{"id":12977,"date":"2016-10-08T08:26:38","date_gmt":"2016-10-08T12:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12977"},"modified":"2016-10-08T08:27:17","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T12:27:17","slug":"quick-nlds-game-1-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12977","title":{"rendered":"Quick NLDS Game 1 thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rendon<\/a>

Rendon came to play. Photo Nats Official via espn.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Nats lose 4-3<\/a> … but showed some promise\u00a0in the process.<\/p>\n

The offense battered\u00a0Clayton Kershaw<\/strong> for 8 hits in 5 innings but only parlayed them into 3 runs thanks to some untimely strikeouts. \u00a0Kershaw to me really struggled; pitch count way up, was missing locations badly, couldn’t throw his slider at all. \u00a0\u00a0Max Scherzer<\/strong> seemed similarly off; the difference in the game turned out to be more of Scherzer’s mistakes ending up over the fence while Kershaw’s mistakes ended up as line drives through the infield. \u00a0I guess maybe that’s as good of a summary of the talent difference between these two guys as any.<\/p>\n

You had to hand it to the nats hitters: Harper had good ABs, Turner had a clutch sac-fly in a key RBI situation, Zimmerman did not look overmatched at all. \u00a0Rendon continued to look like the under-rated team MVP candidate that he has looked like all year. \u00a0Severino; man have we already found our 2016 starting catcher?<\/p>\n

Espinosa? \u00a0Yeah not so much; 0-3 with 3 strikeouts and 6 runners left on base. \u00a0That’s your game right there; not one clutch hit, not even one ball put in play from Espinosa.<\/p>\n

I feel a lot better about the team’s chances in Game 2; when they went down 4-0 early they didn’t hang their heads; they fought back and were one clutch hit away from tying the game on numerous occasions. \u00a0 As a team they were 1-10 with RISP; a common refrain for “clutchness” that we’ve talked about often. \u00a0But in reality, that’s just bad luck; if the team BA is nearly .300 then a 1-10 line is just bad timing.<\/p>\n

If it doesn’t rain that is …. I will be at the game, hopefully.<\/p>\n

PS: fun local connection for me personally; the loogy that hte Dodgers brought in to face Harper in the 6th? \u00a0Yeah that was\u00a0Grant Dayton<\/strong>. \u00a0Dayton played for my dad’s Clark Griffith team 8-9 years ago and we brought him out to \u00a0play for my adult MSBL team a few times. \u00a0 He even pitched for us (though he wasn’t throwing frigging 93 like he was last night back then). \u00a0Great kid, really nice guy and really cool to see him finally break through this year and reach the majors after a very long minor league career. \u00a0Too bad he did his job too well and shut down Harper \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nats lose 4-3 … but showed some promise\u00a0in the process. The offense battered\u00a0Clayton Kershaw for 8 hits in 5 innings but only parlayed them into 3 runs thanks to some untimely strikeouts. \u00a0Kershaw to me really struggled; pitch count way up, was missing locations badly, couldn’t throw his slider at all. \u00a0\u00a0Max Scherzer seemed similarly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2036],"tags":[185,164,426,135,3318,1037,2000,36,2426],"class_list":["post-12977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","category-post-season","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-bryce-harper","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-grant-dayton","tag-max-scherzer","tag-pedro-severino","tag-ryan-zimmerman","tag-trea-turner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12977","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=12977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12978,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12977\/revisions\/12978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}