Photo by Garrett Lang for TalkNats
The Washington Nationals were down 3-runs early last night, and chipped away until they added 6-runs to take a 6-3 lead. The outfielders led the way in this one on offense and defense. Not only did Dylan Crews hit a 2-run homer to give the Nats a 4-3 lead, he also made a leaping catch at the wall and several other plays, and James Wood had 2-hits and the play-of-the-game by nailing the potential tying run at home in the 9th inning on a 93.1 mph dart to catcher Jorge Alfaro. This was definitely the game of the outfielders as Robert Hassell III added 2-hits and perfect defense.
If you’re going to set a “negative” team record for strikeouts as a hitter, you better do it during a game that you played great — and Wood did just that. With strikeout No. 200 in the books, he replaced Adam Dunn for the single-season team record set in 2010. Dunn appreciates getting erased from that record — and like Wood, the Nats power hitter had a monster year in 2010 for the Nats. The issue for Wood is that with over two weeks of games to go, he just has to make sure he doesn’t get close to breaking Mark Reynolds’ MLB record of 223 Ks, set in 2009 as a player on the Arizona Diamondbacks
The Nats have rookie Andrew Alvarez on the mound for this afternoon’s game. Alvarez is pitching on an extra day’s rest as the Nats are using a 6-man rotation that began on Thursday with MacKenzie Gore inserted into the rotation.
Pitching today for Pittsburgh, they have righty fireballer Bubba Chandler (7.36 ERA) on the mound. Of note, the Nats will not face the Cy Young favorite, Paul Skenes, who was Dylan Crews teammate on their 2023 LSU Championship team.
Including today’s game there are 15-games remaining in this season, and 61-wins in the books. How close can the Nats get to the 72 wins that Vegas set for their pre-season Over/Under? Probably won’t happen as they would have to go 11-4 to get there, however, that should be the goal.
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— Interim manager Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game
[Wood] wants to be elite. He wants to be that complete player. He’s a gifted kid.
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The bullpen usage looks like this:
Here are your Nats’ WAR leaders with, CJ Abrams at +3.4, James Wood at +3.3, MacKenzie Gore at +2.9. Add those up, and you get a total of +9.6 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 -10. That is actually quite the improvement over last year’s -18 for Abrams who is on pace to finish at -11.
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
[Crews] is going to be fine. He is a grinder. He is a winner. He is a worker. He knows what it takes to be good. What I love is his demeanor. … He knows what he needs to do. He’s working his butt off.
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The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.21 and that places the starters at 2nd from last in MLB. The reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.42 and now the worst in baseball in ERA.
Here is how the starters rank by ERA:
No. 5 Starter: Cade Cavalli 4.67
No. 4 Starter: Mitchell Parker 5.69
No. 3 Starter: Brad Lord 4.20 (starting/relieving)
No. 2 Starter: Jake Irvin 5.70
No. 1 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 4.14
Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 4:05 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.
