Going Deep with The Nats

The Washington Nationals need a stopper, and tonight’s game will put Mitchell Parker on the mound against former Nat, Reynaldo Lopez, in a game the Nationals desperately need to win. The Braves have their best four starters going in this series, and the Nats have their best four available pitchers.

The Washington Nationals have lost the first two games against the Mets in this three game series — and while execution is certainly at fault, just look at the managerial decisions in sending a fatigued DJ Herz out on the mound for the 5th inning. Quickly, the 2-0 deficit became 4-0. The Nats chipped away, and scored three runs — but even in the 9th inning, the struggling Keibert Ruiz who fell below the Mendoza mark again, batted for himself, while Luis Garcia Jr. sat on the bench in the 9th inning. Winnable games just flushed away.

The Washington Nationals got some good news and bad news today. The bad news is that the Nats best pitcher, Trevor Williams, was placed on the 15-day IL with a strained flexor tendon in his right forearm. He will be shutdown from throwing for two weeks and go through another MRI before he throws again. Josiah Gray has been out nearly two months with this same diagnosis. The good news is the both CJ Abrams and Jacob Young are in tonight’s lineup after dealing with their own bumps and bruises.

The Washington Nationals won yesterday in Cleveland and arrived at Dulles Airport just before 7:30 pm last night. What a difference in an early arrival after that debacle traveling out of Atlanta last week. The Nationals have the Mets in for a 3-game series before a 4-game series with the Braves at Nationals Park.

The Washington Nationals couldn’t catch a popup with two outs in the first inning. The Cleveland broadcasters thought that Eddie Rosario gave up on the ball while Kevin Frandsen of the Nats booth thought that shortstop Ildemaro Vargas should have caught the ball. Manager Dave Martinez in his postgame presser saw it like Frandsen. Replay showed Vargas calling for the ball then he stopped running after it. Instead of a 2-1 win, the Nats lost 3-2. Their 9th loss by one-run in 13-games. A sad reminder of what this season could have been.

Forget about the other mistakes as there were plenty on the base paths with two runners thrown out on awful mistakes that included another blunder by third base coach Ricky Gutierrez who gave his base runner the go sign and then the stop sign when it was too late. And the team suffered their 12th pick-off of the season. This time Jesse Winker was picked-off on a set play that should never work at the MLB level. The Guardians deked him by the first baseman jumping off of first base like he wasn’t holding him on. Winker froze and was thrown out trying to go back to the base standing up. How embarrassing.

The Guardians play aggressive mistake-free baseball. You could point to their outfielder slipping on the turf as a mistake — but that was like a freak accident. The Guardians won, and they are firmly in first place in their division. If you look at their roster, besides Jose Ramirez, they don’t look so great. They just find a way to score enough runs per game. We saw their best starting pitcher yesterday in Ben Lively. Their starting rotation has a higher ERA (4.15) than the Nats at 3.93. The Guardians are 11-6 in one-run games.

The Washington Nationals have Mitchell Parker back on the mound after normal rest, and having just thrown a career-high 100 pitches against the Braves. Parker faced the Dodgers for his MLB debut in mid-April when the Dodgers were the top scoring offense, and now he faces the American League’s top offense today in Cleveland.

The Washington Nationals won a key series against the Braves, and now have this weekend series against the very hot Cleveland Guardians, a team in first place in the AL Central that was just voted the 5th best team in MLB power rankings. Only the Phillies and Dodgers have scored more runs than the Guardians this season. Tonight’s challenge: Patrick Corbin and his 6.12 ERA is on the mound with a back of the bullpen that has pitched a lot in the past two days.