Photo by Marlene Koenig/TalkNats
The Washington Nationals were one clutch away from winning last night after Zack Littell turned in an outing to forget. One thing about the Atlanta Braves hitters is that most of them don’t miss meatballs. Littell looked more like Chef Boyardee by the end of his outing. Littell now has more home runs than James Wood in an 11-9 edge.
The Braves reseeded their rotation, and moved Martin Perez to a tandem start behind Didier Fuentes last night. The Braves are calling up their second ranked prospect with right-handed JR Ritchie making his MLB debut. He is the 79th ranked prospect in all of baseball. The Nats have Cade Cavalli starting this game. You hope to see the Cavalli who dominated the Phillies earlier this season. Cavalli was once ranked as the 27th best prospect in baseball back in 2022. As they say, “What have you done for me lately.”
Only two relievers pitched yesterday, and it’s possible every reliever is available today except for Mitchell Parker who pitched two innings. 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: 1:05 PM EDT
TV: Nationals.TV
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 175 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
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