{"id":12973,"date":"2016-10-06T10:02:42","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T14:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12973"},"modified":"2016-10-06T10:02:42","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T14:02:42","slug":"nats-projected-starting-lineup-versus-kershaw-not-half-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12973","title":{"rendered":"Nats projected Starting lineup versus Kershaw: not half bad"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_7806\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/KershawClayton-unk-via-wiki.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7806\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7806\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7806\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/KershawClayton-unk-via-wiki.jpg\" alt=\"Kershaw is a daunting match-up. Photo via wiki.\" width=\"240\" height=\"257\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-7806\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kershaw is a daunting match-up. Photo via wiki.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I was emailing with\u00a0infrequent commenter &#8220;Old Man&#8221; (aka, my Dad)\u00a0about the upcoming game one match-up and I said something along the lines of, &#8220;Well the Nats are in trouble because their two most important hitters are both hurt and lefty.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Well, why go by biased observations when you can go to the stats? \u00a0Here&#8217;s the career stat lines for each of our projected game 1 starters against\u00a0<strong>Clayton Kershaw<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Harper<\/strong>: 1 for 15; ok, that&#8217;s not good.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Murphy<\/strong>: 6 for 19 with 2 homers; not bad, .316 avg, .947 OPS<\/li>\n<li><strong>Werth<\/strong>: 10 for 35 for a .286\/.359\/.457 line. \u00a0not bad again<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rendon<\/strong>: 5 for 16; .313 but they are all singles; no power.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Espinosa<\/strong>: 1 for 17; no surprise there<\/li>\n<li><strong>Zimmerman<\/strong>: 7 for 22 but with no power for .318<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lobaton<\/strong>; 0 for 8; again, no surprise.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Turner<\/strong>: never faced Kershaw but his career lefty split shows consistent average versus his Righty split but significantly less power; 13 of his 14 career homers have come against righties.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>So honestly; those aren&#8217;t half bad numbers against Kershaw all in all. \u00a0Murphy, Werth, Rendon and Zimmerman all about .300 against him. \u00a0Maybe you work your lineup differently as a result; maybe drop Harper down a bit and stack the top of the order with those who have had success:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>Turner, Werth, Rendon, Murphy, Zimmerman, Harper, Espinosa, Lobaton, Scherzer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>Also keep in mind:\u00a0Kershaw has a 4.59 post season ERA. \u00a0Its the playoffs: anything can happen. \u00a0Last year for example he gave up 3 runs in 6 2\/3rds in game one of the NLDS to take the loss then completely shut down the Mets in Game 4 on three days rest for the win &#8230; but the Mets did enough against the Dodger&#8217;s big two to take the series and move on.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Yeah its a tough match-up for the Nats, or anyone. \u00a0Kershaw shut them down in LA in June, giving up 1 run in 7. \u00a0Scherzer somehow missed the Dodgers in both their season series this year; funny how nobody points that fact out when they talk about how the Dodgers beat the Nats 5 of 6 this year. \u00a0The Nats used these 6 pitchers against the Dodgers: <strong>Petit, Roark, Ross<\/strong> in LA in June, then <strong>Lopez, Gonzalez and Strasburg<\/strong>\u00a0in DC. \u00a0 The one win? \u00a0Surprise; it was with lefty Gonzalez on the mound. \u00a0I won&#8217;t make too much of this, since the Dodgers used 15 different starters this year and its frankly amazing they still won 91 games. \u00a0That and the fact that the Nats missed their #3\u00a0<strong>Kenta Maeda<\/strong> in both series.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Still, I like our chances with those career match-up stats.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was emailing with\u00a0infrequent commenter &#8220;Old Man&#8221; (aka, my Dad)\u00a0about the upcoming game one match-up and I said something along the lines of, &#8220;Well the Nats are in trouble because their two most important hitters are both hurt and lefty.&#8221; Well, why go by biased observations when you can go to the stats? \u00a0Here&#8217;s the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036],"tags":[185,164,426,1859,135,385,115,2691,2239,1597,1037,1875,36,38,77,2426,2313],"class_list":["post-12973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post-season","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-bryce-harper","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-daniel-murphy","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-gio-gonzalez","tag-jayson-werth","tag-joe-ross","tag-jose-lobaton","tag-kenta-maeda","tag-max-scherzer","tag-reynaldo-lopez","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-tanner-roark","tag-trea-turner","tag-yusmeiro-petit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12973"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12976,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12973\/revisions\/12976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}