One win is a win, and you start there to hope the Nats can build on that. The Nats will face Jorge De La Rosa who is a lefty and he hasn’t pitched in Colorado since July 22nd where he got shelled for 6 earned. De La Rosa hasn’t pitched in a week, and will be facing a re-energized Nats line-up.
De La Rosa throws 3 fastballs and favors his splitter, sinker, and cutter and will mix in a curveball about 10% of the time. If De La Rosa is up in the zone he gets himself in trouble.
De La Rosa this year has a 6.62 home ERA vs his 3.17 on the road and he at one time was better in Coors than the road which explains his issues this year.
Strasburg has now pieced together 6 very good starts in a row in which the most he has given up was 2 runs in a start. Strasburg showed a much improved fastball in his last start, and hopes to build on his recent success.
RZim, Werth and Desi have faced De La Rosa many times and have all had good success. Everyone else has had small sample sizes. A sampling Espi 3-6 batting .500, Ian Desmond 5-12 with 2 walks for a .500 OBP, RZim is 5-16 with a HR and 5 walks for a 1.164 OPS, Werth is 4-14 with 2 walks for a .353 OBP and JDub also has a HR off of him. De La Rosa has gotten the better of Bryce in that lefty/lefty matchup but Bryce has a hit and a couple of walks from the 2 games he’s face De La Rosa in their small sample size matchups. Rendon is a combined 1-9 vs De La Rosa.
Line-up looks like last night:
- Werth LF
- Espinosa 2B
- Harper RF
- Escobar 3B
- Desmond SS
- RZim 1B
- Taylor CF
- Ramos C
- Strasburg P
