The Nats Thread

desmonds at bat there was far worse than bryces. the more of those i see from him the less i worry about losing him to free agency

then i remember the nats have no major league ready middle infield prospects and i change my mind again

gaaaaaaaaah wrote:
desmonds at bat there was far worse than bryces.

good point

espinosa to pinch hit with two outs in the 9th was an odd call.

frandsens not a great player but id trust him to at least hang in there and work a count and maybe make something happen to get that extremely productive span/rendon combo back up.

instead we got espinosa meekly hitting the first pitch he saw

schierholtz as a pinch hitter was a nice surprise

i was happy with strasburgs outing. he has a tendency to let situations get into his head (and as much as he and the nats would downplay it, his postseason debut was a big one) but he didnt seem to do that today. he was victimized by some well placed groundballs and that bunt laroche threw to second. not really strasburgs fault.

i expect a great outing from jordan tomorrow

my main concern remains that the Giants are postseason giants.. kind of like what I'm watching with the Cardinals right now… Kershaw who?

yup, experience is gonna be key

though funny you mention kershaw. watching this stl/la game right now and thinking of the shields/lster game, plus scherzer and verlander. strasburgs outing today was the most "ace-like" of the bunch. playoff baseball. you just cant predict it

i cant shake this impending giants/cards nlcs feeling :\

gaaaaaaaaah wrote:
strasburgs outing today was the most "ace-like" of the bunch. playoff baseball. you just cant predict it

Sure, if you discount other performances to meet your criteria:

STATS IP H R ER BB SO WHIP ERA
Peavy 5.2 2 0 0 3 3 0.88 0.00

STATS IP H R ER BB SO WHIP ERA
Strasburg 5.0 8 2 1 1 2 1.80 1.80

wasnt talking about peavy at all

just comparing strasburg today to the other big name pitchers of the playoffs so far

strasburg wasnt great but he wasnt bad either. he kept the nats more in the game than most #1 pitchers so far could claim.

peavy was great, obviously, but no one puts him in that tier of pitchers with kershaw, wainwright, etc

thats kidna my point

You included Verlander and said that only going 5 innings was Ace Like so I was confused.

He was barely in the top 4 starting performances today and isn't in the top 7 or 8 in the playoffs so far, but if it help you sleep well tonight, Strasburg was Ace Like. 

i never said that at all. notice the quotation marks around ace-like. im not even praising stephen (i explicitly said i dont think he was great today. maybe you missed that), just comparing his outing to other, costlier outings by big name pitchers so far. people talk about strasburg and whether or not he belongs in the conversation of the leagues aces so its more interesting to me to compare his playoff performance to kershaw, wainwright, scherzer, etc than jake peavy. go ahead and keep arguing whatever youre arguing though.

my point is for all the marquee billing big name pitching matchups get you never know in advance what the best postseason games will be. thats the fun of the whole thng

No ace, great 'pen.  That formula can work as well.  ;D

Drew Storen.  Wow.  Good guy.  Bad luck.

Shemp wrote:
Drew Storen.  Wow.  Good guy.  Bad luck.

he made his pitch. sandoval was just on it the whole time.

Seemed safe at the plate to me.  Even in slo-mo.

I think it could have gone either way but since they called out on the field it was tough to overturn

Of course it came down to a posey play at the plate

this is ugly.  sometimes an ump will give the corners of the plate, but rarely do you see such a narrow, long strike zone. 

that strike three to cabrera was a strike. weird strike zone tonight, but you cant take that pitch.

more importantly, this does not bode well for storens longterm future here. fair or not, all the progress hes made towards assuming the closers role is gone.

gaaaaaaaaah wrote:
that strike three to cabrera was a strike. weird strike zone tonight, but you cant take that pitch.

more importantly, this does not bode well for storens longterm future here. fair or not, all the progress hes made towards assuming the closers role is gone.

that 2-0 strike call on harper was bad.  cabrera's called strike three was close and you're right, he can't take that pitch. but his strike two is called a ball 99% of the time.  either way, they seem lost at the plate all day.

stevewizzle wrote:
that 2-0 strike call on harper was bad. but his strike two is called a ball 99% of the time.   either way, they seem lost at the plate all day.

agree with all of this

weird zone but tough to find sympathy for an offense thats missed this many chances so far. dont put the game in the umpires hands and youll have nothing to complain about. serious shades of 2012 with these guys right now. somethings gotta change and fast

rendon though, that guy is something else.

bottle shares>NLDS

Steve Wizzle we missed you tonight.