Redemption is a dish best served with quality pitches darted over it. That 17 inch pentagonal shaped dish has been Tanner Roark’s nemesis for the last 30 days when he had one of his worst professional months of baseball with a June ERA that was over 9.00 for the month pushing his 2017 ERA to a poor 5.27.
Roark has sheepishly been giving postgame interviews after each of the last 5 losses saying he feels great and his issue is mechanics. We’ve seen this before when the body won’t do what the mind wants it to do. Pitchers like Dan Haren and Doug Fister both went through that phase, and pushing velocity is not the answer — finesse is. Movement and locating pitches is what Roark’s success was built on not throwing 95 heaters, and it took Gio Gonzalez a while to learn that he is no longer a power pitcher. Gio is now winning with an 89-91 mph fastball.
The Mets are starting righty Jacob deGrom who clearly is their best pitcher once again. Brian Goodwin will lead-off in another Dusty Baker lineup variation with Michael Taylor in the 2-hole with Daniel Murphy taking over the 3-hole to give Bryce Harper a day off. Ryan Zimmerman will bat cleanup followed by Adam Lind who will be in left field followed by Anthony Rendon and Matt Wieters with Stephen Drew in the 8-hole and playing shortstop.
New York Mets at Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park,1500 S Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC 20003
1st Pitch: 7:05 pm EDT
TV: MASN, ESPN (out-of-market), SNY, MLB.TV
Nats Radio: 106.7 FM The Fan; SiriusXM® XM 184 Sirius 218 (Internet 869)
Line-ups (subject to change without notice):
- Brian Goodwin RF
- Michael Taylor CF
- Daniel Murphy 2B
- Ryan Zimmerman 1B
- Adam Lind LF
- Anthony Rendon 3B
- Matt Wieters
- Stephen Drew SS
- Tanner Roark RHP
