The Home for Washington Nationals Game Talk

Photo by Sol Tucker for TalkNats

The Cardinals travel to the FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches where Adam Wainwright and Anibal Sanchez will start for their respective teams. For Sanchez, this game will be his Nationals debut. The Nationals team so far with the starters in the games have looked very crisp. Other than the lead-off batter in the Grapefruit opener, the Nats starting pitchers have not yielded a run although the sample size is all of 6 innings in total. Between Max Scherzer, Erick Fedde, and Patrick Corbin, they have looked very good. Even Joe Ross in relief of Scherzer on Saturday looked great as he went 2.0 innings of shutout baseball. Continue reading →

When the Washington Nationals had their Spring Training home in Viera, they were about an hour away by bus to Champion Field in Disney to play the Braves. The teams played each other several times each spring. With the Nationals and Astros move to West Palm Beach, it is the Braves who are far from all teams except for the Tigers in Lakelands, Florida which led the Braves to seek their own relocation. The Braves secured a new stadium deal in Sarasota, however, the complex was not ready for this season so the Braves extended their lease on the Disney grounds for one more season.

The roundtrip is a 326 mile bus drive, and a lengthy 2 1/2 hours each way from FITTEAM to Champion Field.  Today’s starting pitcher for the Nats, Patrick Corbin, decided to drive up yesterday on his own to avoid the early morning bus ride that is set to leave at 7:15 AM from the FITTEAM complex in West Palm Beach. Continue reading →

Photo of the front gates of Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter by Sol Tucker for TalkNats.com

The Washington Nationals will take to the road from their home stadium at the FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and the 14 miles north to Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium. Some of the Nats players actually have Spring Training residences closer to Jupiter and will drive themselves, and this is why the Nationals relocated from Viera to Palm Beach County so they could avoid long road trips even though the team has one of them tomorrow when they head to Disney to play the Braves. Continue reading →

The Washington Nationals open up their Grapefruit League schedule tonight with their first game against their sole neighbor in the FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches complex. For Nats fans, this is the first game since the Nats season ended rather unceremoniously on September 30, 2018 in Colorado. While Spring Training baseball is more about the process than the results, fans have to temper their expectations because the boxscores should not matter as these small sample sizes are about what players are working on moreso than what happens on the stat sheet.

For those who have been curious about baseball commissioner Rob Manfred’s debut of the 20-second clock, you will see it tonight in this game and throughout spring training. Whether or not these clocks become part of the regular season, the jury is still out on that, but minor leaguers have these clocks in their stadiums in the regular season since 2015. Do they really speed up the games? Yes, but they also change a game that never were timed. That clock will be controlled to begin ticking once the pitcher receives the ball back from the catcher and pitchers will be allowed 20 seconds to begin their wind-up or the motion to come to the set position.

Max Scherzer, who starts tonight’s game, will get the indoctrination to the clock as he is the first pitcher on the mound tonight in what is generally a cavalcade of pitchers in these early spring training games as Scherzer and all pitchers are on strict pitch counts.  Continue reading →