The Home for Washington Nationals Game Talk

From a scheduling nightmare in the first dozen games of the season, the Washington Nationals had to face in NL succession the past three NL World Series teams plus the tough Toronto team in their home stadium. The Nats finished at 5-7 to take us to this 10 day road trip in Miami.

The team arrived Wednesday night just before midnight from their American Airlines AA9721 charter jet, and the players bonded over day-off activities and a dinner with teammates. This is a work trip, and the work begins today.

Let’s get philosophical. Time changes all. The difference a day makes. The difference a week makes. A week ago, the Washington Nationals were 1-6, and the fans were getting restless early. We warned that manager Dave Martinez‘s Washington Nationals teams during his previous 7-years have always started slow. One day can change everything in baseball, and now the Nationals are on a 4-1 hot streak heading to play a weekend series against the Marlins.

Baseball is a game of curveballs — figuratively and literally. You never know what will happen in a baseball game. Brad Lord, a former Home Depot seasonal worker, started his first MLB game — and his first strikeout victim of his career was Shohei Ohtani, the best player in the game of baseball. Lord would face Ohtani again, and strike him out. Lord was on a strict pitch count and went 3.0 innings of shutout baseball to help his Washington Nationals’ team to clinch a series win after taking the first two games from the reigning World Series champion Dodgers.

The morning discussion on MLB Network between Eduardo Perez and former-GM, Steve Phillips, was that the Washington Nationals showed “urgency” last night. Yes, manager Dave Martinez went after that Curly W, and it felt like a playoff game for Martinez. If Kyle Finnegan‘s arm is healthy, then all is good as he has thrown 68 pitches the past three days en route to 32-pitches last night to get the final 5-outs of the game.

The Washington Nationals were able to win the past two games against the Diamondbacks to take some positivity into this three game series against the reigning World Series champs. In fact, the Dodgers are at the White House today.

The Washington Nationals squeaked out of yesterday’s game with a win. Finally, BABIP was on the side of the Washington Nationals in the 4-3 final. Mitchell Parker earned his second win, and Kyle Finnegan notched his second save. The game ended on a caught-stealing, a first in Nats’ history to see a game end that way.

The Diamondbacks put 28 balls-in-play with only five hits on the day and just two strikeouts. They actually had more walks than hits as they worked six freebies and reached once on an error. In the ninth inning, it started with the dreaded LoW followed by a wild pitch then Finnegan was late to cover first base on a harmless grounder to Nathaniel Lowe at first base — that put the tying run on-base until Alek Thomas was caught-stealing on a bullet thrown by catcher Riley Adams.

The Washington Nationals are off to a terrible start at 1-6 on this young season. However, they have been in the majority of every game to start this schedule yet have lost two-thirds of their games in the bullpen. The Nats are hitting for power — but not much else. Three dingers yesterday put them in 5th in the MLB for most home runs, but then you look at a team that did not accept a walk in last night’s game where the team is second-from-last in walks, and sixth from the bottom in OBP.