On March 27, Opening Day started great for the Washington Nationals as they took a 1-0 lead into the 7th with MacKenzie Gore outdueling Philadelphia’s ace, Zack Wheeler. These two match up tonight again in Nationals Park in a rematch of Opening Day. The difference is the Nationals have a much different bullpen from that game in which Lucas Sims took the blown save, and Colin Poche took the loss.
Last night was the blueprint for how the Nationals beat good teams. Great starting pitching with a bullpen that can protect the team’s lead was how Washington got it done. The Nats won an exciting game by the final score of 3-2. In a role reversal, it was the Phillies bullpen with the blown save, and their manager left their starter in the game too long.
Today’s game gives you a good idea of how interim-manager Miguel Cairo will set his roster against a tough right-hander with James Wood at the DH, Daylen Lile in left field, the birthday boy Robert Hassell III in center field, and Dylan Crews in right field.
“I got to tell you, that’s a game that you look at it, and it’s like a playoff game. That’s the way you play games like this. Good pitching, good defense, and opportune hitting. It was nice to see our pitchers, our defense, and our hitters really engage in the game and doing the little things. That’s what we did today. They picked each other up.”
— Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game
The bullpen usage looks like this:
Here are your Nats’ WAR leaders with James Wood at +3.1, CJ Abrams at +3.0, MacKenzie Gore at +2.7. Add those up, and you get a total of +8.8 WAR. The issue is the large gap between those players and the next tier.
On defense, the OAA stats showed some improvement with a good defensive game yesterday. Jacob Young leads the team at +11, and CJ Abrams is on the opposite end at -9. That is actually quite the improvement over last year’s -18 for Abrams who is on pace to finish at -12.
These are your stats leaders on BBRef. There are certainly some surprises on there — good and not so good. The issue is the consistency on this team.
“We’re not out of it. We’re still here. We’re playing, and we’re going to be spoilers. Today we beat a really good team. People think it’s easy, they think we are going to be easy. No, [games against us] are not going to be easy. We got hungry players. They want to prove that they can play in the big leagues. They want to stay in the big leagues, and they want to play every day. It was fun to watch the young kids. They did an excellent job.”
— Cairo said after yesterday’s game
The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.01 and that places the starters at 2nd from last in MLB. The reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.80 and now the worst in baseball in ERA.
Here is how the starters rank by ERA:
No. 5 Starter: Cade Cavalli 3.86
No. 4 Starter: Mitchell Parker 5.55
No. 3 Starter: Brad Lord 3.26 (starting/relieving)
No. 2 Starter: Jake Irvin 5.14
No. 1 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 4.09
Philadelphia Phillies vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 6:45 pm EDT
TV: MASN
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app; In Spanish on DC 87.7 FM and La Pantera 100.7 FM/1220 AM. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 177 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
Line-up subject to change (without notice):
