{"id":870,"date":"2011-03-27T14:35:01","date_gmt":"2011-03-27T18:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=870"},"modified":"2011-03-27T14:35:01","modified_gmt":"2011-03-27T18:35:01","slug":"spring-training-games-week-4-nats-pitcher-goodbadinconclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=870","title":{"rendered":"Spring Training Games Week 4: Nats Pitcher good\/bad\/inconclusive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Week 4 is &#8220;moving week.&#8221;\u00a0 Management will soon need to make all the decisions on who makes this team, and the candidates need to make statements in their appearances this week.\u00a0 Bullpen members, Center Field, backup outfielders and backup infielders seem to be the four competitions yet to really be decided upon.<\/p>\n<p>As with the previous 3 weeks, here&#8217;s links to Kilgore&#8217;s running game-day blogs (when he does them), Bill Ladson&#8217;s game wrap-ups and the official box score on mlb.com.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>3\/20: vs Tigers (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/nationals-journal\/post\/spring-training-live-blog-nationals-vs-tigers\/2011\/03\/20\/ABdqSg1_blog.html\">running blog<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/article.jsp?ymd=20110320&amp;content_id=17034062&amp;vkey=recap&amp;fext=.jsp&amp;c_id=was\">gamer<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/boxscore.jsp?gid=2011_03_20_detmlb_wasmlb_1\">box score<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>3\/21: at Cardinals (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/nationals-journal\/post\/spring_training_live_blog_nationals_at_cardinals\/2011\/03\/21\/ABmO4M7_blog.html?wprss=nationals-journal\">running blog<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/article.jsp?ymd=20110321&amp;content_id=17047484&amp;vkey=recap&amp;fext=.jsp&amp;c_id=was\">gamer<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/boxscore.jsp?gid=2011_03_21_wasmlb_slnmlb_1\">box score<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>3\/22: vs Astros (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/nationals-journal\/post\/spring_training_live_blog_astros_at_nationals\/2011\/03\/22\/ABNAwbDB_blog.html?wprss=nationals-journal\">running blog<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/article.jsp?ymd=20110322&amp;content_id=17071664&amp;vkey=recap&amp;fext=.jsp&amp;c_id=was\">gamer<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/boxscore.jsp?gid=2011_03_22_houmlb_wasmlb_1\">box score<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>3\/23: off day<\/li>\n<li>3\/24: at Tigers (running blog\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/article.jsp?ymd=20110324&amp;content_id=17098144&amp;vkey=recap&amp;fext=.jsp&amp;c_id=was\">gamer<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/boxscore.jsp?gid=2011_03_24_wasmlb_detmlb_1\">box score<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>3\/25: vs Cardinals (running blog\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/article.jsp?ymd=20110325&amp;content_id=17116342&amp;vkey=recap&amp;fext=.jsp&amp;c_id=was\">gamer<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/boxscore.jsp?gid=2011_03_25_slnmlb_wasmlb_1\">box score<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>3\/26: at Astros (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/nationals-journal\/post\/spring_training_live_blog_nationals_at_astros\/2011\/03\/26\/AFwPjwcB_blog.html?wprss=nationals-journal\">running blog<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/article.jsp?ymd=20110326&amp;content_id=17128832&amp;vkey=recap&amp;fext=.jsp&amp;c_id=was\">gamer<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.nationals.mlb.com\/news\/boxscore.jsp?gid=2011_03_26_wasmlb_houmlb_1\">box score<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Good<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Tom Gorzelanny<\/strong>: Pitched effectively on 3\/20, 5 IP, 2 ER, 4 H, 2 BB, 3 K, 84 pitches, 47 strikes.\u00a0 The 2 runs were on a wind-aided homer that wasn&#8217;t that bad of a pitch.\u00a0 Gorzelanny needed 84 pitches to complete 5 innings but he threw a LOT of balls.\u00a0 He was getting squeezed (on one of the BBs he clearly had him for strike 3) by the umpire and he was more effective than his line shows.\u00a0 One area of concern though is velocity; the MASN broadcast only had him in the upper 80s on his fastballs.\u00a0 He followed this up with a similarly good 3\/25 performance vs the Cards: 6ip with only 77 pitches, 4 hits and a walk, getting 5Ks.\u00a0 Perhaps my earlier concerns about him will be proven unfounded.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Brian Broderick<\/strong>: seems to have effectively won his spot in the bullpen by continuing his nearly scoreless spring training.\u00a0 He could be a major find for this team.\u00a0 The more interesting question becomes this, &#8220;who makes way?&#8221;\u00a0 Because we&#8217;re also hearing that <strong>Chad Gaudin<\/strong> is making this team too, meaning that TWO guys who were favorites to make this team at the beginning of spring training are heading to Syracuse.<\/li>\n<li><strong>John Lannan<\/strong>: a great start on 3\/22 (albeit against the weak Astros) puts him in line to be our #2 starter when camp breaks.\u00a0 Final line: 6IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 3 K&#8217;s, 66 pitches, 42 for strikes.\u00a0 66 pitches for 6 complete innings is fantastic, even against the awful Astros.\u00a0 Lets hope we&#8217;re getting the post-minor league banishment version of Lannan (6-3 record with a 3.42 era and 1.24 whip in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/gl.cgi?id=lannajo01&amp;t=p&amp;year=2010\">10 games after returning<\/a>) versus his first 14 games of 2010 (2-5, 5.76 era and 1.85 whip).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Colin Balester<\/strong> continues to prove he belongs by throwing great middle relief.\u00a0 He may lose out in the options dance come April 1st, but he should force his way back to Washington.\u00a0 Kilgore described his curves as &#8220;untouchable&#8221; on 3\/22 and says he&#8217;s easily one of the 7 best relievers in camp.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jordan Zimmermann<\/strong>: his 3\/24 start was pretty good; 5 scoreless innings, giving up 5 hits and a walk, striking out 6.\u00a0 He only needed 90 pitches through 5 and his fastball was sitting 94, reaching 96 (despite what the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsenquirer.com\/2011\/03\/jordan-zimmermann-fastball-radar-gun-spring.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FTheNationalsEnquirer+%28The+Nationals+Enquirer%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader\">stadium radar gun was showing on TV<\/a>&#8230;).\u00a0 He looks like he&#8217;s slotting into the #3 starter role.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Bad<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Stammen<\/strong>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/nationals-journal\/post\/nationals-option-jesus-flores-and-craig-stammen-to-syracuse\/2011\/03\/24\/ABNfxwPB_blog.html\">optioned on 3\/25<\/a> as expected.\u00a0 I say this is &#8220;bad&#8221; because I feel Stammen is better than he&#8217;s shown.\u00a0 His fip and xfip last year were 2nd best on the team to Strasburg (whose advanced numbers, by the way, were the best in the league by a fair margin for starters).\u00a0 I think he can still be an effective back-of-the-rotation starter in the majors.\u00a0 Now it seems he&#8217;s being converted to middle-relief and will enter a very jumbled mix of players in the AAA bullpen competition.\u00a0 He may very well be out of a job before we know it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Concerning<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Most of the Bullpen<\/strong>: As Zuckerman notes <a href=\"http:\/\/natsinsider.blogspot.com\/2011\/03\/home-stretch.html\">here on NatsInsider<\/a>, our supposed strength is turning into a scary liability.\u00a0 <strong>Clippard<\/strong>, <strong>Coffey<\/strong>, and <strong>Storen<\/strong> all pitched 3\/20, all three looked less than stellar and all three now  have spring ERAs that would not merit their 25-man roster spots.\u00a0 Storen  picked in up on 3\/22 with a nice 1-2-3 9th and followed it up with a really nice 1-2-3 9th on 3\/25.\u00a0 Clippard rebounded on 3\/24 but Coffey did not.\u00a0 Perhaps Coffey will be our 2011 version of <strong>Brian Bruney<\/strong>, a veteran reliever on a reasonable contract who gets cut very quickly into the season.\u00a0 We&#8217;ll see.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Livan Hernandez<\/strong>: 5 ip, 6 h, 2 er, 3 bb, 1 k, 83 pitches, 50 strikes outing on 3\/21 against the STL varsity.\u00a0 Zuckerman described it as a solid outing and that Livan faded a bit late.\u00a0 He only threw 5 innings and he was fading!?\u00a0 I know that this is what we get out of Livan generally; lots of baserunners and him pitching out of jams based on guile and experience.\u00a0 But I&#8217;d like to see a bit more competence from our opening day starter.\u00a0 He threw again on 3\/26 and was efficient in 4 innings but left due to a neck issue (from sleeping on it wrong).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Week 4 is &#8220;moving week.&#8221;\u00a0 Management will soon need to make all the decisions on who makes this team, and the candidates need to make statements in their appearances this week.\u00a0 Bullpen members, Center Field, backup outfielders and backup infielders seem to be the four competitions yet to really be decided upon. As with 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":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","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=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":919,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions\/919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}