FBB FanPost Friday: Washington Nationals 2017 Prediction Post

It’s Week 5 (we’ll call it) of our latest attempt to get the FanPost section at Federal Baseball more active than it is!!

[ed. note - “Week 4 went better than previous weeks, and we’re thinking this week’s effort will be even more of a success! Isn’t optimism infectious! Why would you say, “No”?).

We’re continuing undeterred in our attempt to join in on a trending idea across the SB Nation’s baseball’s sites:

FanPost Fridays! (Still no one cheering? Jerks!)

Each Friday throughout the season (hopefully/we’ll try/we promise), we will post a topic for your consideration and close the comments on the story to encourage readers to offer their own take in the FanPosts section instead of just in the comments section.

The FanPost section, if you remain stubbornly unaware, is located on the right sidebar of the front page of Federal Baseball (Here’s a helpful pic of said section):

We also collect quality FanPosts in the FBB Nationals FanPosts section, which is located just under FBB’s top five stories on the front page:

Whichever FanPost generates the most comments and recs over the weekend will be shared on the front page, in the Top 5 stories each Monday.

We’ll also share those stories on our Twitter feed (7400+ followers) and our Facebook page (18K+ followers) to get your work/thoughts/writing in front of as many eyes as possible.

This week’s topic for consideration?: We’re borrowing our friend (we think he likes us) Mark Zuckerman’s fun idea of asking you to make stat-based predictions for the 2017 campaign. Zuckerman asks members of the media covering the Nationals a series of questions and then checks back at the end of the season to see who did best. We’re going to try the same this season.

Here are the questions for consideration. You’ll note that the comment section below here is closed, so you’ll have to write up a FanPost to enter the discussion and have your votes counted. Now, on to the questions. You can reproduce the questions below and include your answer in a FanPost, where you can add whatever expanded thoughts you have, so this is as easy as possible for you as we try to get more people involved:

WASHINGTON NATIONALS 2017 PREDICTIONS:

1. Which Nationals will be All-Stars in 2017?

2. Which Nationals’ position player will lead the team in fWAR (and how many Wins Above Replacement will they have)?

[ed. note: “For the sake of reference, Daniel Murphy led the Nationals in fWAR in 2015 at 5.5 fWAR on the season.”]

3. Which player will lead the Nationals in home runs in 2017? How many will that player hit?

4. Which pitcher will lead the Nationals’ staff in wins (or as we call them “meaningless wins)?

5. Which pitcher will lead the Nationals in strikeouts (Can anyone beat Max Scherzer?) And how many Ks will the team leader collect?

6. Which pitcher will lead the Nationals in saves in 2017? In other words, who’s going to be the closer?

7. How many stolen bases will Trea Turner collect in 2017?

8. How many games will the Nationals win?

9. What will the Nationals total home attendance for the regular season be? [ed. note - “The Nationals drew a total of 2,481,938 in 2016, 2,619,843 in 2015 and 2,579,389 in 2014.”]

• Include your answers in a FanPost and we’ll promote share the best ones and then revisit them after the season. And thanks for playing.