The Nationals will face a Diamondbacks call-up lefty Anthony Banda. The Nationals will pitch Tanner Roark. Nationals’ manager Dusty Baker did submit a lineup card and tweaked it 30 minutes later going with the veteran Chris Heisey in the 2-hole.
News that Ryan Raburn will be place on the MLB Bereavement list broke this afternoon that Raburn will leave the team tomorrow to attend his grandfather’s funeral. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Ryan and his family. Rafael Bautista is on the MiLB disable list. Mike Rizzo could call-up Andrew Stevenson who would need a 40-man move or he could just call-up a bullpen arm and go a man short on the bench. The Syracuse Chiefs are playing in Columbus, Ohio and there are some early morning American Airline flights. Andrew Stevenson is in the line-up for the Chiefs, and currently playing an an FYI.
The Nationals line-up is scuffling with Brian Goodwin in the lead-off batting .231 and Heisey is in the 2-hole batting .157 and Ryan Zimmerman is in the clean-up batting .194 in the past 4 weeks. These players have to start stepping up. Those three players combined yesterday at 0-for-10 and 4 strikeouts.
Sabermetric line-ups work on paper but not always in theory. This particular line-up does not look pretty given recent results and the Nationals must get men on-base before and after Harper bats.
“I’ve always been sort of a streaky hitter where I’ll have one or two bad stretches and then come back with a really hot stretch for two weeks or a month,” Ryan Zimmerman said. “I think I’ve learned that I hit the way I hit, and if you try to do something drastic, you do that for 4 or 5 games and then you just end up going back to what you were doing before, and you just waste another 5 games. Obviously, nobody likes to struggle, but not many people make it through an entire season without going through 1 or 2 periods like that.”
This was similar to what Zimmerman said last year and he never had that long hot streak. It just shows that there are no guarantees and if you recall Dusty Baker and Mike Rizzo last year kept saying water rises to its level and that never happened with Zim last year. This year he started off red hot and seems to be regressing to the mean. The mechanical flaws are evident, yet Zim can’t fix his head drift often this month. Zimmerman’s 1 or 2 periods of a slump or funk is going on well over a month. The question goes back to whether or not he is healthy?
Washington Nationals at Arizona Diamondbacks
Stadium: Chase Field, 401 E. Jefferson St., Phoenix, AZ 85004
1st Pitch: 8:10 pm EDT
TV: MASN2, FOX Sports – Arizona, MLB.TV
Nats Radio: 106.7 FM The Fan; SiriusXM® (Internet 869)
Line-ups (subject to change without notice):
- Brian Goodwin CF
- Chris Heisey LF
- Bryce Harper RF
- Ryan Zimmerman 1B
- Daniel Murphy 2B
- Anthony Rendon 3B
- Matt Wieters C
- Wilmer Difo SS
- Tanner Roark RHP
