The Nats lost. Hey it's going to happen a lot. They now travel out to Colorado to try to see how bad they really are; worst in the league or merely bad.
Time to get out the push pins though and mark some points on the Nats for interest
Robles illusion or real? He's hitting. He's walking! Robles was a highly ranked prospect for a reason despite what the exit velocity guys tell you. Maybe he's not a star but Robles shouldn't be as terrible as he has been. Can he keep up being above average?
What's up with Finnegan? He's had a couple of very bad outings now. You can't have that as a late inning guy trying to hold leads. How long do they stick with him as closer and if he has another bad outing who replaces him? Harvey? Thompson? No one has seen dominant yet.
Can the Nats hit some homers? They go to Coors. The Rockies aren't that good. Homers should follow. But they only have 2 so far.
Ruiz opening up? Ruiz has been a very strong contact hitter his entire career. He's lacked power. Those things might be related and we've seen a couple of XBHs so far and several strikeouts. This would be both a bump in power and a bump in Ks. At this pace the trade-off would be worth it.
Alex Call getting time? With Dickerson hurt Call is getting time and if he's ok the Nats can work with that.
There are other things like Meneses and the MI guys struggling and watching everyone's second starts, that hold as well, but I'll hold off on making these something to note until next week. What we have above are a couple unusual hitting circumstances in Ruiz and Robles that suggest maybe a change in approach, an opportunity presented for Call, a problem that may call for a quick solution in Finnegan, and a team level issue. Again it's early but these are things I'm ok starting to look at. Other things are just too easily a normal week of baseball that just happened to happen first.
6 comments:
Agreed! Robles and Ruiz are doing things that give one reason to hope that their horizons could shift, based on changes in hitting philosophy. And Patrick Corbin losing 2 games is definitely going to be an aspect of many normal weeks of baseball in 2023.
Okay, I've got to admit, they are losing in some interesting ways, now.
Gray looked pretty good today. And if that ball wasn’t dropped he might have escaped. I’ll be happy if Gore pitches well tomorrow, win or lose.
The fact that Gray managed to not give up a solo shot at Coors is astounding, lost that prop bet.
Stone Garrett is playing his way into keeping Dickerson on the IL
Nelson Cruz is going to go right back to slugging .500, isn't he?
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