Tonight, Max Scherzer will have tough shoes to follow after that gem pitched by Tanner Roark last night in Philadelphia. The 11th best pitcher in ERA is now Tanner Roark who leadfrogged over Jacob DeGrom, Drew Pomeranz, and Max Scherzer last night in ERA. Roark came into last night’s game at a 2.99 ERA and tied with Aaron Sanchez and lowered his ERA to 2.87 to nestle in at the #11 spot in the Majors and #8 in the NL. Max Scherzer is 0.05 behind Roark and if Scherzer can throw up zeros, he could overtake Roark and leapfrog some players himself.
NL ERA Leaders
Campaigning has already begun for Tanner Roark as his teammates are sporting t-shirts for his Gold Glove candidacy, but what about his Cy Young candidacy? Roark most likely has little shot of winning it, but he deserves some top votes as he now leads the Majors with eight shutouts through inning number 7. That is impressive.
Shawn Kelley, Tanner Roark's unofficial campaign manager: pic.twitter.com/6jni14bJki
— Chelsea Janes (@chelsea_janes) August 29, 2016
Tonight Scherzer will be pitching against righty Jerad Eickhoff of the Phillies. Both pitchers are familiar with the line-ups they will face tonight although there are some players who expect to change their luck tonight like Bryce Harper who was struck out 3 times in 3 at-bats by Eickhoff. Lefties overall (.276 vs. .244) have hit Eickhoff better than right-handed batters, but no Nats lefty hitter has been able to get on-base on him yet although the sample sizes are very small.
Here is the Nats stats against Eickhoff:
Here are Max Scherzer’s stats against the Phillies:
In other news, Tim Tebow rated as a 50 runner (on the 80/20 scouting scale) in the 60 yard drill which is the distance to run from home to 2nd base. We were told Mike Rizzo had an area scout there to watch this session which goes against Svrluga’s report that said the Nationals were not participating. Mike Rizzo was not personally attending.
Washington Nationals and Philadelphia Phillies
Stadium: Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia, PA
1st Pitch: 7:05 pm EDT
TV: MASN2, CSN-Philadelphia, MLB.tv
Line-ups (subject to change without notice):
- Trea Turner CF
- Jayson Werth LF
- Daniel Murphy 2B
- Bryce Harper RF
- Anthony Rendon 3B
- Wilson Ramos C
- Ryan Zimmerman 1B
- Danny Espinosa SS
- Max Scherzer RHP
