Going Deep with The Nats

The Washington Nationals had a 2-1 lead into the sixth inning with a fully rested back of the bullpen — but allowed starter Patrick Corbin to meltdown on the mound with Derek Law as the bullpen arm to replace Corbin. We all know Law’s record as the anti-fireman who has allowed at least one inherited runner to score in 82.4 percent of those appearances — and that is a lot of scorched earth. He did not disappoint last night as Corbin’s two inherited runners quickly scored. The Nats lost 6-2. The Nats have now sunk to a season’s worst 9-games under .500, and now are on a 73 win pace.

The Washington Nationals made a late surge last night but it was too little too late and they lost 7-5. Some bad umping, bad defense, some bad pitching, and some bad luck seems to be the formula for most Nats losses — but this one did not have the bad baserunning. Well, you have to get on-base to have bad baserunning….. While Jake Irvin didn’t pitch great, he pitched better than the box score shows.

The Washington Nationals have this year’s All-Star snub, Jake Irvin, on the mound for another audition for the Commissioner’s Office and fans of baseball. How do you keep a Top-5 starter (ERA) off of the All-Star team. That’s easy because it just happened to Irvin.

The Washington Nationals have very little margin for error, and that does not mean defensive errors as determined by the official scorer, rather just making mistakes. James Wood had less than a week’s time in the Majors yesterday so some of this he should get a pass for when he makes a mistake. Each game, each play, is a learning experience. Wood doesn’t have a lot of experience in left field.

In the second inning yesterday, Wood allowed a flyball to drop in front of him — and it was clearly his ball. Wood was criticized on-air by MASN’s color analyst, Kevin Frandsen, on two occasions yesterday that also included a baserunning mistake that veterans have made too when Wood was doubled off of first base on a line drive that was caught by a middle infielder. Frandsen was right in both cases, and so was manager Dave Martinez who spoke about the fly ball that led to two runs scoring. That non-play resulted in extra laborious pitches that took a 19-pitch inning to a 29-pitch inning and redlined the young starter, DJ Herz. The situation snowballed as each extra pitch eventually pushed Herz into a career-high 102 pitches in the game. But you could easily try to hit rewind and see that maybe Herz throws 5.0 scoreless if he didn’t have to redline in that second inning.