“You’re never as good as you think you are when you win; and you’re never as bad as you feel when you lose.”― Quote made by former Penn State football coach
The worst thing you can do as an organization is to start finger pointing and panicking. There are plenty of teams right now that are missing their closers and finding a way to still win. The Nationals got poor starting pitching and poor bullpen performances yesterday. That is not a good formula for winning.
Today is a new day. The Nationals will pitch Joe Ross and the Braves have knuckleballer R.A. Dickey.
Bryce Harper was visibly upset as he ended the game with a hard lineout to center, and not thinking at all his frustration was because of the bullpen. But Bryce wants to win.
https://twitter.com/Holdenradio/status/874461851693838336
“Come on man, you saw what I saw,” Dusty Baker said after last night’s game.
So today is a new day. What is going to change? That seems to be the question. The answer could be as simple as hitting the ball like last night coupled with good pitching.
Lollygagger wrote this morning about clean innings for your relievers which is something I preach all the time. There is an article link that Lollygagger included about the Kansas City Royals bullpen. “This article (Dec. 2015, Royals after WS win) confirms the idea that RP clean innings are…” — lollygagger http://disq.us/p/1jj0n9j It means trying to pull starters and relievers before they get fatigued. Dusty Baker did that last night with Stephen Strasburg who was at 100 pitches through 5 innings and was pulled, but he left Jacob Turner in for a 3rd inning of work and Turner faltered.
Here is your sample size slab of Washington Nationals hitters career numbers versus R.A. Dickey:
Atlanta Braves at Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, South Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC
1st Pitch: 7:05 pm EDT
TV: MASN, MLB Network (out-of-market), FOX Southeast , MLB.TV
Nats Radio: 106.7 FM The Fan; SiriusXM® XM 89 Sirius 209 (Internet 869)
Line-ups (subject to change without notice):
- Trea Turner SS
- Ryan Raburn LF
- Bryce Harper RF
- Ryan Zimmerman 1B
- Daniel Murphy 2B
- Anthony Rendon 3B
- Matt Wieters C
- Michael Taylor CF
- Joe Ross RHP
