Photos by Sol Tucker for TalkNats
The Washington Nationals have the Atlanta Braves in for four games in three days. Tonight is another Mitchell Parker start. He had a 7-1 lead through 7.0 innings last week and was asked to pitch the 8th inning. That did not go well. So, we will see if Parker is the pitcher we saw for the first 7.0 inning last week or the 8th inning guy.
The Braves have Spencer Strider scheduled to pitch tonight. We will see which version the Nats get to see in this game.
With the Nats using a 6-man rotation that began on Thursday with MacKenzie Gore inserted into the rotation, it did give Parker an extra rest day after throwing 96 pitches and a eight innings worth of pre-inning warmups.
Including today’s game, there are 13-games and just two weeks remaining in this season, and 62-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 10-3 to get there — but let’s see how close this team can get to 70 wins. They still need one more win to avoid the dreaded century mark in losses. That has to be the first hurdle to cross.
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— Interim manager Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game
Amazing [bullpen work]. When we need them, they’re going to be there. We used different pitchers in high-leverage, and they came through. They’re picking each other up, and it’s been awesome.
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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 +3.3, MacKenzie Gore at +2.9. Add those up, and you get a total of +9.5 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 -9. 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
“I just wanted to give a little break to [Jose A. Ferrer]. He’s been pitching a lot. And like I say, I want to make sure everyone pitches in different leverage. … He will be ready for [Monday].
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The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.17 and that places the starters at 2nd from last in MLB. The reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.43 and now the worst in baseball in ERA.
Here is how the starters rank by ERA:
No. 5 Starter: Cade Cavalli 4.76
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
Atlanta Braves 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 175 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
