Yesterday wasn't ideal. Max was merely ok - which is fine if he makes his next start on time - you gotta give the guy a start to get back into it. But that meant a short outing and reliance on a pen who Wednesday threw out 6 pitchers, Rodney and Doolittle twice. Where is Javy Guerra? We don't know. Let's say dead. But we do know after Grace, Rainey, Sipp, and Suero had their second actions in two days the Nats were left with a choice. Rodney or Doolittle for the third time in two days? Rodney had thrown more pitches (36 to 28) but Doolittle is both more important and more fragile. So Rodney got the call and looked like a guy pitching for the third time in 2 days.
The series didn't quite work out like I thought. Buddy Black leaned heavily on the worst pitchers in his pen for some reason (Davis didn't see the light of day until the last inning of the last game) and used them in questionable spots, effectively negating his team's one advantage. This ended up accounting for the Nats outburst in G1. The Rockies didn't score much but that was more a product of bad timing than bad offense, leaving men on base all over the place until G4. If the Nats weren't rolling it would have felt worse - a series win but not one that inspires much confidence going forward. But since the Nats ARE rolling - well it keeps that going.
Now the Dodgers
The Dodgers are good. Check that. The Dodgers are very good. Nay! The Dodgers are great.
They have the most wins of any team in baseball. (percentage points behind the Yankees for best record). They are actually underperforming their Pythag by a game, in part because in this post ASG 7-5 stretch, they've lost the last 4 by one-run. Thanks to the Rockies road swoon, they have the best offense in the NL, scoring 5.41 R/G AND they have the best pitching in the NL allowing a mere 3.85 R/G
The lineup isn't 8 deep, catcher is an issue, but everyone else is at least good. Cody Bellinger anchors the lineup with an MVP year, hitting .331 / .431 / .638. Max Muncy is having a good year. Turner and Peterson are hitting well. Verdugo and Seager are above average. Pollock is getting worked back in and is hitting up a storm, though slowing lately. And Enrique Hernandez, who had been struggling at 2nd has been on a tear since the ASB. In fact along with Pollock and Hernandez, Turner, Bellinger and Muncy are all OPSing over 1.000 since the break and their Howie Kendrick, David Freese is at .957. You survive 7 batters here and then you catch a two batter break and start it all over again.
The relief pitching is deep. Kenley Jansen isn't the dominant force he used to be but he's still very good and a couple of the usual names, Pedro Baez and Yimi Garcia are doing well (though Garcia is pretty home prone). Julio Urias has converted to a lights out reliever. JT Chargois is effective and Casey Sadler has been great after getting the call. Even the bad pitchers - Caleb Ferguson is young with a ton of talent, just hasn't produced yet. Kelly doesn't have bad peripherals and as "mop-up guy" well that's a great mop-up guy.
What are the pitching match-ups?
Tonight it's Ryu vs Sanchez. Sanchez has been very good since his injury reset but there is a clear decline in his performance from very good to good. Ryu on the other hand is a Cy Young contender who, if you remove an errant game at Coors, has allowed 8 ER in his last 14 games. He's not a K guy but he's walking nobody and got the homers down low. The next game is Kershaw against likely Ross, with Voth out and Fedde moved down for relief help. Kershaw hasn't been KERSHAW for a couple years but he's still one of the better pitchers in the league with swing and miss stuff and great control. He's been even better since the ASB and is a good bet every time out to give the Dodgers 6+ innings with 2 or fewer ER. Sunday will pit Buehler against Strasburg. Strasburg had some minor worries with him after a few ok starts, but he looked great against the Rockies. Buehler is the K-man for the Dodgers now and he also has great control. (don't expect a lot of walks by the Nats this weekend). He TOO has been even better since the ASB. It's the best 3 pitchers the Dodgers have (though Maeda and Stripling are good too)
The Dodgers will likely be favored in every game with the offensive advantage overcoming the slight Strasburg over Beuhler advantage.My take is simple - don't get swept. If the Nats win the series - FANTASTIC. But a 1-2 loss is in line with what was planned and with the Braves and Phillies playing 1-2 would keep the Nats from being too far out in case the Braves pull a sweep.
The Nats are tired now, bullpen is pretty taxed, that day off seems a long time ago now that they've played 4 games in 3 days. It'd be easy to slip up. Don't let it happen. Don't get swept. Then the Braves
29 comments:
What does "OBT" mean when you post your blog links on Twitter? (e.g. [OBT : Looked at the Dodgers stats and they are very very good. I stand by "Don't get swept" as the goal /link/])
I would also like to know this. Best guess is "On the Blog Today"
How about Oh By the Way?
(without the Way, of course)
Anonymous, have you watched A Thousand Clowns recently?
And no, the Nats only have 25 at any given time as active participants.
"On board today"?
So... I want the Phillies to sweep the Braves right? I think? Can they just tie three times?
Every time I see Ryu's name I think of the song by Fort Minor:
They call him Ryu he's sick, and he's spittin' fire and Mike
Got him out the dryer he's hot, found him in Fort Minor with Tak
What a ****' nihilist porcupine; he's a *****; he's a *****
The type women want to be with and rappers hope he get shot
Eight years in the makin' patiently waitin' to blow
Now the record with Shinoda's takin' over the globe
He's got a partner in crime; his shit is equally dope
You won't believe the kind of ***** that comes out of this kid's throat
Very excited for the inevitable Ross complete game out of nowhere to be the anchor for the weekend. Let's go nats!
dangit i missed bleeping out one bad word. sorry Harper
when I first was on Twitter I didn't link the blog and people kept bothering me to note when I put up a post. so OBT stands for "Obligatory Blog Tweet"
Very clever, Anonymous 10:40, especially the Phillies-Braves ties/Rising Tied allusion.
But judging from all the comments today, I suspect the recent heat wave has taken its toll.
The remedy for giddiness isn't more cowbell. It's more ssln.
WHY IS MATT GRACE STILL WEARING A NATIONALS UNIFORM??????????
I don't think the Nats are making a trade, I think it would be better to watch the waiver wire to see who the Nats will "get"......here comes Tim Collins...again.
Wait, I thought it stood for "One Blogger's Take"??
Max is still hurting this morning. There's no reason to burn prospects on what is now a total crapshoot.
Ugh. He's gonna miss at least a few more starts now, if he's openly admitting it. Anything is possible I guess, but this does not sound promising.
Why the hell do you put Bear Claw into that situation?
Davey - Kendricks hasn't had a sac bunt since 2015, this is a good idea.
Also Davey - Guerra is cruising, let's pull him for the guy who gave up a bomb last night. If that fails, I've got a fireballer with a 6+ ERA behind him.
Also Davey (yesterday) - Why go to Guerra? Rodney can't be tired.
- can we just fire Davey tonight and make FP manager?
Robot
Do you know the meaning of death wish?
Anon
No we can't fire Davey. The whole purpose of this exercise is to see how much agony we can put you through.
Ugh... honestly it's just a bad luck kind of day. Ryu looked very human, should have been 5-1. These games happen, though I still Davey definitely hurt his odds by over-managing...
Now Joe Ross complete game coming up.
This team is deceptively close to falling out of the playoff race IMO. There’s a nonzero chance that Max Scherzer has a lingering shoulder/scalpula problem now (I don’t trust the Nats staff to diagnose something correctly that they’ve already misdiagnosed) that won’t allow him to pitch like Max for the rest of the season. He may even be our for an extended period. And the Nats have zero depth. In fact they have zero fifth starter. This is in addition to the league’s worst bullpen. The team depends more than any team in MLB on having an elite rotation. Max is their best player. If he’s not right for even 3-4 starts, i honestly don’t think this team can stay in the WC race starting Joe Ross, Fedde, Voth etc twice every five games given how bad the bullpen is (and long relief will remain bad....all that rizzo will get is a set up man). I truly believe that if the team wants to make the WC game, it will need to get a starter AND relief help. (The Braves are not a possibility anymore and never really have been, as I’ve been saying. The team isn’t good enough.)
The Nats run had a lot of good things going on during it, but honestly, a gigantic portion of it was Max pitching better than anybody in MLB. Stras and Corbin were not pitching better than usual. Sánchez was quite good. But Max was otherworldly. It’s a gigantic bummer that his season is now threatened. (The Nats can say it’s a mild whatever, but I just don’t believe that.)
Bx- totally agree on the Mac issue. I’m worried that this could be start of the decline. IIRC he hasn’t made a trip to the IL since he’s been a Nat? That’s the nail in the coffin if he’s not himself, or worse, injured. To be fair, if most teams were to lose their ace, they all would suffer similarly or experience some sort of setback. “Next man up” mentality can’t apply here because you can’t replace a Max Scherzer, you can only tread water and hope for the best.
I will say his, Fedde and Voth (from his limited time here) are treading-water options. Bringing in, say Dallas Keuchel, for $13M for 10 starts is silly and shouldn’t be an expected response for a team seeking pitching help when their on the outside looking in, in terms of playoff hunt. But Joe Ross? He isn’t a major league pitcher. Period. We know this. Everyone knows this. He’s hot, smelly, flaming garbage. Why he is the first guy to get the call from AAA, I’ll never understand. Same with Barraclough. They got injured, but also pitched themselves out of a spot on this team. For the two of them to get called up just to blow another game is piss poor by the FO. And DM gets the blame, which is unfair. Those two guys are bums and shouldn’t have seen the mound again this season. They have plenty of guys Inn Harrisburg and Fresno who aren’t rocking 5-6 ERA’s. If we have to see a nobody pitching in DC make it a guy who has shown success at a single level of professional baseball, not these two clowns who haven’t had success anywhere.
Barraclough was successful (kind of) with the Marlins. Ross looked pretty good when he came up with the Nats in 2015. That said, at this point in their careers, they are clearly no good and not major league pitchers. Barraclough lost confidence. Ross had arm surgery.
Waiting for the trade deadline has already cost the Nats several games (or more). But then, it's hard to assess the market until you know which teams are sellers and which are buyers. If the Giants aren't sellers, the market for relief pitchers will be a lot tighter -- and that will hurt the Nationals. We should all be hoping for the Giants to start losing now and keep losing until the trade deadline.
I'm really hoping the Nats stand pat now. With Max hurting it's a crapshoot whether they even make the playoffs. Now, they really need a starting pitcher AND two relievers. They don't have the organizational depth to make that move. Also, for everyone who says the Nats draft too late to ever get any good picks, top 20 prospect AND 2nd Round pick Bo Bichette just got called up. Seeing other teams draft top prospects in anything other than the 1st round is a reminder of how poorly the Nats have done outside of 1st round picks.
...the Mets didn’t have to give up even a top-100 MLB.com-ranked prospect for Stroman...whaaaa?
If the Nationals don't start doing a better job of scoring runs against anything but awful pitching it doesn't matter about Max anyway. Friday night, 1 for 9 with men in scoring position, 12 total left on base in a 4-2 loss where we outhit the Dodgers 10-4. I'm certainly not exonerating Barraclaugh, or Davey for bringing him in in that situation, but one trick pony Kevin Long has ridden Daniel Murphy into realms of credibility where he clearly does not belong. A bazillion fly ball outs and runner after runner stranded because everybody's trying to hit that perfect launch angle and go yard. Justin Turner's dinger should have at best tied the game, not given the Dodgers a three run lead.
YOU CAN'T WASTE BASERUNNERS AND SQUANDER MULTIPLE SCORING OPPORTUNITIES. You just can't. And with the pitching woes we continue to experience, we darn well better be able to get guys not just on and over, but IN. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: Line drives still move the line; small ball still wins games. Game 3 in Atlanta we scored a grand total of 1 run with the long ball, and had only 3 extra base hits out of 12 total hits.....and won the game 5-3. That's not a baseball outlier...but it unfortunately is a Nationals outlier.
Any idea why we keep calling up Adrian Sanchez and not Brandon Snyder? He's got 26 HR at Fresno this year... Sanchez couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat.
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