{"id":14393,"date":"2017-09-18T09:27:59","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T13:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=14393"},"modified":"2017-09-18T09:30:30","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T13:30:30","slug":"so-what-did-we-learn-from-the-la-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=14393","title":{"rendered":"So what did we learn from the LA series?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4441\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/strasburgstephen_back-free-extras-allansgraphics.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4441\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4441\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4441\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/strasburgstephen_back-free-extras-allansgraphics-300x192.jpg\" alt=\"Strasburg is the man. Photo allansgraphics.com\" width=\"300\" height=\"192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/strasburgstephen_back-free-extras-allansgraphics-300x192.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/strasburgstephen_back-free-extras-allansgraphics.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4441\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Strasburg is the man.<br \/>Photo allansgraphics.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>When you squinted at the possible pitching matchups for the big weekend series, I thought perhaps we&#8217;d at least get two decent match-ups. \u00a0Instead, We got the following thanks to the Nats &#8220;6-man rotation:&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Edwin Jackson<\/strong> vs <strong>Alex Wood<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>A.J. Cole<\/strong> vs <strong>Rich Hill<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Stephen Strasburg<\/strong> vs <strong>Hyun-Jin Ryu<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, that&#8217;s certainly not LA&#8217;s best (we missed both\u00a0<strong>Kershaw<\/strong> and\u00a0<strong>Darvish<\/strong>, who you&#8217;d have to say are their #1\/#2 right now), but we didn&#8217;t exactly throw our best either. \u00a0Jackson is a MLFA signing\/substitute #5 starter and Cole had a nifty 5.88 ERA in AAA and is our notional &#8220;6th starter&#8221; right now.<\/p>\n<p>Jackson got bombed, Cole leaked a couple of runs but the Nats could do nothing with Hill (one hit over five, a solo HR). \u00a0To their credit, there were no spring training split squad lineups this weekend, so maybe there&#8217;s a slight concern about &#8220;fatigue&#8221; in the offense as we wind down the season.<\/p>\n<p>What the Dodgers did get was a lovely tour of our bullpen, thanks \u00a0in no small part to Jackson&#8217;s 2 1\/3 inning outing friday. \u00a0So there&#8217;s that. \u00a0And to their credit the bullpen pitched amazingly. \u00a06 2\/3rds innings on friday giving up just 3 hits and 0 runs, 4-hitless innings on saturday, \u00a0Plus our standard 7\/8\/9 guys throwing three more shutout innings in the finale when our bats finally got going.<\/p>\n<p>So, here&#8217;s what I think we learned this weekend:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Roark will be the 4th starter in the playoffs<\/strong>: I think Jackson&#8217;s outing clearly took him out of any 4th starter conversation that might have remained. \u00a0I still think he&#8217;s a threat for the last bullpen arm, unless they decide to go with one extra lefty who can throw lots of innings in the form of\u00a0<strong>Matt Grace<\/strong>. \u00a0In the end it might just be matchup driven as we&#8217;ve discussed.<\/li>\n<li><strong>We need Harper back<\/strong>; we didn&#8217;t even face LA&#8217;s best and in a long series we get Kershaw twice plus whatever other shenanigans he does on short rest. \u00a0We scored 9 runs in 3 games &#8230; 7 of them against LA&#8217;s flailing bullpen.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Our offense struggles against good lefties<\/strong>: which is not good news, since we didn&#8217;t even face LA&#8217;s *best* lefty starter this past weekend.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Our bullpen is &#8230; solid<\/strong>: for all the angst it caused us in the first half of the year, this bullpen just *completely* shut down a stellar offense. \u00a0That&#8217;s great news for our chances in October.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Strasburg is better than Scherzer right now<\/strong>: great start last night; 3 hits and 1 run in 6 innings &#8230; and one of those &#8220;hits&#8221; was a ball that <strong>Taylor<\/strong> absolutely should have caught. \u00a0Not sure why that was not an E-8. \u00a0Nonetheless, you have to like the chances of a series where someone has to go against Scherzer\/Strasburg 4 times out of 7 games.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A LA-DC series will be epic<\/strong>, if we can get there. \u00a0We took 2 of 3 in their house and they returned the favor, with both sides not really getting their optimal lineups or rotations going for either series. \u00a0No such excuses if both teams can get to the NLCS (which, I might say, is no given &#8230; LA has a losing record against both its potential WC opponents and the Nats have never won a post-season series and are set to face the Cubs).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What are your thoughts?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you squinted at the possible pitching matchups for the big weekend series, I thought perhaps we&#8217;d at least get two decent match-ups. \u00a0Instead, We got the following thanks to the Nats &#8220;6-man rotation:&#8221; Edwin Jackson vs Alex Wood A.J. Cole vs Rich Hill Stephen Strasburg vs Hyun-Jin Ryu So, that&#8217;s certainly not LA&#8217;s best [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[17,1912,164,426,253,2018,1228,708,2773,38,77,300],"class_list":["post-14393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-aj-cole","tag-alex-wood","tag-bryce-harper","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-edwin-jackson","tag-hyun-jin-ryu","tag-matt-grace","tag-michael-taylor","tag-rich-hill","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-tanner-roark","tag-yu-darvish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14393","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=14393"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14402,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14393\/revisions\/14402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}