The Washington Nationals arrived in Texas on their American Airlines charter late last night while celebrating a 4-game sweep in Miami that took the team to the .500 mark. A win tonight by the Nats would get the team above .500 for the first time since July 1 of 2021. For Nationals’ fans, it has been a long three years, in waiting, to see their team experience a sustained modicum of successes.
Of course the Texas Rangers are the reigning World Series champs, and they are struggling to find some consistency. They go with Jon Gray tonight, and the right-hander will face manager Dave Martinez‘s lineup with a few more lefties as Eddie Rosario and Luis Garcia Jr. are back in the lineup. Rosario has been getting the platoon advantages and still only batting .092 on the season. Is tonight the night that Rosario breaks out?
The Nationals will have MacKenzie Gore on the mound, and he will try to deliver for his manager the first winning April for Martinez’s teams. They have always been slow starters for a variety of reasons, and credit to Davey for working around injuries and slow starts to take advantage of the brand of baseball we saw last year where the running game and limiting mistakes were points of emphasis. Over and over, Martinez would stress that you have to limit the other team to 27-outs — meaning no errors and freebies with mental mistakes. Not every bad play is ruled an error.
The Nationals do not have a day-off until a week from yesterday and are in the middle of their 13-game schedule with no days-off. Here’s what we think the schedule could look like going forward:
- Tuesday: MacKenzie Gore vs. Texas
- Wednesday: Trevor Williams vs. Texas
- Thursday: Mitchell Parker vs. Texas
- Friday: Patrick Corbin vs. Toronto
- Saturday: Jake Irvin vs. Toronto
- Sunday: Gore vs. Toronto
- Monday: Day-off May 6
- Tuesday: Williams vs. Orioles
- Wednesday: Parker vs. Orioles
- Thursday: Day-off May 9
- Friday: Corbin vs. Red Sox
- Saturday: Irvin vs. Red Sox
- Sunday: Gore vs. Red Sox
- Monday: Williams vs. White Sox
- Tuesday: Parker vs. White Sox
- Wednesday: Corbin vs. White Sox
- Thursday: Day-off May 16
Your top Washington Nationals on the FanGraphs’ WAR leaderboard has CJ Abrams at the top at a +1.4 WAR followed by Trevor Williams at +0.9. Jacob Young jumps up the charts to join Hunter Harvey at +0.8 WAR. In total, 22 Nats’ players are in positive WAR and another three at a neutral 0.0 WAR.
“The boys played well as a team, which I love. Kudos to those guys. We came back in this series and played really well. Played good defense, and we’re pitching [well], we’re getting timely hits, so it was a good series. … Just continue to play the way we’re playing, and we’ll be in good shape.”
— manager Dave Martinez said yesterday
The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 4.55 and tied for 22nd in MLB. Obviously the sample sizes are still small at this point considering we are just under the 20 percent completion mark in the season. The Nats have been slowly moving up in the rankings. At this point in the season, the ERA movement is in smaller increments due to the total innings increasing well over triple-digits.
Here is how they rank:
No. 5 Starter: Patrick Corbin 6.82
No. 4 Starter: Jake Irvin 4.28
No. 3 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 3.12
No. 2 Starter: Trevor Williams 2.70
No. 1 Starter: Mitchell Parker 1.69
Washington Nationals vs. Texas Rangers
Stadium: Globe Life Field, Arlington, Texas
1st Pitch: 8:05 pm EDT
TV: MASN2
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. On Sirius/XM, the Nats will be online only, and the opposing team on Channel 183.
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 29:
The Nationals lost on 05/01 at home against the St. Louis Cardinals resulting in a record of 12-17. The Nats were playing without Trea Turner, Anthony Rendon and Ryan Zimmerman. The Nats only put one-run on the board. Box Score / Standings
The Senators won on 05/23 at home against the Chicago White Sox resulting in a record of 13-16. Walter Johnson threw a complete game one-hit gem. Box Score / Standings
