Tonight, the Washington Nationals were scheduled to begin a three game series against the Baltimore Orioles at Nats Park. Instead, the start of Round two of the Beltway series has been put on hold due to rain. Tonight is now the final off day for the Nats in 2015 as they will be making up this game Thursday afternoon at 4:05 PM ET:
Tonight's #Nats - #Orioles game has been postponed. It will be made up on Thursday afternoon at 4:05 pm.
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) September 22, 2015
Matt Williams’ club also has to makeup a rained out game against the Cincinnati Reds on Monday afternoon at 3:05 PM ET at Nats Park. The final game of that Reds-Nationals series was rained out on July 8. The Orioles had the mutual off day as well and they will head up to Boston after the game Thursday afternoon to begin a series against the Red Sox on Friday.
As of right now, the Nats will have to hope for a Mets loss to gain a half game in the NL East. If the Mets were to beat the Braves tonight, Washington’s tragic number in the NL East would go down to seven.
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As for how the rotation will shake out for the Nats because of the rainout, the only guarantee that Williams would give in regard to this series is that Gio Gonzalez is going to pitch tomorrow night. After that, it remains a mystery:
As Chris Johnson of MASN pointed out, the team could go to Jordan Zimmermann Thursday afternoon. Zimmermann, who is on line to start Friday against the Phillies, last pitched on Saturday afternoon against the Marlins. He went six innings in that game, gave up two runs on six hits, struck out seven, and walked one on 95 pitches (63 strikes). Zimmermann made one start against the Orioles on July 10 and picked up the win despite giving up four runs in five innings of work.
The Nats’ right-hander is 2-3 with an ERA of 4.54 in six starts against the Orioles. The Nats are likely going to do anything they can to try to get their top three pitchers to face the Mets at Citi Field next weekend if the team is trailing New York by three games with three to play. However, they have just ten games to try to make up that ground as Washington is currently six games behind the Mets in the division.
When it comes to who Buck Showalter will send to the mound in this series, their starting pitchers will remain the same as Ubaldo Jimenez will face Gonzalez tomorrow, Chris Tillman will pitch Wednesday, and the rookie Tyler Wilson will start on Thursday afternoon.