The Washington Nationals had a much needed day-off yesterday after going hard in the 13 consecutive games before that. In the past 9-games, the Nats have a 5-4 record, and finally shown some improvement. Getting Dylan Crews back certainly has put the lineup closer to what we envisioned with this younger roster.
This is a 3-game series against the NY Mets. The Nats have Jake Irvin on the mound for the first game of this series. And the Mets have a lefty, David Peterson, on the mound with interim-manager Miguel Cairo countering with a very right-handed lineup.
This afternoon, the Nats recalled 1B Andres Chaparro from Triple-A Rochester and optioned infielder Jose Tena to Triple-A Rochester.
“We battled back. Those guys, they were picking each other up, and the bullpen kept us close. It was a long game, for sure. But they were battling.”
— Miguel Cairo said after Sunday’s game
The bullpen usage looks like this:
Here are your Nats’ WAR leaders with James Wood at +3.1, CJ Abrams at +3.1, MacKenzie Gore at +2.9. Add those up, and you get a total of +9.1 WAR. The issue is the large gap between those players and the next tier, and of course the negative tier after them of which many of those players are off the roster.
On defense, the OAA stats showed some improvement with a good defensive game yesterday. Jacob Young leads the team at +12, 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.
“It was kind of tough, but Hickey and I had a game plan. I’m glad Cade gave us seven innings and Ferrer gave us two [during Saturday’s win], so we could be aggressive a little bit more early in the game. It was just playing matchups, and making sure that the top of the Phillies lineup, we could match it up every time in that spot. I was trying to make sure we had the right matchup for those three guys.”
— Cairo said after Sunday’s game
The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 4.99 and that places the starters at 2nd from last in MLB. The reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.82 and now the worst in baseball in ERA.
Here is how the starters rank by ERA:
No. 5 Starter: Cade Cavalli 2.20
No. 4 Starter: Mitchell Parker 5.83
No. 3 Starter: Brad Lord 3.26 (starting/relieving)
No. 2 Starter: Jake Irvin 5.14
No. 1 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 4.04
New York Mets vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 6:45 PM EDT
TV: MASN2
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 179 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
Line-up subject to change (without notice):
