by Andrew Lang
by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears
by Andrew Lang
by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears
by Stan4Nats
by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears
In a pre-game ceremony that included MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, Mayor Muriel Bowser, the Lerner family sans Mark Lerner who was ill, Ryan Zimmerman, Dusty Baker, Daniel Murphy and Bryce Harper, the MLB 2018 All Star logo was officially unveiled in a press conference.
The Washington Nationals have Gio Gonzalez pitching tonight against the Milwaukee Brewers who will pitch right-handed Jimmy Nelson. Continue reading
Photo Credit Marlene Koenig @royalmusing
The game of baseball can be cruel to the youngsters, and veterans on short-term contracts. It is cruel to those players with injuries. It is unfair to those who don’t get a fair chance. Then you have the question of: What have you done for me lately? That pertains to the players who have been great then fall into slumps. No two situations are the same. Ryan Zimmerman has never been benched or has it ever crossed his manager’s mind. Zimmerman has been the ongoing face of the Nationals franchise and he is beloved by all.
There are few teams that could do what the Red Sox did last week and kick Pablo Sandoval to the curb while he is still owed near $50,000,000 from the team. The Nationals don’t have a Sandoval issue on their hands; however, they are dealing with a baseball version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of baseball highs and lows. Ryan Zimmerman is batting .211 for the first 25 days of July. Since June 1st, Zimmerman is batting .255 giving a sample size of nearly 2 full months. In April, Zimmerman was red hot and hitting .420. Overall, Zimmerman is batting an excellent .317. Do you continue to look at the overall numbers to justify the player or do you look at the trend line which is on a steep decline.
With Ryan Zimmerman, it is best to deal with facts when looking at his season and his career. What might shock you is that Zimmerman has a .426 batting average on groundballs this season, and that is tops in the Majors for any player with 70 or more groundballs in play. Continue reading
One week later and Edwin Jackson didn’t look sharp, and sometimes you don’t have to be your sharpest to win. If Jackson had some run support and good fielding, including his own fielding mistake, he could have earned the win if he got some run support. Through 4 innings, EJax had given up only 1 earned run but based on the fielding gaffes he had to throw an extra 25 pitches which certainly could have led to his eventual lack of control in his final inning in the 5th giving up 2 solo home runs which were his 2nd and 3rd earned runs of the game and 112 pitches thrown. That’s how it goes when you have 4 unearned runs and go 0-9 in RISP spots.
The Nats lose 8-0 giving up 4 earned runs and 4 unearned runs.
Tonight, Edwin Jackson will toe that 24 inches of pitching rubber and stride down the dirt mound of real estate that he once made his living on every 5 days when he was in Washington, D.C. five years ago.
Jackson is coming off of a very good 2-run effort over 7.0 innings a week ago. He will face the Milwaukee Brewers who are currently in 1st place in the NL Central. A few of the Nats players have 2 games of at-bats against Zach Davies who starts tonight for the Brewers where the lefties have hit Davies with good results.
Dusty says Doctor says Strasburg is doing fine hopefully will make next start
He Spoke to Strasburg
He says he's feeling good— Byron Kerr (@ByronKerr) July 25, 2017
There was also good news on Stephen Strasburg from the doctors who felt Strasburg could make his next start if he is still feeling good. Thanks to a comment from J.D. earlier today we learned that Fedde was moved from his start today, and we found on our Syracuse pre-game notes that Fedde is now listed for July 29th — most likely as a contingency plan if Strasburg cannot go. Fedde did throw a more robust bullpen session after his start was moved to Saturday. Enny Romero received a chiropractic adjustment and reports his back is fine now. Trea Turner‘s wrist x-ray will be done soon, and the Nats should have the results after the game or later this afternoon. Continue reading
Overnight, Jon Morosi tweeted out that the Washington Nationals could pursue Sonny Gray if Stephen Strasburg is out long-term. There were questions of whether Strasburg would even have an MRI and Strasburg just described his issue as some “achiness”.
“I think I wake up in the morning, it’s a little stiff,” Strasburg said. “Then I get throwing and stuff, and it feels OK. And then it’s like I really kind of reach back for it, and that’s where it starts to linger and start to feel a little achy.”
Strasburg has unfortunately dealt with injuries before from the minor to the major. Last season, he could not make it back for the post-season as he was dealing with a forearm issue described as a “flexor mass” strain. Continue reading
Last weekend the Nats completed a four game sweep of the Reds at the Great American Ballpark. The Power Boater family traveled out to Cincinnati to see how their ballpark compared to ours here in DC.
Walking in the front door
The ballpark is gorgeous, very similar to PNC in Pittsburgh, just a step down, but still up there with the top parks in the league. A perfect mix of new ballpark amenities and old time baseball history. The legacy of Rose, Bench, Morgan, and the rest of the Big Red Machine are everywhere, from the statues as you walk in to the jerseys on the fans. The big 1869 behind home plate is a constant reminder of the baseball tradition in Cincinnati. Continue reading
How many games feel like a kick in the guts when you win a game and a series against one of the better teams in baseball? This game felt like that as the Nationals won this game and took the series from the Diamondbacks, but the Nationals had some casualties in the game to two of their best pitchers. Stephen Strasburg was removed after the 2nd inning with what appeared to be a forearm issue, and Enny Romero was removed in the 7th inning with an issue that appeared to be his back.
The Nationals took the season series from the Diamondbacks 4 games to 2, and moved back to 21 games above .500 while lengthening their lead in the NL East to 12.0 games ahead of the Braves. The Nationals went 7-2 on this road trip, and have a Monday day-off which they will certainly need after a late night plane trip back to Washington, D.C..
The Nationals added Andrew Stevenson to the roster as an extra outfielder, and he entered the game as a pinch-hitter and then remained in the game in leftfield. Stevenson got 2 at-bats and hit a grounder and was out on a force-out, and in his 2nd at-bat he worked the count to 3-2 and fouled off several pitches to get it to a 10 pitch at-bat before striking out. He looked very comfortable in the box as you would expect from a player who was playing baseball on national TV at 11-years-old in the Little League World Series. Continue reading
In 2010, Stephen Strasburg started his season as a Washington Nationals farmhand and later in 2010 Robbie Ray would also become a Washington Nationals’ farmhand. The hard throwing lefty was drafted by the Nationals in the 12th round of the 2010 MLB June Amateur Draft out of Brentwood High School in Tennessee. Ray was then traded in the Doug Fister deal and then subsequently traded to the Diamondbacks where he struggled going late in games, but this year Ray has figured it out. Both Strasburg and Ray were part of the 2017 NL All-Star team.
Now Ray and Strasburg will match-up in this game where the winning team will claim this series, and the Nationals can do no worse than split in the season series as the Nationals won 2-of-3 earlier in the season in Nats Park.
Tanner Roark was dominant last night and better than the 2-earned runs he was charged with due to a ball with an unlucky ricochet off of the outfield fence and a misplay on a flyball that should have been caught that turned into a triple. To put Roark’s outing in perspective, 11 outs were compiled by the strikeout and only 10 by the fielders behind him. The sinker pitch over the plate had become a BABIP nightmare for Roark where he was leaving those balls-in-play up to fate.
“[Tanner] doesn’t look worried. He was looking worried before,” Nationals manager Dusty Baker said. “It looks like Tanner’s back, big time.”
In Roark’s first start in 2017 he was fastball dominant with a steady diet of sliders, and last night Roark went with very few four-seam fastballs and went curveball crazy. Roark also modified his changeup slightly with much better results. The batters could not adjust to the curveball and Roark’s changeup which were as good as they have ever been. Before last night, Roark averaged about 2 curveballs per inning and last night he threw almost 4 curveballs per inning.
“It was something that started feeling good,” Tanner Roark said. “[The curveball] is probably my second best pitch, and it felt good today. You got to throw it and keep it down and not try to make it break. That’s how I’ve been feeling — with every pitch.”
As batters tried to read the ball out of Roark’s hand, they didn’t know if they were getting the slider or the curveball at times. The “swing & miss” looked “Scherzer-like”as the batters had to sit back on the slower curve and made emergency hacks at the hard slider. The result was a season-high 11 strikeouts surpassing his previous high of 8 K’s.
The boxscore sometimes lies. The Nationals won a nail-biter that should have been a 4-2 no stress win and save for the Nationals that began with a Sean Doolittle lead-off walk followed by an error by the sure-handed Anthony Rendon that could have been a doubleplay. The error put Sean Doolittle in a jam — that Doolittle worked out of for a “big boy” save. Tanner Roark in my opinion had his best outing of the season and only a grounder down the line and a poorly played flyball turned into the 2-runs on Roark’s ledger.
Roark mixed up his arsenal from his normal 13% curveballs to 26.2% of them tonight and only 46 fastballs. He didn’t even attempt to throw the 2-seam swingback fastball in this outing and instead mixed in a curveball and slider combo that was weighted with a steady diet of curveballs. Overall, Roark was filthy and racked up 11 strikeouts. Continue reading
