Photo from Nationals official Instagram
These four-game series give a team a chance to split a series that mathematically they cannot do in the traditional three-game series. In those three-game series, there’s always a series winner and a a series loser, and luckily for the Nationals, this four-game series won’t be decided until the 27th out.
This game features Jeremy Hellickson against righty Anibal Sanchez. This is Sanchez’s 4th start of the season and in small sample sizes as been awful in Atlanta with a 5.14 ERA. Lefties and righties have similar batting averages against Sanchez and the real difference is all the walks the lefties get plus the extra power.
The Nationals are coming off of an exciting 14-inning victory last night, and manager Dave Martinez is using this afternoon game to rest Bryce Harper and Matt Adams who is nursing a sore foot. It goes without saying that reliever Justin Wilson will be getting the day-off after pitching 3-innings of perfect game baseball. The Braves thought they were missing Max Scherzer in this 4-game series, and they were so mistaken as he got a no-decision but did score the winning run!
As it seems daily, the Nationals placed Tim Collins on paternity leave and have called up Jefry Rodriguez to take his place.
With tomorrow’s day-off, the Nationals front office will still be hard at work in the war room preparing for the amateur draft.
Washington Nationals vs. Atlanta Braves
Stadium: SunTrust Park, Atlanta, Georgia
1st Pitch: 1:35 pm EDT
TV: MASN2; MLB App out-of-market
Nats Radio: 106.7 The Fan and via the MLB app
Line-ups subject to change without notice:
- Trea Turner SS
- Juan Soto LF
- Anthony Rendon 3B
- Mark Reynolds 1B
- Brian Goodwin RF
- Michael Taylor CF
- Wilmer Difo 2B
- Spencer Kieboom C
- Jeremy Hellickson RHP
