The Washington Nationals arrived in New York City for a 3-game series against the Mets with the third and final Wild Card spot up for grabs between the Mets and Braves. Those two teams enter play today tied with 81-68 records. Unless the Padres or Diamondbacks fall apart — it looks like the Mets or Braves will take the final spot in the NL Wild Card. For all intents and purposes, the Nats are in the spoiler’s role. Basically, a Nats win helps the Braves, and a Nats loss helps the Mets and hurts the Braves.
The Nats need to go 4-9 or better to beat their 2023 win total. How great would that be to finish in the mid-70’s for a win total? For the remainder of the season, the Nats will face teams with winning records with postseason aspirations on the line.
The Nats are deep underdogs today, at +150 to win on the moneyline. That means if you bet $100 you would win $150. Bet $10.00 and you win $15.00.
Nats’ manager Dave Martinez did not have Kyle Finnegan available so he turned to Jose A. Ferrer for his first career save. The rest of the bullpen innings was covered by Derek Law, Eduardo Salazar, and Robert Garcia. Four relievers saw no action at all this weekend as Tanner Rainey, Zach Bryzkcy, Jacob Barnes, and Jo LaSorsa were not used.
Manager Dave Martinez said today that he would like to seed Trevor Williams back into the rotation this weekend against the Cubs. If that happens, Williams would get two starts to finish the season. Without Williams, this is how the rotation is setup:
- Monday: Jake Irvin vs. Mets
- Tuesday: Mitchell Parker vs. Mets
- Wednesday: DJ Herz vs. Mets
- Thursday: Patrick Corbin vs. Cubs
- Friday: Gore vs. Cubs
- Saturday: Irvin vs. Cubs
- Sunday: Parker vs. Cubs
- Monday: Day-off September 23
- Tuesday: Herz vs. Royals
- Wednesday: Corbin vs. Royals
- Thursday: Gore vs. Royals
- Friday: Irvin vs. Phillies
- Saturday: Parker vs. Phillies
- Sunday: Herz vs. Phillies (Final Game of the Season)
Your top Washington Nationals on the FanGraphs’ WAR leaderboard has Luis Garcia Jr. at a WAR of +3.0, and Jacob Young at +2.7. CJ Abrams is at +1.6 WAR. There are 30 Nats’ players in positive WAR with another 7. Finally, Keibert Ruiz has worked his way back from -0.8 just last month to a positive +0.1 now.
“The biggest thing I want them to learn is the mindset of playing in September and getting into October. It’s the mental game right now. … Winning is important. If we’re going to do what we want to do is to get to another championship, we have to learn how to win.”
— Nats’ manager Dave Martinez said after yesterday’s game
The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 4.36 and 22nd in MLB.
Here is how they rank:
No. 5 Starter: Patrick Corbin 5.45
No. 4 Starter: Mitchell Parker 4.29
No. 3 Starter: Jake Irvin 4.19
No. 2 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 4.17
No. 1 Starter: DJ Herz 3.70
Washington Nationals vs. New York Mets
Stadium: CitiField, New York, New York
1st Pitch: 7:10 pm EDT
TV: MASN
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app; In Spanish on DC 87.7 FM and La Pantera 100.7 FM/1220 AM. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 176 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
Line-up subject to change (without notice):
TalkNats is celebrating the 5 and 100 year anniversaries of World Series Wins by providing Game-by-Game Summaries.
