Photo by LouAnn Solis for TalkNats
The season is now over 2/3rds complete. The Washington Nationals are counting down the days this season until they get back key injured players back like Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Trea Turner, Jayson Werth, Michael Taylor, Stephen Drew, Koda Glover, Enny Romero, and with a miracle — Adam Eaton.
The Chicago Cubs have only one player who is injured — just one — Addision Russell. The Cubs also only have a 1/2 game lead in the NL Central.
We are literally watching the Cubs playoff roster, and the only player they are missing is the .241 batting Russell. The Nationals are playing with a split-squad roster 3/8ths of the Opening Day roster is on the DL, and on days when Lobaton starts, the Nationals have 1/2 of the line-up as replacement players. This is not to say that Wilmer Difo, Brian Goodwin and whoever is playing leftfield aren’t doing an admirable job, but let’s be real — Brian Goodwin leading off isn’t wreaking havoc like Trea Turner.
Today, in an insult to injury way, Erick Fedde replaces Gio Gonzalez who is on paternity leave, and today’s winning team will decide the season series as the win/loss record is 3-3 right now. The season series only matters if the teams end up tied at the end of the regular season as that will determine home field advantage.
There you have it — Erick Fedde goes up against four-time All-Star and three-time top-5 Cy Young pitcher left-handed Jon Lester.
The on-going debate of line-ups between 106.7 radio personality Grant Paulsen and Dusty Baker got a challenge by Nationals radio play-by-play man Charlie Slowes. Here is Paulsen’s suggestion for a line-up today:
I get to fill it out for a day?
Murphy
Rendon
Harper
Zim
Lind/ Kendrick
Goodwin
Wieters
Difo
Pitcher— Grant Paulsen (@granthpaulsen) August 6, 2017
The good news is Dusty Baker is still writing up the line-up cards, and he is not leading off with Daniel Murphy.
Washington Nationals at Chicago Cubs
Stadium: Wrigley Field, 1060 W. Addison St., Chicago, IL 60613
1st Pitch: 2:20 pm EDT
TV: MASN, TBS (out-of-market), Comcast (Chicago), MLB.TV
Nats Radio: 106.7 FM The Fan; SiriusXM® (Internet 869)
Line-ups (subject to change without notice):
- Brian Goodwin CF
- Howie Kendrick LF
- Bryce Harper RF
- Ryan Zimmerman 1B
- Daniel Murphy 2B
- Anthony Rendon 3B
- Matt Wieters C
- Wilmer Difo SS
- Erick Fedde RHP
