With the Washington Nationals virtually locks for the postseason and the Miami Marlins looking towards the future and the sale of the franchise, this series carries little weight for the postseason. Nevertheless, these are still divisional rivals with the teams having split the first nine with the Marlins winning five, including taking two of three at home this past week. Washington now gets a chance for revenge, hosting the Fish in a best of four.
This series will be contested from Monday, August 7, 2017 through Thursday, August 10, 2017 at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. Monday's game can be seen on the MLB Network.
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Pitching Matchups
Monday marks a rematch of the August 1st showdown between the Marlins and Nationals with the 27-year old rookie Chris O’Grady on the mound against veteran right-hander Max Scherzer.
In the last meeting, the Nationals won the game 7-6 with most of their damage coming off O’Grady. In fact, they roughed him up for six runs on seven hits in three innings. The start was just his fifth big league start and, by far, the worst.
Overall, the youngster is 2-1 and the Marlins are 4-1 when he starts. He’s pitched 25 innings now, allowing 15 runs on 26 hits—including four homers—and 14 walks. That’s a lot of base runners, though he has struck out 24.
O’Grady was pitching to a 3.29 ERA in the Pacific Coast League before getting the promotion. He served primarily as a starter in the minors this year, though he’s historically been a reliever.
As for Scherzer, he’s a man that needs no introduction. The reigning Cy Young Award winner is 12-5 with a 2.21 ERA and 0.841 WHIP in 146.1 innings. He’s the league leader in strikeouts with 201 and tops the NL in FIP at 2.83. He’s already been worth 6.1 rWAR.
In his last start, Scherzer showed well with the bat, but left the game after just a single innings—albeit a hitless one—due to injury concerns. He appears fine and ready to go. Before that, however, Scherzer did allowed four or more runs in two of his previous four contests. He wasn’t exactly terrible in either game, but against Scherzer, you must take what you can get.
As the series progresses, the Marlins will continue to use their makeshift rotation with Vance Worley and Adam Conley starting the next two games. Dan Straily pitches in the series finale.
Worley was great in his last start against the Nationals. He held them to two hits in seven innings. He didn’t allow a run in the game to lower his ERA to 5.31. Overall, he’s been bad in his starts. Is other five starts this year, he combined to allow 17 runs in 20.1 innings.
Can Worely build off his last start or with the Nationals figure him out after back-to-back starts? Probably more of the later, but he does have a history of success against Washington with a 2.78 career ERA in 45.1 innings.
As for Conley, the 27-year old is 4-4 with a 5.10 ERA in 11 games—including 10 starts. He struggled early and spent some time in the minors, but has pitched to a 2.42 ERA since returning, throwing three quality starts in that time.
Dan Straily closes out the series as the Marlins’ best starter this year. Subject of a few trade rumors, the right-hander ultimately stayed put. He’s throwing well now, too. His last two starts have been solid. He did struggle a bit before that, but a thumb injury played a role.
Even with the ups and downs, his 3.77 ERA and 1.186 WHIP are both very respectable.
As for the Nationals’ counterparts for the last three games, those have yet to be announced, but A.J. Cole, Tanner Roark and Gio Gonzalez.
Cole is a fill-in starter. He’s only made two starts this year and is 1-1 with a 4.91 ERA and a ton of base runners. It’s been a struggle for him at Triple-A, too. He’s 4-4 there with a 5.66 ERA. The second game of this series should produce a ton of runs.
The rest of the series will be established veteran starters for the Nationals though it’s been a tale of two seasons for the two starters.
Roark has long been one of the most underrated pitchers in baseball. This year, he’s been below average at 9-7 with a 4.82 ERA and 1.392 WHIP. His last start, however, was a quality start against the Cubs.
As for Gonzalez, he’ll come off the paternity list if he’s to make this start. He should have been an All-Star. He’s 9-6 with a 2.66 ERA and 1.145 WHIP, though his average against is quite low due to a BABIP. He’s put up better numbers than the peripherals indicate he should have, but he’s a solid mid-rotation starter regardless.
Offensive Comparison
The Nationals have scored the second most runs in the NL and have the best OPS in the league and second in baseball behind only Houston.
Washington’s offensive prowess is obvious now. The story focuses on the middle of the order that has Ryan Zimmerman, Daniel Murphy, Anthony Rendon and Bryce Harper all with OPS+ numbers of at least 134 and as high as 166 in the case of Harper.
That’s a formidable heart of the order, but there’s more to look at with this offense than just that. Jayson Werth, Adam Eaton and Trea Turner are all out. Michael Taylor who filled in for Eaton admirable, is also out. That leaves Brian Goodwin, Wilmer Difo and a misplaced Adam Lind to get more at bats. Goodwin has been surprisingly good and Lind’s at least a great option against righties; even if his glove is not.
All that aside, there are few things to keep an eye on for this team. Lind’s numbers are starting to drop as he becomes more exposed. More than that, however, the big four are slowly becoming the big three. Zimmerman’s regressing. He’s batting .214 with a .735 OPS since the break.
On the other side, the bat of Justin Bour is missing from the infield, leaving all four spots an offensive waste land. The outfield and catcher position is locked down, however. Giancarlo Stanton has slammed 10 bombs in the second half and has a 1.173 OPS as he competes for the Major-League lead in homers. Christian Yelich’s bat has perked up lately, too.
Bullpen Breakdown
The Nationals are no longer the worst bullpen in baseball. Brandon Kintzler, Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson have all been great additions at the backend, pushing Matt Albers up to the middle innings where he’s better suited and taking a lot of pressure of the rest of the sub-par ground of arms.
The addition of Kintzler is very much like the Mark Melancon addition last year and he’s already been part of three games, throwing three scoreless, frames, allowing just a single hit and a walk. In fact, Sunday’s game was a great highlight of this new-look pen. Kintzler, Doolittle and Madson each tossed a scoreless frame while Perez finished out the sixth after the youngster, Erick Fredde couldn’t make it out of the sixth.
On the Marlins’ side of things, their backend shutdown the Braves on Sunday with Junichi Tazawa and Brad Ziegler closing it out in the eighth and ninth respectively. It worked Sunday, but without A.J. Ramos, everyone has been bumped up a spot, sliding the 6.30 ERA—heading into Sunday—of Ziegler in the closer’s role.
What once was a weakness for Washington regardless of matchup is now a strength in this series.
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