Photo by Lynn G for TalkNats
How quickly things change in baseball. On Saturday, many Nats fans were on the ledge after two consecutive losses to the Mets and facing reigning Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom this next day with the possibility of being behind the Mets in the Wild Card chase. The Nats beat deGrom’s Mets on that day and now the Nats have won three-in-a-row and six of their last eight games, and the Mets have now dropped two straight.
Playoff chances, per Fangraphs: Nationals 83%
Cardinals 44.4%
Mets 39.1%
Brewers 25.3%
Diamondbacks 12.8%
Phillies 8.4%
Reds 3.7%
Giants 2.0%
Padres 0.3%— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) August 14, 2019
The Washington Nationals now enter today’s game with a chance to sweep the Reds, and Fangraphs has the Nats postseason odds at 83% this morning. The difference a few days make taking some fans from the ledge back to the ballpark as the Nats had a crowd of over 30,000 on a Tuesday night that had an extreme risk of bad weather while the Phillies hosted the Cubs and only had 26,000 in attendance.
With Stephen Strasburg on the mound, the Reds counter with one of their newest acquisitions, Trevor Bauer, who has an almost identical ERA to Strasburg. The Reds right-hander has faced players from the AL Central before like Adam Eaton and Brian Dozier, but few other Nats have faced Bauer until now.
Cincinnati Reds vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 4:05 pm EDT
TV: MASN2, FOX Sports Ohio, MLB Network (out-of-market), MLB.TV
Nats Radio: 106.7 FM The Fan; SiriusXM® ( Streaming Internet 869)
Line-up subject to change (without notice):
