Last night was the best example of how the 2019 pitching staff's season would go. Starter goes deep. Leaves with lead. In comes someone, maybe two if match-ups dictate or starter went out in 7th, and holds the lead. In comes Doolittle, finishes the game. Rinse, repeat 50 or so times. Last night was the 7th time you could possible say that's happened this season, putting the Nats on pace for 30, not 50 or so type games. Such is how 2019 has gone.
But a win! And in the first game of a series too! The Nats are on the precipice of irrelevance, which is hard to be on this early in the year, and they desperately need something to go right? Three out of 4 in LA when one looked likely would be that.
Tonight is an interesting game because tomorrow Soto comes back. Win tonight and all of a sudden there is a little jazz to that. 2 in a row, team back to "injured but not beyond what a talented team should be able to handle" status... There would definitely be a little "OK now we're getting back to normal and we're going to start winning!" (Now mind you the Nats were in a better situation than this through April 20th and managed a 9-10 record so it isn't like things were going swimmingly before injuries derailed them, but you take what you can get). However tonight is an Anibal Sanchez start and while the pen is rested, well, you've seen the rest of the pen. The best bet will be Maeda continuing with control issues and the Nats winning a slugfest. I wish them well but I'm not putting money on these guys tonight.
Whatever the issues the Nats have had - they'd be worse off in any other division. Hell the NL East only has on team over two games UNDER .500 right now. If the NL East is no good, then the Nats could have more wins coming up than we thought, which means they can get things right.
A moment to talk about Corbin.
Corbin isn't Max. He's not even Strasburg. But he's right there and he's been pitching more like last year than years before that. He has come back a little but that is probably to be expected that season at that age (28) was almost certainly a peak. But that doesn't mean he still can't be effective. Last year was Cy Young worthy. They don't need that from him. They need "hey this guy is also pretty good". It's something they haven't really had since 2015. After that Gio started to slip and ZNN was gone. Sure Roark WAS good, but he wasn't someone you'd rely on for that. He just did it and you were glad.
Anyway so Corbin's walk rate is up and strikeouts are down and HR rate is up but for the most part last year matched career numbers. Last night you saw that 8 Ks in 7 is great but under what he was pumping out last year. 4BB in 7 is bad actually, and well above what we was getting.What's saving him now is a low BABIP (.266) which shouldn't hold. I'd love to tell you that's because he's fooling them into soft contact or getting a lot more GBs but neither is true. A lot of pop-ups? Yes. I'm not sure that's sustainable though. But that doesn't mean he's going to get rocked. These numbers are moving from career highs - a little worse is fine. that BABIP is low but not crazily so, a bump up will be ok. It means he'll have that 3.50+ ERA instead of 3.20 but give me that and 6-7 innings and I'll take that every day.
Corbin gives you someone to rely on as a stopper again. Someone to rely on if the Nats make the playoffs. He resets the rotation to a Nats rotation you are accustomed to, which they haven't had for a year and a half at least - if you are just thinking about good pitching, and three years if you are thinking about three guys you feel you can count on. It alone isn't enough - see all of this year so far and it's probably more fleeting than the 2012 arrival of this for Nats fans - but it's here in 2019 and it's a good thing to have.
All Nats games are important now that they've dug themselves a hole, but I think tonight's game is particularly important. If they beat LA tonight, they'll have won the first two games of the series with Max and Stras pitching the final two games. This is a chance to build some momentum, and to dig out of the hole.
ReplyDeleteI certainly wouldn't bet on Sanchez against the Dodger lineup, but I am hoping for some good luck tonight.
Missed the beginning of the game so had to go to the Tivo to see HOW the Nats scored three. That was lovely, but in the interest of functioning at work today, had to turn the game off.
ReplyDeleteDog #1 needed attention at midnight - still 3-0.
Dog #2 at 2:30 and the Nats won 6-0. Thought I was dreaming, but alas, turned out that I wasn't. (Still mad at the dogs for waking up up - twice.)
@W. Patterson wow, that schedule's like having newborn twins!
ReplyDelete@Cracka - I can only imagine.
ReplyDeleteOn the baseball note, having a starter go seven innings, a mid-level getting two outs so the closer can come in for four outs makes for a good outing all around. It's not sustainable, however, and some of the more ineffective relievers would need to make an appearance, sometime.
Looking forward to tonight (without the dogs waking me up).
A bit off-topic: Tanner Roark pitched well last night. He's 3 - 1 with the Reds, with an ERA of 3.27, but a WHIP of 1.43, well above his career average of 1.22. Compare to Anibel Sanchez (because the Nats essentially traded Roark for Sanchez in the #4 spot in the rotation): 0 - 5, 5.15 ERA, 1.66 WHIP. This "trade" never made sense to me, although I readily concede that Roark is declining.
ReplyDelete@Potomac Fan - Agree. I wasn't for the trade either. This was a typical gamble by Rizzo. Roark was regressing slightly, but Sanchez was too. Then Sanchez has this fountain of youth season, and Rizzo bet on that. Straight up, I wouldn't kept Tanner because at least we knew we were getting a healthy ~4.50 ERA type guy. But we wanted just a bit more. Now, we also got the other Tanner (Rainey) in return, who has great stuff, but has terrible command. If he were to pan out, I'd call this trade a moot point, but we'll have to see. So far, its looking like another roll of the dice by Rizzo that has come up snake eyes.
ReplyDeleteAll the more reason why a Corbin for Gio swap in the rotation was imperative. Can you imagine if we still had Gio instead? Woof.
My dog was pissed at me for staying up to finally watch a win. Harper, I think the Nats DO need Corbin to pitch as well as Strasburg and Scherzer. Preferably the vintage variety since those guys aren't getting great results either. The Dodgers played like the 2019 Nats last night. I do not see a corner being turned after ONE game.
ReplyDeleteSanchez developed a really good cutter last year, that was the difference. It wasn't magic. That's a bit of a trendy thing to hang a contract on, but Roark looked pretty bad last year and it seems like it was an ownership decision, and in this case, I understand not wanting to pay him eight figures.
ReplyDeleteThese base-running mistakes are inexcusable.
ReplyDeleteYikes! If the Nats win today, and take 3 of 4 from the Dodgers, Dave(y) M. could be the manager for the rest of the year.
ReplyDelete@PotomacFan & OlePBN: I think the problem here is that Roark is in decline and has continued to be, but Sanchez might have been in a period of rejuvenation (based on the fact that he made substantive alterations in his pitch choice, etc. last year) but has thus far this year resumed his pre-2018 decline. In hindsight (again, assuming no reversal of course from Sanchez) Rizzo could have made a better decision to replace Roark with (for example, Gio Gonzalez, based upon his SSS performance thus far with MIL), but the desire to cut ties with Roark does not thus far appear to itself be a bad choice. Plus, Hellickson's made three starts when he's been excellent and three starts when he's been hot garbage.
ReplyDeleteThe Nats are in a weird place right now. Most of the things that were predictable to be good have turned out to be accurate (Rendon, Turner, Soto, Eaton, Robles, Gomes, Suzuki, Scherzer, Strasburg, Corbin, Doolittle, even Kendrick). Some are a little low (Gomes, Robles's, and Soto's bats, Strasburg's early pitching) while others were a little high (Rendon and Kendrick), but basically those are all within expectations. Injuries have hit here, but when healthy performance from these guys has been worthwhile.
But virtually every player that the Nats were hoping for a little luck on has crashed and burned. Sanchez, Hellickson, Rosenthal, Miller, Sipp, Grace, Suero, Dozier, Zimmerman, Adams, Taylor, Kieboom...they've all not just not performed to their average expectations, but lots of them have been worst-case scenarios. Guys like Grace and Sipp and Miller in the 'pen who could be reasonably expected to be "just okay" aren't even that. (Difo has been bad and Glover injured, but that's what you expect those two to be.)
And you can't make in-season adjustments to fix catastrophic bad luck, not unless that "luck" is genuinely traceable to management or coaching (and...for example, how would Lilliquist have been responsible this year for Grace/Miller/Suero if he was also around for them being competent last year?). You can fix depth issues, but at some point, some of the breaks have to cut the team's way.
nmd
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