Click to Read an Important Member Update Regarding Our Comment System
We recently upgraded our comment system to improve reliability, performance, and long-term control, and we’re currently running both systems during the transition. This shift moves us away from an external service to a system we run and control directly—meaning we own the content and can continue improving it over time. We’ve also reduced the comment refresh delay from about 30 seconds to 10 seconds, making it much closer to real-time.
We understand there have been frustrations and increased feedback, and we’re actively working to improve things. What we ask is simple: use the system and give it a fair shot. If you run into issues, please submit them through the support form so we can track and fix them properly. Repeated complaints without details don’t help us solve problems—we appreciate your patience as we continue refining the experience.
If you’d like a full side-by-side comparison of the platforms and the reasons behind this decision, please refer to the chart below. This change is being made with the long-term benefit of the entire community in mind.
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Yesterday, it was rookie A.J. Cole pitching against top 10 pitcher Noah Syndergaard, and today’s game has a similar match-up of another top 10 pitcher, Tanner Roark, going up against a rookie. The Mets, who have been victimized by numerous pitcher’s injuries, send rookie righty Robert Gsellman to the mound in his second career start.
Gsellman has a 3.72 ERA and was a 13th round draft pick by the Mets. He is very recognizable with his long dark hair in the Mets dugout. Gsellman throws a power sinker that has a mid-90’s velo averaging 95.0 mph, and he will mix in his four-seam fastball, a cutter, a change-up and a curveball.
Tanner Roark is vying for some top pitching honors and is working on achieving top 3 in ERA, Gold Glove consideration, and some Cy Young votes. Continue reading →
“You play the games because you never know” and A.J. Cole just showed that in sports almost anything can happen. A.J. Cole pitched a 3-hitter of 1-run baseball against the reigning National League champions as Cole struck-out five batters while earning his first career win against the Mets ace, Noah Syndergaard, who only had four strikeouts, and gave up 2-runs to the Nationals. Continue reading →
Today is one of those games that on paper looks to be an easy “W” for the Mets with their Ace of their depleted staff, Noah Syndergaard, going against Nats’ rookie call-up A.J. Cole. In an adapted quote, “You play the games because you never know” is what teams do. The Nationals take their 9.5 game lead into CitiField tonight for this one, and if Mother Nature cooperates this will go one of two ways, the Nats will find themselves either with an 8.5 game lead in the NL East or a 10.5 game in the NL East when the game ends. The Magic Number will either remain at 20 or move simultaneously 2 spots to 18 games with a Nationals win.
There are additional Nats reserves in New York today in the first wave of call-ups to bolster the Nationals roster as they are now in the September call-up period. We are hearing Brian Goodwin and Pedro Severino will be in the call-ups for today’s game. Dusty Baker will also get some bullpen arms, and this is where it gets complicated as Mat Latos and Sean Burnett could be two of the arms added to the roster today, but neither of them are on the 40-man roster which is a requirement. For either of them to be added, Mike Rizzo will need to remove a player off of the 40-man roster—And that is easier said than done. Behind the scenes, Rizzo might have already tried to pass players through waivers like he did with Taylor Hill, but was unsuccessful with Abel De Los Santos.
UPDATED: Rafael Martin, Matt Grace and Trevor Gott all added to the Nats roster (along with Severino and Goodwin as we previously reported) and to make room for Burnett and Latos (also previously reported) the Nats DFA’d Matt den Dekker and made a procedural move to transfer Joe Ross to the 60 day DL which means one additional move will be needed when Ross is activated.
In about 2 to 3 hours, we will start seeing teams across the Major Leagues making moves since 22 teams did not play yesterday negating the need to make moves right on September 1st which of course was the first day of roster expansions. Roster expansion usually comes over several days as the Minor League season has not ended yet.
Mike Rizzo and Dusty Baker also have the ability to add several starters to the Nationals roster whereby Dusty could pitch some bullpen games and save the innings using combinations of Joe Ross, Reynaldo Lopez, Lucas Giolito, and Mat Latos. Plus the Nationals should have Stephen Strasburg back early next week.
Our suggestion is to use the roster expansion as a way to ration the innings for Max Scherzer who pitched 220 1/3 inning for his 2014 Tigers team, and the reigning Cy Young winner went into the 2014 post-season fatigued and gave up 5 runs in the 1st game of the ALDS and lost. Scherzer leads the Majors right now in most innings pitched at 190 currently. The right number should be to keep him near 200 innings but no more than 210 innings.
Back to today’s match-ups, do you start Ben Revere and Clint Robinson or stick with the Wednesday line-up?
Here are you Nats’ stats against Syndergaard:
When in New York, Nats players get to stop by the MLB Network studio in Secaucus, New Jersey, and today it was Danny Espinosa who got a chance.
Screenshot from SNY
Washington Nationals and New York Mets Stadium: CitiField, Queens, NY 1st Pitch: 7:10 pm EDT TV: MASN2, WUSA9, SNY , MLB.tv
This post is a collaborative effort by Allstars, Senators69 and DonH.
Allstars (aka Andrew) agreed to put a post together for after the game based on information provided by those who attended the session. We quickly realized that was not practical and decided to post/publish it on the next off-day. Too much good stuff from the session and we wanted to do it justice. So part 1 is an overview about Frank Hondo Howard written ahead of the session. And part 2 is a summary of the Q&A session with Frank. Continue reading →
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The Nationals once again pitched very well in this game as Gio Gonzalez pitched a very good game holding the Phillies to one run with only 2 hits and 1 walk, and the Nationals bullpen threw a 3 inning shutout with Shawn Kelley earning his 7th save.
The Nationals offense got on the board in the 1st innings with a Jayson Werth solo home run that measured 453 feet that sailed above the batter’s eye for Werth’s 20th home run of the season, and Wilson Ramos had the game winning RBI with a clutch 2-out RBI single in an 8 pitch at-bat where he hit a ball to rightfield scoring Anthony Rendon. The Nationals had their chances to add-on runs, but couldn’t get any more clutch hits on the evening. Anthony Rendon and Jayson Werth had two hits each in the game.
Dusty Baker inserted Trea Turner for defense when he inserted Shawn Kelley with 2 outs in the 9th inning, and Franco shot a hard grounder up the middle that Trea Turner tracked down and made a fabulous play to end the game. The infield defense was very good all night as Ryan Zimmerman had a few really nice plays that he made look easy.
The Nationals combined great pitching and defense to hold the Phillies to the one run. The Nationals completed the grueling stretch of 20 straight games with an 11-9 W/L record, and close out August with a 17-11 record.
Tonight is dueling lefties on the mound as Gio Gonzalez starts for the Nationals, and Adam Morgan for the Phillies.
To nobody’s surprise, Michael Taylor (career 1-6 against Phillies’ starter Adam Morgan) will start in centerfield and leadoff in tonight’s game as Trea Turner rests after 19 straight games. Ben Revere will watch from the bench (career 1-2 against Morgan). Wilson Ramos is in the starting line-up which seemed like the perfect rest day for the Buffalo also. It could be that Dusty liked his 1.700 OPS against Morgan.
The Nationals get tomorrow off as they travel to New York, and today’s game is the 20th game in a row for the Nationals. Trea Turner had played in the Nationals previous 30 games and was the only Nationals player to start in the previous 19 consecutive games.
Here are the Nats’ stats against Morgan:
Here are Gio Gonzalez’s stats against the Phillies:
Washington Nationals and Philadelphia Phillies Stadium: Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia, PA 1st Pitch: 7:05 pm EDT TV: MASN2, CSN-Philadelphia, MLB.tv
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You can usually tell in the first inning which Max Scherzer you were going to see, and Scherzer looked great as he carried a no-hitter into the 6th inning, and then got into a little bit of trouble in the 7th inning when the 3-0 lead changed to a 3-2 lead after an opposite field Ryan Howard two-run home run. Max Scherzer came out for the 8th inning clinging to that 3-2 lead and struck out his 11th batter to end his outing. Never a doubt, right?
The Nationals could not score any more runs since the 4th inning where the offense carried those 3 runs until the end of the game, and the one run deficit held up in the 3-2 game.
Max Scherzer went 8 full innings and dropped his ERA to 2.89, and Mark Melancon picked up his 37th save this season with 7 of those coming as a National, and all this happened after Melancon walked the lead-off man who got erased on a game ending 6-4-3 doubleplay. Never a doubt, right?
We recently upgraded our comment system to improve reliability, performance, and long-term control, and we’re currently running both systems during the transition. This shift moves us away from an external service to a system we run and control directly—meaning we own the content and can continue improving it over time. We’ve also reduced the comment refresh delay from about 30 seconds to 10 seconds, making it much closer to real-time.
We understand there have been frustrations and increased feedback, and we’re actively working to improve things. What we ask is simple: use the system and give it a fair shot. If you run into issues, please submit them through the support form so we can track and fix them properly. Repeated complaints without details don’t help us solve problems—we appreciate your patience as we continue refining the experience.
If you’d like a full side-by-side comparison of the platforms and the reasons behind this decision, please refer to the chart below. This change is being made with the long-term benefit of the entire community in mind.