At one time, Jim Riggleman was the only full-time Washington Nationals manager with a winning record in a single season when he resigned mid-season in 2011 with a 38-37 record. Now the Rockville, Maryland native returns home to a city he loves as his Cincinnati Reds team tries to play spoiler.
Riggleman’s Reds have been playing inspired baseball since he was named interim manager after the team fired Bryan Price in mid-April after four years of disappointment in Cincinnati. The 65-year-old interim manager has made it clear he wants to be named the full-time manager, and he has made a case for himself taking a team Price had as the worst team in the Majors to one of the better teams.
This is the fourth team Riggleman has taken over mid-season. He did it with the Padres, Mariners, Nationals, and now the Reds. One common denominator of all of the teams that Riggleman has been a full-time manager for is they were all low payroll teams. His 1995 Cubs pinched pennies and gave him a coaching staff budget that looked like a uniform budget.
Maybe Riggleman’s biggest issue has been not being able to persuade his GMs and owners to spend on big free agents until 2011 when he got Jayson Werth, but his starting rotation was John Lannan, Jordan Zimmermann, Jason Marquis and an aging Livan Hernandez, Chien-Ming Wang and Tom Gorzelanny. Still, Riggleman managed them to a winning record until he abruptly resigned and Davey Johnson took over.
Standing in Riggleman’s way in this four game series is Nationals manager Dave Martinez and his 25 players.
With this series leading the Nationals into a three game series with what could be a fight for first place with the Braves the Nats need to win this series against the Reds first and foremost. The Nationals competition for NL East supremacy have series against the depleted Mets and Marlins.
What almost seems normalcy these days is that there is wet weather in the forecast. If the game starts, the Nationals are scheduled to pitch Max Scherzer against the Reds righty Tyler Mahle.
Cincinnati Reds vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 7:05 pm EDT
TV: MASN; MLB.TV app out-of-network
Nats Radio: 106.7 The Fan and via the MLB app
Line-ups subject to change without notice:
