When Max Scherzer got his neck pain, it became a real pain-in-the-neck for Dusty Baker and his bullpen who have had to pick up one 8 inning performance and a 9 inning bullpen start. Scherzer is again scheduled tonight as we hold our collective breath that he is completely healed. The Marlins are on a roll as they have are 13-and-3 in their last 16 games and their last losing series was to the Washington Nationals when they lost 3-of-4 games from August 7th to the 10th.
Tonight the Marlins start José Ureña who struggled in his last outing throwing 101 pitches over just 5 innings of work while giving up 2 home runs. Ureña surpassed his career high of 128 innings in a season from last year based on his Minors and Majors combined innings. He enters tonight’s game with 129 2/3 innings.
The Nationals are showing their own fatigue throughout this roster. The most obvious signs have been Daniel Murphy who is batting .257 in August which is sub-par for him, and Matt Wieters is batting .175 in August and .202 in the 2nd half of the season. They aren’t the only ones. Tanner Roark hit the wall last night when his pitch count reach just 95 pitches and he quickly gave up 3-runs in a game he had a shutout. Even the dominant Gio Gonzalez didn’t look as sharp, and was fortunate that he was facing a Mets team missing 6 of their regular starters. Gio gave up only 2-runs and went 6 2/3 innings, but wasn’t as sharp as he had been. Brandon Kintzler in the bullpen wasn’t used last night in the game and as we reported from a sourced report that he was fatigued and that was later confirmed by Dusty Baker in the post-game news conference.
Help is on the way this week as general manager Mike Rizzo has several moves he can make. There is also 3-days remaining in the trade deadline, and Dusty Baker could really use a strong and reliable back-up catcher for the final 30+ games of the season to rest Matt Wieters.
Miami Marlins vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park
1st Pitch: 7:05 pm EDT
TV: MASN, Fox Sports – Florida, MLB.TV
Nats Radio: 106.7 FM The Fan; SiriusXM® Sirius 218 XM 184 (Internet 869)
Line-up subject to change (without notice):
They're baaaaaaack… pic.twitter.com/XqUqqB2Glq
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) August 28, 2017
