Photo by Sol Tucker/TalkNats
The Washington Nationals shocked the Atlanta Braves last night en route to an 11-4 win by the home team. The Nationals took the MLB lead for the most runs scored in the process.
The Braves have reseeded their rotation, and moved Martin Perez to tomorrow instead of Chris Sale, and Atlanta called up Didier Fuentes to start tonight. The Nats have Zack Littell for this start. This comes five days after Littell’s meltdown giving up 8-earnies over 4.0 innings and a 77 pitch count. Hopefully the Littell we saw against the Cardinals two weeks ago is the type of pitching we see tonight from the Nats’ righty who was signed to give the team length in games as well as put them in a position to win.
The Nats scored 11-runs last night despite 0-fers from both CJ Abrams and Daylen Lile. Well, when James Wood hits a homer and gets walked four times, and the batter after him, Luis Garcia Jr. makes the Braves pay for those walks by racking up four hits — that’s how you make a team pay for walks.
No roster moves in the bullpen today. Only three relievers pitched yesterday, and it’s possible every reliever is available tonight — but you want some fresh arms for tomorrow’s early afternoon game. Here is a chart of usage on manager Blake Butera‘s bullpen:
The FanGraphs WAR chart is accumulating data. This will start to give us a clearer picture in a few more weeks when the sample sizes get larger. The OAA defense stat is now giving us a picture of what the Nats have — and don’t have. We will start adding more statistics as the sample sizes get larger.
Atlanta Braves vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 6:45 PM EDT
TV: Nationals.TV
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 182 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
