The Home for Washington Nationals Game Talk

Magic was in the air last night as Max Scherzer spun some baseball magic and history.  Sometime this afternoon we will say goodbye to real Nats baseball for 2015.  In the words of MrsB, “Sigh”.

This comment from legnatsfan seemed appropriate given what happened a week ago:

legnatsfan • 3 hours ago

You wanted it, you go it, and we are not talking about Scherzer and Harvey pitching, rather Turner at shortstop and Difo at 2nd base.  Not an easy assignment for 2 newbies to face Matt Harvey as this will be the 1st career start for Wilmer Difo.

Bryce Harper will not start in Game 2 and will  rest his aching shin after the HBP on a 97mph cut-fastball to Harp’s left shin leaving him with the classic ‘shinburger’.  That is only the 5th HBP that Harper has contacted this season and has dodged many more. None bigger than the Cingrani HBP to his spine at the end of May that was costly to the Nats and Bryce’s recovery from that.

Here is the line-up as of right now:

#Nats Game 2 lineup: Turner SS, Taylor CF, Escobar 3B, Robinson 1B, Ramos C, den Dekker RF, Moore LF, Difo 2B, Scherzer P

— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) October 3, 2015

The Nats will go for win #83 and the Mets will continue to hope for homefield advantage for the NLDS as the Dodgers now hold the lead with 90 wins to the Mets 89.

It’s the final countdown to 2015 for the Nats with the 1st of 3 in Flushing Queens for the Nats hope to get above the .500 mark for good while the Mets play for homefield advantage in the NLDS round vs. the Dodgers.

Game 1 is Gio Gonzalez vs. Noah Syndergaard.

The Nats have done well against the hard throwing Syndergaard in previous games the 2nd time through the order.  The question for Terry Collins is when he pulls Syndergaard who is projected in the Mets playoff rotation.

#Nats @ #Mets: Rendon 2B, Escobar 3B, Harper CF, Werth LF, Robinson 1B, Desmond SS, den Dekker RF, Lobaton C, Gio P pic.twitter.com/r6VnRAGm04

— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) October 3, 2015

Besides the obvious team goals to finish with 84 wins, and the Nats would like to sweep this series, there are players on the Nats roster who want to meet personal goals. Bryce Harper holds a slight margin the Batting crown but now is 1 HR behind Arenado for the NL HR crown and percentage points behind Votto for the OBP lead.

Desmond wants that 20th HR and players like MdD want to show that he belongs on the 2016 Opening Day roster.  Gio wants to better his ERA and that is part of what you hope adds to an inspired Nats win today.

Game 2 thread will follow after the Game.

The song said, “This is the way the world ends; not with a bang, but with a whimper.”
Into Flushing, New York the Nats come to end a well-chronicled disappointment of a season. If all goes according to script the season will end Sunday at about 6:00 pm. We can then go on with the business of hot-stoving the winter. But, as they say in the sitcoms, “Not so fast, my friends.” Mother Nature may have another script in mind.

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If you’ve been glued to the forecasts for Hurricane Joaquin all week you’ve seen “Spaghetti Model” tracks that at one point strongly resembled a Jackson Pollack painting. Most of the uncertainty is gone out of the forecast for Juaquin at this point. But the frontal system on the East Coast has set up shop. After all those days of dry, unimaginably beautiful weather, we now have to put up with her evil twin. Flushing, NY is not immune as one glance at the National Weather Service, NY page will tell you. The short-form version of the weather for the weekend series is: Ghastly, transitioning to Awful, then improving to Yuk.

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These in-game posts lately seem the same after all of these games, but it’s 4 games left before the roster changes forever. The odds that the Nats could ever compile this exact roster again next year or beyond is near zero% and last night’s post-game interview with Wilson Ramos told it all as he had tears in his eyes as Dan Kolko asked him what it meant to be a teammate with Jordan Zimmermann. Tonight Ian Desmond makes another start but there’s no telling which one will be his last on the field as a Washington National.

We are trying to do ‘be positive’ here and look towards a great future with this team even though things haven’t been great lately in NatsTown.  The people who come here aren’t the bandwagon fans who give up so easily and even the beat writers seem to be displaying and reveling in the negativity as that’s what seems to get ‘clicks’ and generates the ad revenue and the Svrluga article(s) got a lot of distance, and discussion and it’s a one-sided piece.  We believe in everything that there’s 2 sides to every story, and the story sometimes is as simple as you can’t win hobbling on 1 leg which is the story of the 200+ games missed by Nats projected starters when you consider Span, Rendon, RZim, Harper, Werth, Desi, Escobar, Ramos, Scherzer was your projected 2015 Opening Day line-up.  Now we can get back to the game and the October 1, 2015 line-up which will be a glimpse of the past and the future.

Here is tonight’s line-up:

#Nats @ #Braves: Rendon 3B, Turner 2B, Harper RF, Werth LF, Robinson 1B, Desmond SS, Taylor CF, Ramos C, Strasburg P pic.twitter.com/UFWomlzeI0

— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) October 1, 2015

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Weather permitting there will be 4 more games remaining in the season. There is a little more to accomplish in player goals and team wins at 82 or more. We hopefully also get additional looks at Trea Turner, Difo and Severino.

After Sunday we will go into wait and see mode and compile stats and do our what went right and what went wrong.

We will also do some player spotlight pieces.

Use my email address to ask questions and suggestions and plan on good discussions where we strip away the harsh emotions and get down to analysis without paralysis.

Jordan Zimmermann wouldn’t admit to saying that September 30th 2015 would be his last game pitching as a Washington National as he said, “Let’s see what happens”, and he is correct as stranger things have happened including like Livan Hernandez that you can always come back towards the end of your career.

Jordan Zimmermann has always been the bulldog of this staff and his tenure under team control just seemed to go by too quickly with the lost year from Tommy John surgery and the shortened 2011 season coming back from Tommy John.  Last year, Jordan Zimmermann showed us he is a true Ace with the no-hitter on September 28th but also the masterful job of throwing virtually a shutout against the Giants in Game 2 and departing that game with 2 outs in the 9th and left to the bullpen to get the last out with a 1-0 lead.

Jordan Zimmermann’s stats didn’t look like an ace this year but many games did which is why the Nats have won 19 of the 32 games he has started this season.  He has averaged starts this season that have gone well into the 7th inning which is 2nd on the staff just below Scherzer.  JZim threw 4 shutouts this year and 23 games of 32 in which he gave up 3 runs or less.  It’s his 5 games where he gave up 5 runs or more that killed his stats but like they say, ‘you aren’t as bad as you look when you’re losing or as good as you look when you’re winning’ and JZim resembles that well.  His stats will end making him look like a #3 to some, a #2 to some others, and a few might think he can regain #1 stature, but it’s doubtful he will see $27 million a year because he’s right-handed, doesn’t have the gaudy K rates that some GMs want, and he will be coming off of a 3.50ish ERA and lastly he is a Tommy John survivor.

Share your JZim stories below.

Today’s lineup vs. Williams Perez:

#Nats @ #Braves: Rendon 2B, Escobar 3B, Harper RF, Werth LF, Robinson 1B, Desmond SS, Ramos C, Taylor CF, #JZimm P pic.twitter.com/tjFysHyu8c

— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) September 30, 2015

Update 4:59pm : Trea Turner will replace Escobar and play 2nd base with Rendon shifting to 3rd base. Escobar was scratched.