Game #87 Lucas Giolito hopes to go deep into the game if Mother Nature cooperates: Game Thread

This is game number 87 which means there is just 75 games left in the regular season after today, and the Mets are feeling the pressure as they have to decide what to do shortly with their team that has been rocked with serious injuries to Matt Harvey and David Wright. The Mets have made two acquisitions recently with James Loney and Jose Reyes, and we will hear shortly what they will do if they have to replace Matt Harvey who faces some difficult choices regarding his thoracic issue.

The Nats are 4.0 games up in the standings and are guaranteed to leave New York in 1st Place, and Dusty Baker and Mike Rizzo want to head into the All-Star break feeling good about themselves with a padded lead in the tight NL East.

The series pitching match-ups are (subject to change):

1. Giolito and Colon
2. Strasburg and Syndergaard
3. Scherzer and TBD (could be Verrett)
4. Gonzalez and Matz

As we wrote earlier, the weather was a factor in Giolito’s first start, and Mother Nature could be an issue again in this start according to Weather.com which is showing an almost 5 hours window of scattered thunderstorms increasing in likelihood to 50% by 9pm.

Here are the Nats stats against Bartolo Colon:

Here is Lucas Giolito’s stats against the Mets:

Washington Nationals and New York Mets
Stadium: CitiField, Queens, NY
1st Pitch: 7:10 pm EDT
TV: MASN, MLB Network, SNY-NY, MLB.tv

Line-ups (subject to change without notice):

1. Ben Revere CF
2. Jayson Werth LF
3. Daniel Murphy2B
4. Bryce Harper RF
5. Wilson Ramos C
6. Clint Robinson 1B
7. Anthony Rendon 3B
8. Danny Espinosa SS
9. Lucas Giolito RHP