Photo by Andrew Lang/TalkNats
The Washington Nationals now open up their May calendar after they finished the month of April strong. At one point this past week in Chicago, the team was 5-games under .500 then went 4-1 in their final five games to finish the month of April. The Nats are now 15-17 and enter this series with Milwaukee at Nationals Park after sweeping them in Wisconsin.
Can you believe the season is 20 percent completed? The sample sizes are getting large, and the stars are shining brightly and the weak links are showing themselves. As someone said the other day, could you imagine if the Nats upgraded first base, catcher, and closer? President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, thought he was upgrading the starting rotation. Well, best laid plans of mice and men/women don’t always work-out.
The Nats have Jake Irvin for the opener of this series followed by Foster Griffin on Saturday, and then Sunday is supposed to be Zack Littell‘s day. We will see how the Nationals handle Sunday. Monday is a scheduled day-off for the Nats. Andrew Alvarez is eligible for a recall on Tuesday if the team wanted to do that.
Yesterday, Mitchell Parker was the bulk reliever going 3.0 innings, and Gus Varland threw 1 1/3 innings and 22 pitches. Obviously Parker will get a few rest days. Here is the chart of bullpen usage for Blake Butera‘s team:
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.
Milwaukee Brewers vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 6:45 PM EDT
TV: Nationals.TV and WTTG FOX5
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 178 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
