the team’s series finale against the Cardinals.

Ruiz was discharged and was flying to Philadelphia late this afternoon to rejoin the Nationals, who formally placed him on the 10-day IL prior to tonight’s game against the Phillies. Manager Davey Martinez, though, said Ruiz has been instructed not to partake in any strenuous activities for three weeks, which leaves him almost no chance of making it back before the season ends in 26 days.

“We hope that he just continues to get better,” Martinez said. “We’ll see how he’s doing. But with everything going on, the doctors said he’s not able to do anything strenuous for three weeks. So we’re just going to take it day by day and take it from there.”

Martinez generally was encouraged about Ruiz’s progress in the last day and didn’t sound overly concerned about his long-term well-being. Assuming his season is over, the 24-year-old will finish with a .251 batting average, 22 doubles, seven homers, 36 RBIs and a .673 OPS across 433 plate appearances.

Ruiz enters the day having caught 106 games, second only to the Phillies’ J.T. Realmuto this season. He has thrown out 18 basestealers while also picking off four runners, giving him 22 total runners thrown out (again, second only to Realmuto among all major league catchers).

PHILADELPHIA – The first two legs of the Nationals’ three-city road trip went about as well as anyone could’ve reasonably expected, and that’s even with Wednesday night’s disastrous bottom of the ninth in St. Louis. They still managed to win two of three against the Mets, then split a four-game series with the Cardinals. Now they arrive at Citizens Bank Park for a three-game weekend set with the Phillies, who aren’t in first place of their division the way the other two teams were, but are very much in the thick of the wild card race.

As expected, the Nats did make roster moves before tonight’s game, with Keibert Ruiz landing on the 10-day injured list with a testicular contusion after his scary incident with a foul ball Thursday afternoon. To fill his spot, 22-year-old catching prospect Israel Pineda had his contract selected from Triple-A Rochester, getting his first promotion to the big leagues. Jordan Weems was also recalled from Rochester, while Jake McGee was designated for assignment.

The Nationals have been scoring runs during their recent upswing, and they’ll try to continue that tonight against veteran Noah Syndergaard, who gave up four runs on 11 hits when they met each other here last month. Also remember: Syndergaard has long been one of the worst pitchers in baseball at holding runners on base, so look for the Nats to run when they have the opportunity.

Patrick Corbin, meanwhile, returns to the site of one of his worst starts of the year, one of two in which he didn’t complete the first inning. He’s been much better since, and tonight he looks for his third straight win against a Phillies lineup that surprisingly doesn’t include Bryce Harper (who has struggled since coming off the IL).

WASHINGTON NATIONALS at PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES
Where: Citizens Bank Park
Gametime: 7:05 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN2, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, MLB.com
Weather: Mostly clear, 79 degrees, wind 8 mph out to left field

ST. LOUIS – The 2022 season was never going to be about wins and losses for the Nationals. It was always going to be about development, and the hope that there would be more reason to be optimistic by season’s end than there was at the outset.

It’s still far too soon to declare anything in that regard, and the current roster has a whole lot of work still to do to try to erase the foul stench of April through August. But there is no doubt the last couple of weeks have offered as many encouraging developments as anyone around here has seen all year, peaking this Labor Day weekend.

Today’s 6-0 victory over the Cardinals was the Nationals’ third straight over a first-place opponent, coming on the heels of back-to-back, 7-1 road wins over the Mets. They’ve now won six of eight for only the second time this year, and they’ve won nine of 16 for the first time in 2022.

"I think it shows you what we can do when everyone's clicking at the same time," outfielder Lane Thomas said. "It's been fun. The last 10 days or so, it's been awesome."

The results, of course, are welcomed by everyone, but just as encouraging are the primary players who are making these results possible. The young core general manager Mike Rizzo is trying to assemble in the wake of the massive sell-off of the last two summers is beginning to take shape and beginning to look like something worth building around.

ST LOUIS – Nelson Cruz is out of the Nationals lineup for the third straight day, still plagued by a sore right knee but showing enough signs of improvement to suggest he’ll be ready to return Tuesday night.

Cruz fouled a ball off his knee in the third inning of Friday’s game against the Mets and was replaced two innings later. He sat out the remaining two games of that weekend series in New York, and now he’s out again for the opener of this four-game series against the Cardinals.

“We’re giving him another day today,” manager Davey Martinez said. “He says he feels a lot better. He’ll be available to pinch-hit today. Hopefully, he’ll be good to go tomorrow.”

Cruz has dealt with several minor ailments this season, but typically has returned after only one or two days off. This is only the second time the 42-year-old designated hitter has been out of the lineup three consecutive games.

Cruz’s absence has opened the door for Martinez to try some different looks with his lineup and defensive alignment. Luke Voit has assumed DH duties in his absence, with Joey Meneses shifting from right field to first base. Martinez has tried out multiple corner outfielders in recent days, and today he’s again going with rookie Josh Palacios in right field and veteran middle infielder César Hernández in left field.

NEW YORK – Having caught the first two games of the Nationals’ weekend series against the Mets, with a day game for the finale of a three-city, 10-game trip that includes no off-days, Keibert Ruiz seemed to be a safe bet to find himself on the bench Sunday at Citi Field.

The young catcher knew that’s what Davey Martinez’s intention would be when devising lineups for the series. So he took a proactive approach and walked into the manager’s office after Saturday night’s game and said he wanted to start the following afternoon.

Martinez, knowing Ruiz had taken a foul ball off his mask during the game, said he needed an honest answer if he was feeling well enough to do it. But when Ruiz insisted he was, Martinez didn’t hesitate to rewrite his lineup card and give the 24-year-old the opportunity to play again.

“I’ve had Willson Contreras (in Chicago), who caught every day. I watched (Yadier) Molina catch every day, (Ivan Rodriguez) catch every day,” Martinez said. “I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt, see how he reacts today and we’ll go from there. I did tell him: ‘You will get a day off here in the next couple days.’ But I love the fact that he wanted to play today.”

Martinez loved it even more when Ruiz proceeded to collect three hits and call another strong game behind the plate in the Nationals’ 7-1 win over the Mets.

NEW YORK – A Nationals ballclub that entered the weekend with a historically woeful record against division opponents marched into Citi Field and emerged with a series victory over the first-place Mets. And all it took to achieve the seemingly unachievable was Patrick Corbin outdueling Max Scherzer, César Hernández hitting his first home in more than a calendar year and Erick Fedde earning his first win in 16 career attempts against New York.

Strange times, indeed. But welcome times for the Nats, who followed up Saturday night’s rousing victory with an identical 7-1 blowout before a stunned and/or booing crowd of 31,711 that couldn’t believe what just happened here over the last 24 hours.

So what if the Nationals were 9-43 against the National League East this season? They’re 2-0 the last two days. So what if their rotation set a modern baseball record with 43 consecutive winless starts? They’ve notched four wins in the last week. And so what if they’ve won only six road series all year? Three of those have come against the Mets, Dodgers and Braves, owners of the three best records in the NL.

"We're getting good pitching," manager Davey Martinez said. "We're starting to put the ball in play. Playing good defense. The last couple games were really good. I'm proud of the guys. They're playing hard, and that's all you can ask for."

None of this means the Nats are about to go on a September run against a daunting schedule loaded with opponents in the thick of the pennant race. But neither does it mean they can’t enjoy a few celebratory moments along the way, making this season a little more tolerable.