Game #55 begins with a new look to the Washington Nationals as they have activated Trea Turner to take Ryan Zimmerman‘s spot on the roster as Ryan was moved to the paternity leave list.
We had been speculating since Spring Training about when we would see Trea Turner back in a Washington Nationals uniform. Turner’s team control date was set at May 30th, and we ran a poll piece on when readers thought Trea would be called up. Then we started speculating on Ryan Zimmerman’s ‘paternity leave’ coming up at the end of May (turned out to be June 3rd) and when Ryan was struggling it became an interesting discussion of playing Zim less and putting Murphy at 1st base where he played his best defensively which was snuffed out when Ryan Zimmerman stepped up his offensive output near the end of May.
We got bold on May 21st and in a piece we wrote about Daniel Murphy we threw this out there:
โThat in itself is a plus for the Washington Nationals, and the team should consider using Murphy at 1st base when Ryan Zimmerman leaves for paternity leave for the birth of his second daughter, and callup Trea Turner to play 2nd base.โ
Jamal Collier tweeted out yesterday this exact notion and Barry Svrluga today and to paraphrase, “What about Murphy at 1st base and put Trea Turner at 2nd base”. Great idea ๐
In a short while, the Nationals will announce the news we broke yesterday that Trea Turner would be called up to replace Ryan Zimmerman who would be put on Paternity Leave.
Just last week the Cardinals had a similar situation as Matt Carpenter went out on paternity leave during the Cardinals series with the Nationals. The Cards called up Greg Garcia who played so well that when they reactivated Carpenter off of the paternity list that they kept Garcia and DFA’d Ruben Tejada. The Nats do not have to send Trea Turner back to Syracuse as they could keep him and make another corresponding roster move.
Today’s matchup of pitchers will be dueling lefties between Gio Gonzalez and Brandon Finnegan. You might remember Finnegan who was drafted in 2014, and the Royals made him part of their 2014 post-season roster only to see him struggle in the World Series. Last season at the trade deadline the Royals traded Finnegan to the Reds in the Johnny Cueto trade.
Here are your Nats stats against Brandon Finnegan:
Here is Gio Gonzalez’s stats against the Reds:
Lineups (subject to change without notice):
- Ben Revere CF
- Trea Turner 2B
- Bryce Harper RF
- Daniel Murphy 1B
- Jayson Werth LF
- Anthony Rendon 3B
- Danny Espinosa SS
- Jose Lobaton C
- Gio Gonzalez LHP