Photo by Sol Tucker/TalkNats
The Washington Nationals will have to deal with another iffy forecast on storms threatening to pass through the region near game time. The Nats have Zack Littell going, and he pitched a scoreless game his last time out. Can he repeat on that success? The Mets have a callup for his MLB debut, Zach Thornton. He is a left-handed pitcher.
With this game, the Nats have reached the 50-game mark in the season, and closing in on the one-third completion mark where we can extrapolate by multiplying non-average stats by three. What is impressive is the Nats Big-3, the L.A.W. firm of Lile, Abrams, and Wood. They have a combined +4.5 WAR going into this game.
Last night, Wood’s inside-the-park grand slam was impressive. That padding on top of the visitor’s bullpen in left field has 3 marks on top of it from Wood oppo smashes that somehow the balls didn’t go over that padding for a home run — but finally one bounced the right way off of that padding, and Wood got the unconventional inside-the-park grand slam that ignited the Nats team to a victory last night.
Manager Blake Butera‘s bullpen is operating with three long-men, Mitchell Parker, Brad Lord, and Andrew Alvarez. Last night Lord did his job. Alvarez is fresh for the bullpen. Three other relievers are fresh also. Clayton Beeter and Cole Henry could both be activated at any time off of the 15-day IL. Here is what the bullpen usage looks like going into today’s game:
The FanGraphs WAR chart is accumulating data. The numbers are getting very large as the season is nearly one-third completed. The OAA defense stat is now giving us a picture of what the Nats have — and don’t have.
New York Mets 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 183 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
