Photos by Marlene Koenig for TalkNats
The Washington Nationals are set to play the second game of this doubleheader (subject to the inclement weather) with MacKenzie Gore on the mound. The Nats have dropped the first two games of this four game series.
By the way, who will end up the season with the higher OPS, Daylen Lile or James Wood? As of this afternoon’s game, Lile leapfrogged past Wood for the team lead .823 versus .814. Wood had a miserable first game going 0-5 with four strikeouts and now has 209 strikeouts for the season which is just 14 from tying Mark Reynolds’ MLB ignominious record of 223 Ks, set in 2009 when he played for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Wood already owns the Nats’ all-time record surpassing Adam Dunn‘s mark of 199 strikeouts in a season.
In the first game of this doubleheader, Lile set the all-time Nats’ rookie record with 10 triples to move ahead of Bryce Harper who had nine. Trea Turner holds the Nats’ third place mark with eight. Next on the list is regular season record for non-rookies held by Denard Span with 11 in 2013. Of course Span did that with 610 at-bats — Lile doesn’t even have 290 ABs at this point.
There are 11-games and less than two weeks remaining in this season, and 62-wins in the books. 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 this afternoon’s game
I keep saying to [Wood], and I keep saying to everyone, he’s got his stay with his approach. When he’s doing good, he’s left-center. He’s always from the middle to left-center. That’s when he’s doing good. When he’s in that alley right there, he recognizes the breaking pitches better, and there’s no fastball that can go by him. So the next two weeks, he needs to go back to that approach.
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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 +2.9. Add those up, and you get a total of +9.3 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 this afternoon’s game
He doesn’t give at-bats away, and you see it. The last inning against righty, against lefty, he goes over there and battles. He doesn’t want to give no at-bats away. And he’s being consistent. Hopefully, he’ll stay like that and keep going until the season is over.
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The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.23 and that places the starters at 2nd from last in MLB. The reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.46 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 5.85
No. 3 Starter: Brad Lord 4.20 (starting/relieving)
No. 2 Starter: Jake Irvin 5.76
No. 1 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 4.14
Atlanta Braves vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 1:05 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 175 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
