While the rains that pounded the Washington D.C. region are leaving the area this afternoon, it brought in a cooler temperatures dropping into the mid-40’s by the late innings. This weekend series is against the Phillies, and the first NL East games for the Washington Nationals for the season.
The Nats are tied for second place in the NL East with the Phillies entering this second week of the season. The division is really struggling out of the gates with the Mets at one win and the Marlins still winless as of yesterday.
Your top Washington Nationals on the FanGraphs’ WAR leaderboard are CJ Abrams, Luis Garcia Jr., Jesse Winker, Trey Lipscomb, Trevor Williams, and Hunter Harvey at +0.5, +0.3, and the other four at +0.2 respectively — and just how you had it drawn up, right?
The matchups for tonight’s game has Patrick Corbin going up against Aaron Nola of the Phillies. Nats’ batters have reverse splits against Nola meaning the righties hit him better overall than the left-handed batters.
Before yesterday’s game, Victor Robles‘ was officially place on the 10-day IL with a hamstring strain, and the team called-up prospect Jacob Young. He had not played before last night’s game due to three consecutive Triple-A games cancelled due to inclement weather. Young will not start tonight as Eddie Rosario is back in center field facing the right-handed Nola.
“We’ll matchup the best that we can every day. … I want to get everyone at-bats. I still like the right-handed matchups with Rosario and Winker. The good thing is Jacob can play all three outfield positions. He can come off of the bench and play defense for us. … And he can pinch-run. … We talked a lot about situational bunting for him which would definitely help. A guy with that much speed should always try to bunt for a hit here and there. We saw some of that in [Spring Training].”
— manager Dave Martinez said
The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 7.94 for 29th in MLB. Obviously sample sizes are miniscule at this point.
Here is how they rank:
No. 5 Starter: Josiah Gray 14.04
No. 4 Starter: Patrick Corbin 8.31
No. 3 Starter: Jake Irvin 5.40
No. 2 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 5.06
No. 1 Starter: Trevor Williams 3.38
Philadelphia Phillies vs. Washington Nationals
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 6:45 pm EDT
TV: MASN
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app; In Spanish on DC 87.7 FM and La Pantera 100.7 FM/1220 AM. Sirius/XM The Nats will be on Channel 176 and online for the opposing team
Line-up subject to change (without notice):
TalkNats is Celebrating the 5 and 100 year anniversaries of World Series Wins by providing Game-by-Game Summaries.
Game 7:
The 2019 Nationals won on 04/06 against the Mets by the score of 5-6 with a blown save by Justin Miller and the loss on Tony Sipp , and a record of 3-4 on that date. Box Score / Standings
The 1924 Senators won on 04/22 at home against the Yankees by the score of 3-6 resulting in a Senators’ record of 3-4 on that date. Box Score / Standings
