This is the left side of your infield again tonight! Photo by Marlene Koenig for TalkNats
For Nationals fans, they are enjoying Patrick Corbin as a starter on this team. So far, he leads the Nationals in ERA, and he has the highest swing and miss rate among the pitchers. Last year, Corbin led all Major League pitchers in swing and miss percentages. He will face Michael Wacha of the Cardinals who is returning from the 10-day IL. The Cardinals are now second in the NL with a .630 winning percentage just behind LA’s .633 winning percentage. This is certainly a new-look Cardinals offense with Paul Goldschmidt anchoring their infield.
Your left side of the infield tonight will be Howie Kendrick and Carter Kieboom for the third game in a row. For the seventh time in the last eight games, Anthony Rendon will not be in the Nationals starting line-up, and for the seventh time in the last eight games expect his manager, Dave Martinez, to say Rendon is available for pinch-hitting duties.
The Nationals have even shored up their bench by adding Adrian Sanchez because Ryan Zimmerman was placed on the 10-day IL yesterday leaving Martinez with a 3-man bench essentially because Rendon clearly was not available to pinch-hit like his manager once again promised. The Nationals had a golden opportunity with bases loaded to get back into the game in the 3rd inning yesterday and had to go with Adam Eaton to face the Padres left-handed starter instead of Rendon in that key spot. Martinez then used Yan Gomes and Wilmer Difo as pinch-hitters leaving only Rendon unused on the personnel card.
The Nationals optioned Erick Fedde back to Harrisburg today to make room for Adrian Sanchez. The move to send Fedde back was smart in that he would not be available to pitch again until the end of the week after throwing 4.0 innings yesterday.
In one of the stranger anomalies of this season, the Nationals are 7-2 in final games of series, but only 1-8 in first games of series. How can that even make sense? The Nationals at least got themselves back to 4-5 in one-run contests which is improvement over last year and are at 2-2 in extra inning games.
St. Louis Cardinals vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 7:05 pm EDT
TV: MASN; MLB App out-of-market
Nats Radio: 106.7 The Fan and via the MLB app
Line-ups subject to change without notice:
Still waiting for Big City's walk-off to land.#OnePursuit pic.twitter.com/Qh5aGfALmA
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) April 29, 2019
