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Game 2 of the 4 game series with the St. Louis Cardinals will feature Max Scherzer and lefty Jaime Garcia. The Nats have faced Garcia before and St. Louis native Max Scherzer will once again face his hometown team.

Dusty Baker will set his lineup for the lefty and expect Daniel Murphy to be in there against Garcia.

Here are the Nats stats against Jaime Garcia:

Here is Max Scherzer’s stats against the Cardinals:

Note that Matt Carpenter was not included in the stats since he was on the inactive list yesterday. Matt Carpenter  was batting .500 against Scherzer with a 1.200 OPS in 10 at-bats.

#STLCards expect Matt Carpenter to join them in DC ahead of Saturday's game: https://t.co/PnuWNrVKPj pic.twitter.com/U0gSqBWL4c

— Jenifer Langosch (@LangoschMLB) May 27, 2016

Line-ups (subject to change without notice):

1. Ben Revere CF
2. Jayson Werth LF
3. Bryce Harper RF
4. Daniel Murphy 2B
5. Ryan Zimmerman 1B
6. Anthony Rendon 3B
7. Wilson Ramos C
8. Danny Espinosa SS
9. Max Scherzer RHP

The schedule makers put the 2 Cardinals series for the regular season within the first 2 months of this season which will make this the final regular season series against the Cardinals. The Nationals swept the Cardinals in a 3 game series in St. Louis, and did it without Ben Revere and tonight the starting line-up will be without Daniel Murphy who gets the night off. The Cardinals will be playing without Matt Carpenter who is on the paternity leave list for at least today and most likely tomorrow also.

The projected starters for each team during this 4 game series are:

Game 1 (tonight): Mike Leake and Joe Ross
Game 2 (Friday): Jaime Garcia and Max Scherzer
Game 3 (Saturday): Adam Wainwright and Gio Gonzalez
Game 4 (Sunday): Michael Wacha and Stephen Strasburg

Mike Leake pitches tonight for the Cardinals and has thrown 55 1/3 innings with a 4.07 ERA and in a strange coincidence when he was traded last year to the Giants, he pitched for them 55 1/3 innings with a 4.07 ERA.

Leake was a starter against Strasburg in St. Louis in the first game of that series also and took the loss for the Cardinals.

Here are your Nats stats against Mike Leake:

Here is Joe Ross‘ stats against the Cardinals:

Line-ups (subject to change without notice):

1. Ben Revere CF
2. Jayson Werth LF
3. Bryce Harper RF
4. Ryan Zimmerman 1B
5. Anthony Rendon 3B
6. Wilson Ramos C
7. Stephen Drew 2B
8. Danny Espinosa SS
9. Joe Ross RHP

Tanner Roark was almost as effective as Steven Matz was in this game as Roark’s outing had him giving up 2 runs of which only 1 was an earned run. The Nats failed to score any runs on offense off of Matz, but the game was there to be won by the Nats in the 9th inning. Continue reading →

This is the early edition 1:05pm ‘getaway’ start time which is usually for teams to get away as they head on a plane for another destination although in this case there was no accommodation needed as the visiting Mets don’t even have a game tomorrow and welcome in the Dodgers to CitiField on Friday.

The Nats get to look forward to a 4 game series starting tomorrow with the St. Louis Cardinals. Continue reading →

These head-to-head matchups between NL East teams are big, and when you are playing the team that many had as the favorite to win the NL East the game becomes a little more important because you have an opportunity to swing the standings by 1 full game each time so these are not like playing a NL Central opponent. Continue reading →

The Nats and Mets square off for a 3 game series in Nationals Park tonight with Gio Gonzalez and Bartolo Colon as their teams’ respective pitchers.

What a difference a few days have made for Ben Revere and Anthony Rendon. Both players were getting the grumbles from fans who were concerned about their production. Ben Revere needs a few more 2 hit and 3 hit games to get his stats to a level of respectability, but how great is it to see him raise his batting average nearly 100 points in a few games. Equally as wonderful is watching Anthony Rendon who was slashing .120/.241/.120/.361 on May 7th in RISP situations, and 2 weeks later is now slashing .256/.370/.359/.729 in RISP spots. How quick things change as Rendon has more than doubled his OPS. Continue reading →