The Nationals are defending World Series champs. But what does that mean in a shortened season?

But now, as Major League Baseball wades into a season shortened by the novel coronavirus pandemic, Hudson is conflicted. What will it mean to win it all in 2020, should the sport make it through a 60-game schedule and the playoffs? And what if the Nationals repeat?

“What does 60 games prove? I don’t know,” Hudson wondered recently. “Can you really figure out who’s the best baseball team in the league from 60 games? Probably not.”

Hudson’s best argument — or at least his most recent one — may be a team he didn’t exactly pitch for. In the spring of 2019, when he was still with the Toronto Blue Jays, the Nationals were very, very, very bad before they were very, very, very good. Through 50 games, they were famously 19-31. Through 60, they were slightly better at 27-33. In both cases, they were far from the playoff picture, and had the season ended, the eventual World Series winners would have watched the World Series from home.

That’s all hypothetical. It’s hard to compare the first 60 games of any season with the 60 of 2020. Every result counts equally, narratives aside, yet the reality is that in a normal year August and September are treated differently than April and May. And now managers and players know they’re starting in the final stretch.

The question, though, is how this season will be viewed in the record books. Baseball writers and fans love to debate legitimacy, context and when, where and to whom an asterisk should be applied. Records and legacies before Jackie Robinson integrated the majors in 1947? Up for discussion. The home run records of the Steroid Era? Asterisks for everyone. The Houston Astros’ 2017 title after it was found that they used illegal sign-stealing tactics? Pushed out of the discourse this spring, but their time will come.

When the Nationals won last October, beating the Astros in seven games, they also earned a shot at going back-to-back. Then that shot was complicated.

“It’s not 162 games,” said Kurt Suzuki, a veteran Nationals catcher, when asked whether a 2020 title would be viable next to what he and his teammates just accomplished. “I think what makes it so special is [when] you’re in it for 162 games, it’s a marathon, man. You go through so many ups and downs. It’s survival of the fittest, who can last the full season. And then you have the postseason, the extra month, to go into.

“I don’t want to discredit it, because everybody’s in the same boat. Everybody has the same rules to follow. We’re all in this doing the same thing. You can’t discredit a championship, because everything starts from scratch, but is it going to be different? Maybe.”

“Maybe” is the operative word here. It’s what will fuel discussions for decades. It’s why talking about records, awards and the Hall of Fame is so addicting: There’s no right answer.

The last team to repeat was the New York Yankees, who won the World Series in 1998, 1999 and 2000. The last National League club to do it was the Cincinnati Reds in 1975 and 1976. It’s hard for some of the reasons Suzuki described. The baseball season is correctly described as a marathon, with six weeks of spring training, six months of the regular season, then a sprint through October.

A hot start could mean absolutely nothing by the end — just ask any longtime New York Mets fan.

Or a midsummer surge could be short-circuited by early results — just look at last year’s San Francisco Giants.

Washington started camp Feb. 13 and took Game 7 on Oct. 30, 2019, the last day of MLB’s calendar. That night, the sport’s oldest team had a short celebration before most guys wound up sipping beers or eating cold-cut sandwiches in the clubhouse cafeteria. They were spent.

“You don’t realize how tired you are until it’s over,” closer Sean Doolittle said over the winter. “And we were really tired, emotionally and physically. It makes you appreciate every little thing it took to get there.”

So there’s also a lot of chance involved. At one point early last season, while they tumbled down the standings, the Nationals were without shortstop Trea Turner, third baseman Anthony Rendon, left fielder Juan Soto, first baseman Ryan Zimmerman and Matt Adams, Zimmerman’s backup. A bunch of injuries hit all at once, forcing Manager Dave Martinez to roll out spring training-caliber lineups.

But the Nationals were relatively injury-free down the stretch, and they may have benefited from another team’s misfortune. The Milwaukee Brewers lost MVP candidate Christian Yelich for the season Sept. 10. Yelich fractured his right kneecap by fouling a pitch square off it. The Nationals later beat the Brewers in the National League wild-card game, only after right fielder Trent Grisham, Yelich’s replacement, misplayed a ball and allowed three runs to score on a Soto single.

It took that moment, plus many others like it, for the Nationals to win one World Series. Winning two, in a standard 162-game season, has proved improbable because of the combination of talent, durability and luck it requires. This year, though, will require a watered-down amount of each.

“We know it’s going to be a short season,” Nationals catcher Yan Gomes said. “And we can’t really do the whole 19-31 and make it a story again.”

There will be unique challenges for a hypothetical champion, assuming, perhaps naively, that the season is even completed. There is a manual of new rules to follow. Players, coaches and staff members are being tested every other day for the coronavirus. There is already a lingering worry that the virus could spread through clubhouses. Regional travel will heighten those concerns.

Nationals pitcher Patrick Corbin figures a champion will have earned it. Doc Rivers, the coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, says this year’s NBA champion will deserve a “gold star, not an asterisk.” Their shared logic is that these circumstances are difficult, unlike anything teams have dealt with before. But baseball’s defining characteristic is longevity. In the eyes of history, a 2020 title would come without the rigors of slogging through February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September and, finally, October.

And so the Nationals, through that same lens, will never have a true chance to repeat.

“I can’t tell you how whoever is there at the end is going to feel about it, if they’re going to think it’s legit. I don’t know,” Hudson said. “But if we’re standing at the end, I’ll probably be just as happy as I was last year.”