Photo by Michael Daalder for TalkNats
The Washington Nationals needed a great Brad Lord start, and he delivered with some great defense behind him. Lord turned in 5 2/3 innings of 1-run baseball along with scoreless bullpen work, and a Daylen Lile homer, to get the Nats a 2-1 win in Wrigley Field yesterday. That win gives the Nats a shot to take this series with a Curly W today.
For the Nats today, it is the second start of Andrew Alvarez‘s MLB career. Hopefully, he can replicate the magic he had in his debut start. He won’t have CJ Stubbs catching him as he did when the duo combined for a scoreless outing on Monday in Nats Park. By the way, Stubbs smashed two homers yesterday for Triple-A Rochester.
Including today’s game, the Nats only have 21-games remaining in this season and just six series starting with tomorrow’s 4-game series in Miami. The Nats only have 57-wins at this point in the season, and now must go 6-15 or better to avoid 100-losses. A winning month of September should be the goal with 3 weeks remaining on this 2025 season. How close can the Nats get to the 72 wins that Vegas set for their Over/Under? Probably won’t happen as they would have to go 15-6 to get there.
Yesterday’s game proved to show once again that interim-manager Miguel Cairo will deviate from the typical role that a closer pitches the 9th inning. Once again, Cairo went with Jose A. Ferrer in the 8th inning to face the Cubs top of the lineup and used Cole Henry to close-out the game in the 9th. It worked once again.
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— Interim manager Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game
It’s something that I learned [with] really good managers that I played for — and I watched this work. Hickey and Doolittle have been a big help with the pitching staff. It’s a credit for them. They really helped me. We’ve got a plan, and we stick to it.
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The bullpen usage looks like this:
Here are your Nats’ WAR leaders with, CJ Abrams at +3.3, James Wood at +3.1, MacKenzie Gore at +2.8. Add those up, and you get a total of +9.2 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 +13, and CJ Abrams is on the opposite end at -8. That is actually quite the improvement over last year’s -18 for Abrams who is on pace to finish at -10.
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.
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— Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game
The bullpen has been so resilient. … They compete. … They’re doing their job.
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The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.28 and that places the starters at 2nd from last in MLB. The reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.33 and now the worst in baseball in ERA.
Here is how the starters rank by ERA:
No. 5 Starter: Cade Cavalli 4.85
No. 4 Starter: Mitchell Parker 5.87
No. 3 Starter: Brad Lord 4.20 (starting/relieving)
No. 2 Starter: Jake Irvin 5.71
No. 1 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 4.15
Washington Nationals vs. Chicago Cubs
Stadium: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois
1st Pitch: 2:20 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 184 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
Line-up subject to change (without notice):
