As we discussed yesterday, the Washington Nationals were at the quarter pole of the season, and with the win in last night’s game the team’s 24-16 record is the best 40 game start in Nationals’ history.
The Nationals are guaranteed to remain in 1st place in the NL East even after today’s games. As of this morning, the NL East boasts the best top 4 teams in combined records in baseball with a combined total of 91 wins as the vaunted NL Central with the Cubs has 87 wins for their top 4 teams and are the only division with 4 teams with 20 or more wins.
This 3 game series with the Nationals and Mets are at one win each, and tonight is the rubber game to determine the winner of this series. The Nationals have Stephen Strasburg starting against the Mets’ Matt Harvey who has been struggling in the latter innings of most of his starts this season. Harvey is currently at a 4.93 ERA compared to a 1.98 ERA that Harvey had at this same point last season which led him into his worst start of the 2015 season last year on his 9th start of 2015 when he was pulled at 4 innings giving up 7 runs. The Nats hope for deja vous all over again!
Here are the Nats stats against Matt Harvey:
Here are Stephen Strasburg’s stats against the Mets:
Lineups (subject to change without notice):
- Ben Revere CF
- Jayson Werth LF
- Bryce Harper RF
- Daniel Murphy 2B
- Ryan Zimmerman 1B
- Anthony Rendon 3B
- Wilson Ramos C
- Danny Espinosa SS
- Stephen Strasburg RHP
