Washington Nationals: Five To Watch In Phillies Visit To D.C.
We give you five players to watch in this weekend’s series at Nats Park between the Washington Nationals and Philadelphia Phillies
The Washington Nationals (5-4) started off their six game homestand this week by taking two out of three from the St. Louis Cardinals. Their starting pitchers gave up six earned runs in the three games, but the story of the series was the offense.
Despite scoring only one run in Wednesday’s loss, the Nats offense scored 23 runs over the course of the three game series. Daniel Murphy was 6-for-15 in the series with a home run and five RBI’s and has had a hit in every game this year. Also, Adam Eaton and Ryan Zimmerman had six hits each.
Today, the Nats will start the final series of this homestand when they begin a three game set against the Philadelphia Phillies (3-6). Philadelphia won two of three against the Nats last week, but they lost all three games at home to the New York Mets earlier this week (outscored 23-11).
Pete Mackanin’s club won the final two games of their series against the Nats thanks to a 12 run first inning against Jeremy Guthrie and company last Saturday and a walk-off single by Cesar Hernandez against Koda Glover on Sunday.
Since that series, the Phillies have made a change at the closer spot. Joaquin Benoit is now the new closer after Jeanmar Gomez got demoted due to giving up the ninth inning home run to Zimmerman last week.
With the way both bullpens have fared this season, no late inning lead is safe. Coming into tonight, the Phillies and Nationals are both ranked in the bottom three in bullpen ERA (Phillies – 5.73 and Nationals – 6.75) and their relievers have combined to give up 21 home runs (Phillies 12, Nationals 9)
Before this series starts this afternoon, here are the players to watch on both teams and we give you all the broadcast information that you need.
Adam Eaton
With Trea Turner out of the lineup, Eaton is now the new leadoff hitter and he has flourished in that role. It shouldn’t come to anybody’s surprise that he is having success there since he was the leadoff hitter when he was with the Chicago White Sox.
In the four games that Eaton has hit in the leadoff spot, he is 7-for-17 (.421 average) with four RBI’s, two walks, and a .450 on-base percentage. He had good success against the Cardinals this past series as he went 6-for-13 with three runs scored and four RBI’s.
If Eaton can keep this success up over the next week, no one should be shocked if Dusty Baker decides to keep him in the leadoff spot and move Turner down to the number two spot. If anything, Eaton should at least stay in the top two of the order going forward.
One of the things Eaton does well for this team is his ability to take pitches and work the count, something the Nats didn’t do on Wednesday against Mike Leake. He is averaging 3.85 pitches per plate appearance out of the leadoff spot and 4.21 pitches per plate appearance overall.
As far as drawing walks goes, Eaton has eight walks this season, which is one behind the league lead that is shared by six others, including one of his teammates (Bryce Harper).
While Eaton has yet to be aggressive on the basepaths (two stolen bases), he has done everything the Nats could’ve possibly asked him to do in the first nine games of the season.
Howie Kendrick
Early on in the offseason, the Phillies acquired Kendrick from the Los Angeles Dodgers for Darin Ruf and Darnell Sweeney. It’s only nine games, but Philadelphia has won that trade in the early stages of the season.
The 33-year-old left fielder is hitting .355 with five RBI’s, four walks, and has a .429 on-base percentage in the first eight games of the season. All five of those RBI’s came against the Washington Nationals last weekend (6-for-13).
True, three of those RBi’s came against Jeremy Guthrie in the blowout win last Saturday. However, he also had a RBI double in the series finale against Stephen Strasburg and he had a double against Max Scherzer.
Since Kendrick was with the Angels, he has been a nightmare for opposing pitchers. He doesn’t have much power, but he finds a way to get on base on a consistent level. He sees about four pitches per plate appearance and is tied for second on the team in walks.
With Kendrick in the number two spot in their lineup, it allows Philadelphia to give more run scoring opportunities to Maikel Franco and Odubel Herrera because Kendrick has the ability to get the productive out and move runners over.
Kendrick is in the final year of his deal. If the Phillies are out of it, the team could always trade him at the deadline and get something for him that helps the organization long term. But, in the short term, the veteran left fielder is off to a strong start.
Tanner Roark
It’s been a mixed bag of results for Roark in the first two games of the season, but the record shows that he is a 2-0 pitcher. Against the Cardinals last Monday, he went five innings, gave up five runs (three earned) on seven hits, and struck out three on 104 pitches (70 strikes).
Roark showed good command of his pitches, but one of the problems he had was that he was elevating his fastball. With that being said, he still had the same number of groundball outs (nine) as his first start against the Miami Marlins.
If it wasn’t for a great play by Stephen Drew in the fifth inning, Roark wouldn’t even have to finished the inning. However, he wasn’t helped out much by a defense that made four errors in the ball game.
With the offense on a tear of late, Roark has benefited from plenty of run support (20 total runs in two games). Now, he makes his third straight home start tomorrow against a team he’s very familiar with.
In five starts against the Phillies last season, Roark was dominant as he went 3-0 with a 0.79 ERA (three runs allowed in 34 innings) and held the Phillies to a .196 average at the plate with one home run (Freddy Galvis). Three of those five starts were at Nats Park (one run allowed in 20 innings).
He has a tough opponent in Jeremy Hellickson, who shut down the Nats last Sunday before leaving the game after the fifth inning due to injury. If Hellickson has that same form tomorrow afternoon, then the fans at Nats Park are in for a good pitcher’s duel.
Jerad Eickhoff
Eickhoff doesn’t have a win in his first two starts, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t pitched well enough to get one. He pitched into the seventh inning in both of those games and has given up a total of three earned runs.
Against the Mets on Monday, the 26-year-old right-hander went seven innings, gave up one earned run on three hits, struck out seven, and walked four on 94 pitches in the no-decision. The four walks are high, but he had another number on his stat line that was higher than normal.
During that outing, Eickhoff allowed 13 flyball outs and had just three groundball outs. The Mets are a team that can hit a lot of home runs so it is surprising he didn’t give up more runs than he did. If the Nats can get enough flyballs into the air on Sunday, they could have more success than the Mets did.
On the Phillies staff last year, Eickhoff threw the most innings (88.1) and strikeouts (73) of any pitcher in the Philadelphia rotation in the second half of the year.
As for his numbers against the Nats last season, Eickhoff made two starts and had a 2.25 ERA (0-1 record). Adam Eaton was 3-for-6 against him last year with a home run and Jayson Werth is 2-for-6 with a home run and two RBI’s.
In both of those starts, the Phillies gave him minimal run support as they scored a total of two runs. Considering Gio Gonzalez only gave up four runs in four starts against the Phillies last year, it wouldn’t surprise me if the lack of run support continued for Eickhoff this weekend.
Daniel Murphy
After the lack of playing time Murphy had in the World Baseball Classic, no one expected that he would have as great as a start as he has had. But, if you think back to the success he had in the NLDS against Los Angeles, it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.
Murphy enters this weekend’s series on a nine game hitting streak and has had six multi-hit games. He is hitting .450 with two home runs and nine RBI’s and is coming off of an excellent series against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Against the Phillies last weekend, Murphy was 6-for-12 with three doubles and a home run, which he had in the series opener against Vince Velasquez. We all talk about Murphy’s success against the Mets, but check out his numbers against the Phillies since last season.
In 2016, he hit .319 with two home runs and ten RBI’s. Out of his 22 hits, 12 of them were for extra bases and ten of them were doubles. He has been a doubles machine this season as his five doubles are tied with Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner for the most in the National League.
It’s become routine to watch Murphy get a hit nearly every game, but it’s amazing to see the production he is putting up without many spring at-bats. He was our player of the week last week and he has a good case to win that award again for the second consecutive week.
Where To Watch/Listen/Stream
Here are the three pitching matchups for this weekend’s series at Nats Park:
Today: Aaron Nola (1-0, 4.50 ERA) vs. Stephen Strasburg (1-0, 3.21) – 4:05 p.m ET, broadcast on MASN
Tomorrow: Jeremy Hellickson (1-0, 0.90) vs. Tanner Roark (2-0, 4.09) – 1:05 p.m, MASN2/WUSA9/MLB Network
Sunday: Jerad Eickhoff (0-1, 2.63) vs. Gio Gonzalez (1-0, 0.69) – 1:35 p.m, MASN2/WUSA9/MLB Network
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You can listen to all three games on 106.7 The Fan with Charlie Slowes and Dave Jaegler on the call. As far as the TV announcers, Bob Carpenter and F.P. Santangelo will break it down on MASN, MASN2, and WUSA9, depending on what day it is. Of course, if you are not in the D.C. area, you can watch the game on MLB.TV (paid subscription required)
If you are in the Philadelphia area, you can watch all three games on CSN with Tom McCarthy on the play-by-play.
After the game, be sure to head over to our Youtube channel where co-editor Ron Juckett will be hosting the postgame shows for all three games. He will also be live tweeting each game via our Twitter account (@DistrictOnDeck).
We want to hear from you, so send your questions or comments on the game that day to us so that we could read them on air.
Next: Takeaways From The Cardinals Home Series
Also, if you have a prediction on the series itself, send it to us in our comments section below this article.