John Boehn­er shed the bur­den of what had become one of Washington’s most cheer­less jobs last week.  Next week, Matt Williams may fol­low him.

Both Boehn­er and the Wash­ing­ton Nation­als’ man­ag­er began the year with high expec­ta­tions.  Boehn­er presided over the largest GOP major­i­ty since 1931.  Williams led a high pay­roll team rich in tal­ent. Both were under­mined by peo­ple they were cho­sen to lead, then blamed for fail­ures that were the fault of their followers.

I was among those who thought the Nation­als were a lock to win baseball’s weak­est divi­sion, pre­dict­ing ear­li­er this month that the Mets would squan­der a six-game lead.    They didn’t.  By Sat­ur­day night, New York had secured the divi­sion cham­pi­onship.  How did I get it so wrong?

I was right about the Mets pitch­ing, wrong about their hit­ting. In win­ning six of sev­en games over ten days against the woe­ful Phillies, New York’s pitch­ing staff showed pal­pa­ble signs of wear.  The Phillies, who rank 28^th of 30 major league teams in offen­sive out­put, had hung up 19 runs in three games against the Mets.  If the punch­less Phils could pum­mel their staff, sure­ly New York’s fabled arms were wear­ing down.  Turns out that they were. Through the end of August, the Mets post­ed an envi­able 3.30 ERA.  This month, it is near­ly a run per game high­er at 4.29, plac­ing them 19^th in baseball.

Their hit­ting has more than com­pen­sat­ed for that dete­ri­o­ra­tion, some­thing I did not antic­i­pate.  Through games of Sep­tem­ber 3, a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of their offen­sive out­put had come at the expense of the Phillies, a team with ghast­ly pitch­ing.  But that anom­aly dis­guised a fun­da­men­tal trans­for­ma­tion that coin­cid­ed with their July 31 acqui­si­tion of Yoe­nis Cespedes.

Almost imme­di­ate­ly, the Mets evolved from a team that relied pri­mar­i­ly on its pitch­ers to one car­ried by its hit­ters.  Through yes­ter­day’s games, the Mets had scored more runs since August 1 than any oth­er team in base­ball. Their 168 runs in August eas­i­ly sur­passed their pre­vi­ous month­ly high of 97.  They aver­aged six runs per game that month, mak­ing them the sec­ond most pro­duc­tive team in base­ball in August, a posi­tion they also occu­py in Sep­tem­ber. They ranked 28th in May in that cat­e­go­ry, 27th in June and 24th in July. Since August 1, they’ve plat­ed 5.81 runs per game, com­pared with the 3.54 runs they aver­aged over the first four months of the sea­son.  That’s an increase of more than two runs per game, more than enough to com­pen­sate for weary arms.

I was so focused on the decline in their pitch­ing that I com­plete­ly whiffed on just how good Mets hit­ting had become, erro­neous­ly dis­miss­ing it as large­ly an arti­fact of their per­for­mance against the Phillies.

I was wrong about Bryce Harp­er. A bit off point, but since I’m chron­i­cling my errors, I should note that I’d writ­ten last spring that Harp­er was very good, but not near­ly as good as he imag­ines him­self to be.  I’d observed that in 2013 and 2014 he hadn’t fin­ished in the top 50 in Wins Above Replace­ment (WAR), a sta­tis­tic that attempts to cap­ture a play­er’s over­all per­for­mance in a sin­gle index.  Then there was the ver­dict of his peers.  Harper’s fel­low major lea­guers had vot­ed him the game’s most over­rat­ed play­er two years in succession.

That won’t hap­pen this year.  Harp­er is this season’s best play­er, com­pil­ing a WAR of 9.8 accord­ing to Fan­Graphs   No play­er in either league comes close.  He has a .470 on-base aver­age, mean­ing that he reach­es base near­ly half the time he comes to the plate and a .663 slug­ging per­cent­age, mean­ing that when he hits the ball, it is often for extra bases. He leads the majors in both cat­e­gories.  He has an ungod­ly OPS+ of 203. Trans­la­tion: his offen­sive out­put is twice that of an aver­age big lea­guer.  For those who pre­fer more tra­di­tion­al met­rics, his .336 bat­ting aver­age and 41 homers both lead the Nation­al League.

Harp­er has had a great 2015 and rich­ly deserves to be named most valu­able player.

I was right about the Nats. Right about their hubris, I mean, not about win­ning their godaw­ful divi­sion just by show­ing up.  The team again proved itself “a per­fect fit for the nation’s cap­i­tal, com­bin­ing invin­ci­ble self-esteem with chron­ic under­achieve­ment,” as I wrote last spring.  Bryce Harp­er remains the face of the franchise’s patho­log­i­cal lack of self-aware­ness.  As the team crum­bled against the Mets, suc­cumb­ing to them in Wash­ing­ton three straight times to seal their doom, Harp­er whined about the fans.  “They left in the sev­enth,” he said, “so, you know, that’s pret­ty brutal.”

Harp­er seemed obliv­i­ous to why the fans left: the team’s “pret­ty bru­tal” play. Its pitch­ers yield­ed 21 runs (19 earned) over three games, 14 of them in the sev­enth inning or lat­er. Its reliev­ers com­piled a 13.50 ERA in the series, twice blow­ing leads in the sev­enth inning and once in the eighth.  Which is why, Bryce, the fans did­n’t stick around through the end of the game. They could­n’t bear to watch high­ly-tout­ed, lav­ish­ly com­pen­sat­ed play­ers who, for the fourth con­sec­u­tive year, melt­ed down on their home field with­out com­ing with­in shout­ing dis­tance of a World Series.

When they’re not pub­licly fault­ing their fans, the play­ers are anony­mous­ly heap­ing blame on their man­ag­er, Matt Williams.  A num­ber of them spoke to a Wash­ing­ton Post reporter as the Nats slid toward obliv­ion.  In their telling, Williams cre­at­ed a bad off-the-field atmos­phere that was a source of the team’s unrav­el­ing.   “It’s a ter­ri­ble envi­ron­ment,” one play­er said. “And the amaz­ing part is every­body feels that way.”

Bet­ter to blame your leader than to take full respon­si­bil­i­ty for your own fail­ure.  Which brings us to John Boehn­er, who last week lib­er­at­ed him­self from a dys­func­tion­al Repub­li­can cau­cus that includes dozens of law­mak­ers sin­gle-mind­ed­ly focused on his ouster.

Boehn­er spared them the trou­ble, step­ping aside vol­un­tar­i­ly and with evi­dent delight. Boehner’s crit­ics are cel­e­brat­ing his depar­ture as though it were an achieve­ment.  It is noth­ing of the sort.  A par­ty with a 59-seat major­i­ty in the House and con­trol of the Sen­ate should have accom­plished some­thing leg­isla­tive­ly, rein­ing in a lame duck Pres­i­dent with under­wa­ter approval rat­ings.  That, how­ev­er, requires leg­is­la­tors who know how to leg­is­late or, fail­ing that, the humil­i­ty and self-aware­ness to fol­low lead­ers who do.

But humil­i­ty and self-aware­ness are no more com­mon in the halls of Con­gress than in the Nation­als’ dugout.  Leg­isla­tive acu­men, mean­while, is dis­dained and those who pos­sess it scorned as Wash­ing­ton insid­ers.  So the party’s less­er lights pre­vent Con­gress from achiev­ing any­thing of sub­stance by defy­ing their lead­ers, then blame their lead­ers when noth­ing is achieved.

Last Novem­ber, John Boehn­er led House Repub­li­cans to their most sub­stan­tial major­i­ty in gen­er­a­tions.  A week lat­er, Matt Williams was named man­ag­er of the year.  By this Novem­ber, both may well have moved on, leav­ing behind orga­ni­za­tions that include too many peo­ple whose self-esteem is undent­ed by their own incompetence.