Going Deep with The Nats

Photo by Marlene Koenig for TalkNats

We are finally here. The final series of this regular season for the Washington Nationals before the post-season and for the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates they can’t wait to move on. The Pirates are 73-85 and won enough games where they won’t lose 90, but they will still finish the season with a losing record. The one player the Pirates tried to trade in the off-season was Andrew McCutchen, and he finished with a good bounceback season as McCutchen raised his batting average of .256 last year to .279 this season and “Cutch” leads his team in OPS.

One day we may find out how close McCutchen was to being traded to the Washington Nationals. It didn’t happen and in the way sports works the man the Nationals did get was Adam Eaton who was traded for a hefty load of prospects only to see Eaton injured and lost for the season giving way to Michael Taylor who is at a fWAR of 3.2 versus Cutch’s  fWAR +3.7, but Taylor has had 34% fewer plate appearances making Taylor more valuable on a per-PA basis in an equivalent Taylor would be worth an astounding +4.9 . Surprise surprise.

Nobody can control the future, and Edwin Jackson’s is murky at best going from a 2.79 ERA to a 12.38 ERA his last four starts with a 1.225 OPS against. If Dusty Baker wonders where “best record” went to — that is one place to look. The Nationals lost all four of those games by a combined score of 26-to-12 and in Jackson starts the team lost 7 of his 12 games. What looked so promising on August 29th turned to “Fool’s Gold” afterwards. Jackson has also taxed the bullpen getting pulled mid-inning in his last 4 starts averaging just 4 innings completed. Continue reading →

Photo by Marlene Koenig for TalkNats

With 5 games remaining in the regular season including tonight’s game, Dusty Baker just wants his players to get their reps and be ready to attack on October 6th when the Nationals will almost certainly be playing the Chicago Cubs in Nationals Park for the first game of the NLDS.

The starting 8 and the starting rotation (4) is set along with the back of the bullpen (4) and the front of the bench. You can almost pencil in the 8 starting players in Dusty Baker’s mind with Trea Turner, Bryce Harper, Anthony Rendon, Daniel Murphy, Ryan Zimmerman, Jayson Werth, Michael Taylor, and Matt Wieters because that is what Dusty will write on his line-up card and probably not in that order.

The starting rotation will be Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez and Tanner Roark and the only question is to who pitches game 3 and game 4.

The bullpen certainly has Sean Doolittle, Ryan Madson, Brandon Kintzler, and Matt Albers. Beyond that we don’t know if Dusty Baker will go for the traditional 8-man bullpen for post-season play or a 7-man bullpen like he had last year. That virtually puts everyone else on the bubble from Oliver Perez to Enny Romero, Sammy Solis, Matt Grace and Joe Blanton. Part of the issue is the Nationals are very left-handed in the bullpen and the Cubs have 3 impact right-handed bats in Javier Baez, Jose Contreras, Kris Bryant along with Addison Russell. Their lefty bats are Anthony Rizzo, Jon Jay, Kyle Schwarber, and Jason Heyward. In addition they have switch-hitters Ben Zobrist and Ian Happ. The Cubs 11th position player will be catcher Alex Avila which leaves two more spots for their bench which will be Albert Almora who was injured yesterday and one more.

The Nationals bench will have Howie Kendrick, Adam Lind and Wilmer Difo. The back-up catcher is mostly used as a player who can pinch-hit and pinch-run in the later innings. Will Dusty go with a 5-man bench or a 6-man bench? The bench certainly needs a good outfield defender who can pinch-hit and has some speed. The name keeps pointing to Victor Robles however he has been schooled lately at the plate. The other choices just are not great with the absence of Brian Goodwin. The other name that keeps popping up on projections is Alejandro De Aza. Continue reading →

Photo by Marlene Koenig for TalkNats

By most measures, Gio Gonzalez is having the best season of his career and enters this game with a 2.68 ERA and 191 2/3 innings. Gonzalez only pitched 177 1/3 innings last year and depending on whether Gio starts Sunday’s game which is the regular season finale, he could also surpass his career high of 202 innings in 2011.

Gonzalez is certainly in contention for a Top 5 finish in the Cy Young race along with teammates Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer, and Gio said he wants to finish strong. At this point, Gio appears to be a lock for the third spot in the Nationals post-season rotation which would have him pitching Game #3 in Chicago.

First things first, Gio has to help the Nationals finish up this season. For the Phillies, righty Jake Thompason gets another start. Michael Taylor got that inside-the-park-home-run off of him the last time they met. Continue reading →

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On the early evening of August 12th, the rain was falling hard in Southeast Washington, D.C. at the scheduled start time of 7:05 pm for the Nationals and Giants game after a rainout the night before. Rain had turned to a drizzle and misting when play began after 10 p.m. — totaling almost a 3 hour weather delay. The Washington Nationals were already banged up, and the line-up that evening resembled a split-squad line-up with Brian Goodwin leading-off, Wilmer Difo playing shortstop and batting second, Adam Lind getting “reps” in leftfield batting seventh, and Edwin Jackson as the starting pitcher trying to resurrect his career — again. Only this was not a split-squad game as the facts were that Trea Turner, Jayson Werth, and Adam Eaton were all on the disabled list. It was so bizarre that Adam Eaton’s replacement, Michael Taylor, was also on the disabled list at the time.

What happened in the bottom of that first inning stunned the baseball and sport’s world when Bryce Harper had a slip and fall making contact with first-base as his knee awkwardly contorted and he tumbled to the ground writhing in pain that caused a reaction from Dusty Baker that looked like shock and grief all rolled into one. There was indignation at the design of the base — exasperation at Major League Baseball as they had the full authority on that day to cancel the game or “play ball” in the inclement weather. There seemed to be a foregone conclusion from many that Bryce Harper’s season and the Nats chance at the post-season would be over in that instant as tweets, texts, blog comments, breaking news on sports shows were all showing video footage of the accident and fearing the worst. When the going gets tough, some turn to negativity and self-loathing. Fortunately, there were a few positive thinkers who emerged with an alternate ending to that horrifying video that the injury could just be a hyper-extension and a bone bruise.

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We all saw that Harper was carried off of the field, but after the game there was some optimism among the thorns as news spread that Bryce had actually walked with a slight limp to his car after the game. How could that be? It sounded like a miracle. The next morning there was an 11 AM press conference with Washington Nationals general manager, Mike Rizzo, and there were no leaks beforehand as to Bryce Harper‘s condition. Mike Rizzo delivered some very encouraging news on Bryce Harper that there was no ligament, tendon or structural damage to Bryce Harper’s leg. The official diagnosis was a “knee hyper-extension” with a severe bone bruise, and they didn’t mention the calf strain but that may have not been known at the time. Continue reading →

Photo by Marlene Koenig for TalkNats

On paper, this looks like a great match-up for the 19th and final game of the season between the Nationals and the Mets. The Nationals have won 7 of the 9 games so far in CitiField this season. Dusty Baker said he plans on putting in some of his youngsters into the line-up in this day-game after a night-game which will be in stark contrast to last night’s game where Dusty had his best available line-up for the game.

Last night, Dusty Baker pulled Stephen Strasburg with just 83 pitches at the 5-inning mark saying this was to get Stras ready for the post-season. When asked after the game if Dusty would go easy on Max Scherzer today, Dusty wouldn’t commit to that.

Adam Lind has substituted nicely for Ryan Zimmerman two games in a row. We learned from Dusty Baker that Zim is dealing with some general soreness on a slide he made into home on Thursday in Atlanta. Lind has homered in back-to-back games, and now has 57 RBIs in just 258 at-bats which is a Nats best RBI rate of 4.53 AB/RBI.  Continue reading →