The Nats play the Orioles this weekend for their rivalry games and well no one cares too much. At least as far as I can tell. Hard to remember but for the first half of the Nats window the Os got good too making these games kind of interesting if you have no feeling about Baltimore vs DC or the MASN situation. Now the Os stink and have for a while so the games mostly don't matter other than what kind of boost they give the Nats and this year is no exception.
The Orioles can't hit. Cedric Mullins has blossomed into a fine player and Trey Mancini is a solid power bat but after that their best bats are merely average and 3-4 starters a night are well below. A couple of poor hitters are hot - Santander, old friend Severino - but this is just the normal streaks you see. They don't do anything particularly well but they do particularly lack power after the two good hitters and DH Mountcastle. It's a worse line-up than the healthy Marlins but maybe a tick better than the hurt Marlins? I don't know. But this hardly matters because where the Orioles really stink is on the mound!
They have one starter of use (John Means) and them a handful of guys that might not make it as other teams #5. The relief is a little better if only because if you throw 7 guys out there for limited innings someone is going to be ok. Tyler Wells is probably the guy to watch as he has good control and can strike you out. I'm saying now he'll be the closer sometime before the end of next year. An inopportunte homer or 2 (or 4) have hurt him though. The rest are either good stuff but wild guys or some control no stuff guys or at least I avoid the homers guys or whatever it is that Adam Plutko or Thomas Eshelman are. Bad. That's what they are bad.
Probables!
Corbin vs Jorge Lopez - Corbin has been beaten around in a couple of his last starts, against the Padres and Dodgers with an ok Padres start in between. He could be good he could not. I've kind of lost faith in him putting any long good stretch together but can he get the Orioles to scatter a bunch of hits and strike out too much over 6+? I think so. Lopez has one decent start since May ended. He's trash. The Nats should beat his brains in (metaphorically). His one saving grace is he's not that homer prone so it's never like 8 runs in 3 innings more like 5 in 4 but they should get to him either way.
Scherzer vs Spenser Watkins Matt Harvey - Max had a disappointing for him start last time out against the Padres, unable to hold a big lead without giving some of it back. He's been a bit homer prone recently but against the Os that means 2 guys might hit solo homers as he goes 8 and strikes out 12. If the Nats score they win this game. That might be a problem? Watkins isn't a prospect - but he's been very good since coming up with the Os. A junkballer who uses a cutter a lot he mixes things up and accepts the occasional single or walk to avoid the rare homer or big hit. It's a formula that has worked in the majors better than the minors - perhaps because of all the fast stuff usually seen up here. It's three starts so it could also be a fluke and the Nats could pummel him. Dammit they changed it on me! Watkins was actually kind of interesting but they are giving him MIA later and keeping Harvey on schedule. Harvey stinks! The basic fact is you can hit Harvey well. He won't get himself in trouble in the sense he stays away from the walks and homers but he's a BP pitcher to guys with fungo bats. Put it over, hope they hit it at someone. That doesn't usually work but it can. This would be a crushing loss
Lester vs Means - Lester gets the Marlins then the Os? That's a way to save your rotation spot. He looked fine against the Marlins and really his stuff plays at the back of a rotation. He'll handle the bad offenses. MIA? NYM? PIT? So he should handle the Orioles. John Means isn't bad. He's hard to hit and doesn't put men on. But he's homer prone - possibly a spin rate casualty and he's hurt on and off. If he can keep you in the park he can win.
The first game is in the Nats favor, the second one really so, the last one more of a toss up. While they should win any single game 2-1 is probably slightly more likely than 3-0 as these things go. 1-2 or worse would be a devastating failure in my book.
13 comments:
I rarely laugh aloud when I'm reading, but "BP pitcher to guys with fungo bats" was one those times. Literally coffee-through-the-nose laughed.
God, I love your blog!
This one is simple. Win two games or you're in sell mode. The Orioles are the second-worst team in all of baseball and they don't even have the excuse of having an entire starting rotation on the IL the way the Diamondbacks do; they're just bad. I know that baseball is baseball and luck is luck, but the Nats are out of second chances. They have to win these games or it's time to start selling pieces, preferably in package deals to upgrade the quality of the lottery tickets coming back, and put on our "Just wait 'til next year!" T-shirts.
I ALWAYS care when the Nationals play the blankety blank blank blanking O's. I don't care how bad or good either team is. This is war.
I despise Baltimore the town, I despise the Ravens, I despise the Colts, and for sure I despise the Orioles and Peter Angelos. If not for him and them we'd have had baseball in Washington 20 years earlier. His extortion of the Lerners, the Washington baseball fans, and everyone else associated with the Nats and MASN should earn him a lifetime of uncontrollable diarrhea and poison ivy in the privates. And I'm being nice. The Nationals should never EVER EVER lose to the Orioles. I wish the Nats would score twenty runs in the first inning of every game against them, then slowly pull away for a 45-0 shutout no-hitter every time....and I would never feel one molecule of sympathy for them, or get bored watching it. I would whoop to Jericho if I could live to see them go 0-162 one season.
I even root for the blankety blank blank Marlins when they play the O's.
And now there's a new report from Mark Zuckerman via Twitter that due to continued neck discomfort, the team is backing down on Stras's throwing program. Martinez is talking about finding him a new specialist, which means we're very unlikely to actually have Stras helping out before September, if that.
This is starting to make me think that "soft buy" may be the worst decision Rizzo could make. As Harper has pointed out, without solid improvement in the SP area, this team is not going to be able to get past three other teams, flawed as the Mets, Braves, and Phillies may be, and Strasburg isn't going to be that improvement. If Rizzo is going to buy, he needs to add a genuinely good SP, a legit #2-3 quality, or there's simply no point in buying at all--better at that point to soft-sell, hope to get back something that helps, and reload in the offseason.
Anyone else starting to thing that Rob Dibble’s comments on Strasburg’s toughness rings a little more true every year?
Seems like we're selling. Probably the right call, bummer though.
I'm no expert but I don't think you can win if you don't score runs.
Yeah I know it's obvious. Just pisses me off when I watch a game and the nets score zero.
As they say in France: Verdun.
I'm 99% certain Rizzo scratched Max tonight so to not risk any injury before trading him Monday morning. And I'm fine with it. Sell. Blow it up. If you can't beat the friggin' Orioles, play out the string and let Max go to a contender. Get a good, young third baseman and a couple of AA pitching prospects for him. Then re-sign him next season. Trade some of those bullpen guys for a lame horse. Then shoot the horse. Fire Kevin Long.
@ Anonymous Dibble Fan, you mean his years-old comments about WORLD SERIES MVP Stephen Strasburg?
To repeat what Ollie said - cause it absolutely bears repeating - you mean WORLD SERIES MVP Stephen Strasburg?
I mean, c'mon man, be real. If you want to complain about the contract extension he got AFTER his postseason for the ages, because it's looking like it could be a major burden for the team for the next several years, that's fair (if a little churlish). But at least have the sense to acknowledge that what he gave the Nats in October 2019 was one of the greatest pitching post-seasons of all time, and that they needed every single inning of his to win the freaking World Championship.
And Rob Dibble can stuff it.
Blech. The Orioles. Anyone on the 40-man roster not named Turner or Soto or Strasburg should be fair game at this point. I was at the gunfire game -- walking right past the 3rd base gate with my kid when the shots were fired -- and I'm told my tickets can be exchanged for another game if I go to the box office. I love baseball, but this team is making it pretty difficult to be interested in doing that.
Losing that series is bad. Means is a perfectly fine #3 or #4 starter for a good team, but Harvey and Lopez both stink! Getting swept is beyond embarrassing.
At this point, the only untouchable, at least for me, is Soto. If some team is stupid enough to take on Corbin's contract in order to get Turner, then fine, at least in my opinion, that team can have Turner!
Whoa. Let's not overreact to one weekend. Turner is clearly one of the best two-way players in baseball at a premium position. Imaginging him as a throw in to a deal would be VERY shortsighted. We should be dumping players that are good, but not needed for the long term or who are going to be free agents. Hand, Hudson, Gomes, Harrison, maybe Escobar and of course the crown jewel Max. The haul may not be great but let's not go too crazy here.
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