The Nationals are in an unusual spot at this years deadline: they are in first.
A bat to help solidify the offense and a starting pitcher to fill in when Stephen Strasburg is shut down would be good pickups, but there is no move that the Nats just HAVE to make before the trade deadline.
John Lannan was supposed to be the fifth starter in the rotation for the Nationals this season. Davey Johnson changed his mind last minute, giving the spot to Ross Detwiler. That left Lannan to twiddle his thumbs in AAA…until now.
According to Mark Zuckerman, Lannan will return to the Nats for a start on Saturday. However, with Stephen Strasburg on an innings limit and Chien-Ming Wang’s health what it is, we could see Lannan on a regular basis down the road.
Just when the Nats won’t want him.
Rumors say the Nats are shopping for another starter, something they seem to have an abundance of already. But when Strasburg is inevitably shut down, they will need another arm, and the options they have aren’t great.
Barring a trade and a remarkable health turnaround for Wang, the Nats could turn to two main sources: Lannan or Tom Gorzelanny. Yeah, that’s the situation we’re dealing with.
Coming into the 2012 season, there was something the Nationals were used to having to deal with: expectations.
With big off season moves, the impending debut of Bryce Harper, and the momentum the Nats took into the off season at the end of 2011, everyone was expecting an improvement. To say anyone expected the Nats being in first place at the All-Star Break (and having been in that position most of the year) would be crazy.
Yet that’s where we stand. The Nats are not only first in the NL East, but they have the best record in the National League at the halfway point of the season. Here’s a look at what the top stories of 2012 have been.
We’ve been saying it over and over this season: the Nationals’ pitching has been superb, and the only thing standing in the way of dominance is the inconsistency of the offense. Well, after sweeping a series against the top 3 Giants starters, coming back twice, that time may have come.
The Nationals scored a combined 24 runs against the Giants over the three games. In game two, they went down 3-0 in the first before roaring back to a 9-4 victory. Last night, during throwback night, they rallied from a 5-1 deficit to walk-off with a 6-5 victory, courtesy of clutch hitting by Bryce Harper and Adam LaRoche.
This series changed the book on the Nats. Earlier in the season, opponents could take comfort in the fact that if they got the Nats down a few runs early, they wouldn’t be able to come back. They used to be the Lindsay Lohan of the league, but now they are closer to J. Lo’s revived music career.
I thought that the Nats were going to have some All-Star candidates with potential, but I honestly didn’t think that Ian Desmond would be one of them. His mistakes and inconsistencies of the past seemed to not be going away.
But this year, that has all changed. Desmond has been a huge steadying force at the plate, and has impacted the Nats positively all year.
Desmond leads the National League shortstops with 37 extra-base hits, with a .302 batting average in June. In the last 11 games, Desmond has had 11 extra base hits.
The realities of the All-Star Game may play against him (which is weird for the Nationals). Mainly, every team has to be represented, and it is a solid bet that Stephen Strasburg and.or Gio Gonzalez will be going to the game. They have both been superb this year.
This was a pretty hotly anticipated series. Nats fans wanted to see how this team stacked up against the cream of the baseball crop, hoping that recent success would carry them through another series against a top team.
That didn’t happen.
Although the Nats have done very well against the Yankees in recent years when the team wasn’t doing so great overall, this year was different. The Nats have developed their talent, but there is a difference between having talent and knowing how to win, and that is what this weekend came down to.
The Nats can take away a few lessons from this series:
1) Talent isn’t always enough
Leaving men on base, misjudging how to play a certain ball at a certain time, deciding when to use which pitchers…all of these little things add up to runs. The Nats lost this series on the little things, and looked out of their league doing it.
However, they are all problems that can be fixed. Now that the talent is developed, there is time to mold it into what will become a winner. The Nats are new to winning, and once they get a handle on it, they won’t have performances like this.
Moore had 2 HR and 5 RBI today against the Blue Jays
The Nats busted out the brooms in Toronto this afternoon, sweeping the Blue Jays and continuing their dominance in interleague play against the AL East. They are now 15 games over .500 and have a 4 game lead in the NL East.
There are many reasons the Nats are clicking right now. Starting pitching continues to be superb of course, but what has made the difference is the offense.
Remember how everyone hated Bryce Harper because he ran his mouth without backing it up? Well he has spent the last few weeks backing it up. His average is over .300 and while he isn’t hitting home runs every day, he has been more consistent than many of the veterans at the plate.
While the return of Michael Morse helped, what made the difference in Toronto was rookie play. Between Harper, Steve Lombardozzi, and Tyler Moore, the newest Nats went 13-30 with a walk, 3 doubles, 3 home runs, 7 runs scored and 7 RBI.
The injuries for the Nats have gotten so out of control, particularly at catcher, that they have to go deep still into the organization to find a replacement. Enter TV broadcast color analyst F.P. Santangelo and a crazy fly ball that darted toward the press box in yesterday’s series finale with the Red Sox.
You know it can be bad when broadcasters are involved, but this was actually not nearly as awkward as you would expect. MLB,com has the whole thing on video.
Hey, maybe it brought the Nats what they needed to complete the sweep of the Red Sox.
With Ian Desmond on the DL, Corey Brown has been promoted from AAA-Syracuse. Here are some snippets to get familiar with the new guy.
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