For the Wild Card Nats the weekend went well. These guys ignore the Braves as a direct competitor and see this stretch as simply a tough 16 games they have to survive. With the majority of games at home, 9-7 would be great, but 8-8 would be fine. It's not the pace the Nats want, but playing .500 ball when you are playing this many straight including 10 games against division leaders would reinforce the Nats are continuing to play at a high level. It would probably put them just outside of the WC when it's over but with the toughest stretch of the season likely over they'd be a good bet to pick up a few games on the rest of the field.
For the NL East Division Hopeful Nats the weekend was a failure. These guys see the Braves as the team they have to catch and they already had dug themselves a 6.5 game hole. It's a tough ask to expect the Nats to make up that many games over the course of the rest of the season. They just played the best baseball in the majors for 44 games and only made up 3.5 games. The saving grace though was 14 head to head games remaining in which the Nats could control their destiny. The more they make up on the Braves head to head, the more reasonable how much better they need to play better than Atlanta in the non head to head games. But to do that, to go say 9-5 at least in those games, the Nats need to win series against Atlanta. Instead 4 games have passed and the Nats made up no ground. Now they have to go 7-3 in the remaining 10 to make up the 4 games
Now it's on to the Rockies and the hope of a 3-1 series win or better because anything else puts pressure on winning the Dodgers series.
The Rockies have been a roller coaster ride this season. 3-12 to start the year, then a climb featuring runs of 10-2 and 11-2 to get them into the WC hunt before a recent 2-13 swing took them right back out. It's a hard team to read because of course the Rockies hit well and pitch poorly, but the Nats are catching them in DC so we can see how these guys hit/pitch away from home which is the flip. They have an ERA of 4.21 which would be Top 3 in NL and an OPS of .658 which would be dead last.
Offensively Arenando can hit, Story is pretty good too and away from home the catcher tandem (Wolters/Ianetta) does better. Maybe catching in Coors is a bit of a mind-sucking experience. Murphy and Desmond aren't particularly good on the road, while Dahl and Blackmon suffer real dropoffs. McMahon and Tapia are not good anywhere. I'd say it's a pretty ineffectual lineup where you have one star hitter in Arenando who's having an off year and one star hitter in Blackmon who's only a star at Coors. That isn't enough to balance the rest. Story is a decent bat. Murphy, Dahl, and Desmond aren't awful. The rest are. It's sort of a lineup I'd expect to fall as "worst of the teams who aren't truly terrible" if they had a regular home field. Like a Reds/Giants/Padres are now.
Relief pitching is a biog strength away from home. Davis and McGee have ERAs under 1.00. Oberg is at 1.71. Diaz, Dunn, and Estevez under 3.00. It's actually a real solid group that can hold a lead given to them when you aren't dealing with this superball and playing on the moon. The Nats will catch the following pitchers.
Lambert - (3.00 ERA on road - 2 starts) rookie that's hard to read as he's only had two starts away from Coors, but pretty good numbers in those two and it was against the Cubs and Dodgers. Then they it's Jon Gray (4.29 - 11) who has figured out how to pitch in Coors but that's made him middling outside of it. After that is Kyle Freland who got beat up in NY and hasn't had an impressive season home or away. Game 4 would have been Senzatela but he's been demoted. Hoffman will likely pitch and he's not been good. The Nats luckily miss German Marquez who is honestly a good starter.So in short they get Lambert - an interesting control-heavy prospect, Jon Gray - perfectly solid middle rotation guy, Kyle Freeland - last year's hotness who is struggling in 2019, and likely Hoffman - a one time big time prospect who now seems like rotation filler (why didn't he match up with Fedde?)
The Nats counter with Fedde, Stras, Corbin and then hopefully Max. The pitching match-ups would probably favor Rockies, Nats, Nats, and almost certainly Nats again even if they run out Ross or Voth. I like the Nats to take 3 of 4 in a lower scoring set then you'd probably expect. However, if the Nats find themselves behind going into the later innings things could get ugly. They need to jump on the beatable starters then let the bullpen hold off a less than impressive Rockies away lineup.
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Just a little friendly nitpick: A quick check of BR shows Arenado sporting a higher BA/OBP/SLG/OPS than his career averages - not his best year, but hardly an off year if you ask me.
For those who don't want to look it up: .307 .371 .552 .923
Yeah, but that doesn't account for the rocket ball or this year's Coors effect. Arenado's OPS+ is 118, down from around 130 for the last 3 years.
if Soto and Rendon can maintain, season will hinge on Turner turning back into something other than what he has been this season at the plate and whatever bat (Adams/Kendrick) replaces Zim. maybe turner can get hot but im not too hopeful for 1B. Adams is Adams and Kendrick has cooled off (should never have been considered one of our top weapons anyway).
also we really need to start hitting home runs damnit. lack of pop is concerning as we dont have a roster where guys can get 3-4 hits in a row each inning to score runs.
not starting great in the second half!
@coosny, I'm not heartbroken about the start, save the second Baltimore game. 2/3 in Phily was great, 2/4 in Atl was mildly disappointing but mostly from a "why does Kevin Gausmann still have Zach Wheeler powers over the Nats" type feeling Sunday. Still can believe we got shellacked by Baltimore (and Davey pulled Fedde). Bats have been cold for a while now... feels like a slump bust is coming soon.
Get healthy Max.
I fully believe Max is this team's soul. Once he is no longer injured, the team will rip off a 50 game HR streak
I disagree. If you told me that Max wasn't starting the Braves series at all; Corbin was going 5 innings; and Joe Ross was starting Sunday, I would have told you the Nats would be lucky for a split. They need to play well this week. If they win tonight and Thursday night they'll make up a 1/2 game each time bc the Braves are off. Sadly, I think the question of catching the Braves depends more on the Braves than the Nats. The Braves are on about a 95-win pace. Are they really that good of a team? A couple of weeks ago I would have said no. Unfortunately, they might be that good. The Nats just need to keep their head down. Try and win each series and try to throw in a couple of sweeps here and there. If the Braves when 90-92 then the Nats will be in the thick of it (I hope). If the Braves win 95-97 there is no way the Nats catch them.
On a side note, I am sad about the Zim injury. However, I think this makes Davey's job easier. The Nats were really on a roll when he was mixing Dozier, Kendrick, and Adams. Also, it is a real shame they didn't sign Kimbrel. It wouldn't have cost them any prospects in a trade. Now you hear that teams are asking for Carter Kieboom in any trade. Could have just signed Kimbrel and kept all of their prospects. That is the dumb move that might bite them this year.
The next 10 days are going to be wild re: trade front. I'm trying to figure out who the sellers are. It's so weird to think that a three day sample of records (and trends going in) will determine positioning with 60 games left. But the only teams I can see for sure are 6: Toronto, Baltimore, KC, Detroit, Seattle, Miami.
That list could boom by mid-week. I'm guessing 6 teams at least jump in: Pitt, Cinci, San Diego, Colorado, White Sox, Mets
The ones that could really tip the market if they go on a bad break the next week: Boston, Rangers, LAA, Giants, Arizona
So depending on how deep the snapshot of the middle is in a week, there could be 6 teams or 17 selling. With 6 teams, I don't think even the middle relief guys we want are available. With 17 teams, we can get it for lesser prospects. In the meantime, we need help yesterday to separate in any meaningful way...
Kimbrel was never an option at his price. The Nats will not go over the tax for a relief pitcher; just not happening. Two cheap, controllable relievers is what they might (and I don't think it's more than "might") pick up. Unfortunately, that also translates into "not great".
Best guess is a little over 5mil to spend on 2 guys. That also translates into "not great".
The Nats don't need more than "not great" though. They need serviceable. They need guys who are valuable enough to not be DFA'd by their teams like the rest of the Nats bullpen. Pick up a couple relievers on pace for like 1 WAR, that's all you need
Teams asking for Kieboom? Really? Now who told you that that would be the asking price weeks ago? Who asked whether you would trade CK for a relief pitcher who might never pitch in the post season?
BOX is still on the farm. One pitcher for a mid level prospect, that is all she wrote.
I got it, I got it. ssln is Randy Marsh.
So is what you've been yelling about this whole time is just focus on a mid-level prospects and seeing if there's a decent get at that price while ensuring we keep Kieboom? Because that's what literally everyone else has been saying.
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