Scoring 6, 5, and 6 runs over the weekend will win most series and they did just that. Really capitalized on facing neither of the Tigers ok starters.
Now they can enter the Padres series with no real danger of being thought of as on a major slide (though a sweep would put them back on that line)
The Padres are a fascinating team right now because they stink! They are barely better than the Nats. Now they have faced a pretty hard schedule (outside of the AL East who have no in division breaks, it's the Tigers*, the Cardinals** and then the Padres). But that might excuse hovering around .500 not multiple games under. If you were vaguely paying attention you might think the problem was they can't pitch and Juan Soto failing to come up big. In reality they pitch very well and Soto is clear and away their best hitter after going from Mid April to Mid May hitting .322 / .451 / .567. What is the issue then?
The rest of their starts aren't hitting like stars. Tatis Jr is hitting fine. Bogaerts ok. Machado, pre-injury, like crap. And no one has really stepped up outside of a nice little performance from Matt Carpenter at the DH spot. Everyone else is below average except for the catcher Austin Nola who would have to go on a two-week tear to see below average. Worse is that the bench is complete garbage so every time someone can't play they are replaced by someone who is basically an automatic out.
The starting pitching match-ups play out with a nice symmetry. Gore gets Darvish who is having another solid year. Williams gets Weathers, a couple of perfectly competent pitchers. Irvin gets Snell, two guys hoping to do better than they have recently.
For the Nats Candelario, Thomas, and Vargas are hot and Adams has come in to hit well when needed and none of that is likely to last or particularly helpful for the future. But not every win is going to be young guys doing well. If the Nats are to have a decent season you need stretches like this where other guys do ok. They never got them last year.
It could be a fun series. If the Nats win regardless of what Soto does and take an almost certainly temporary standings lead over the Padres Nats fans will crow like fans of bad teams do.
It could be a awful series. If the Padres win with Soto doing well dropping the Nats down to the bottom of the standings while signalling maybe San Diego is turning things around.
But either way it's a series with actual interest outside of "baseball is fun" and "lets see how the young guys are doing". Not going to get many of those this year
*So maybe they aren't bad? Oh wait we just saw them. They are.
**Ok maybe THEY aren't bad
2 comments:
I get a good laugh that the Padres acquired EVERYBODY and yet they have nearly the same amount of success as the Nats. I don’t have any animosity or any feelings at all toward Soto. He’s just another former Nat.
In other news…Cole Henry’s 2 rehab starts at Fredericksburg look pretty sharp.
The thing is - everyone they signed except Machado is doing ok. No one they traded away is doing anything except a couple relievers which they don't need. It's hard to find what they did wrong but still here they are. It's like EVERYONE at the plate is 15% worse than you'd hope.
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