Washington Nationals: 5 To watch in visit to Pittsburgh

Tanner Roark

Roark will get the start on a getaway day for the Nats. So far this season, he has not been what Washington Nationals fans had expected. One of the reasons for that is the amount of walks, which is uncharacteristic for the right-hander.

In his first eight starts of the season, Roark has walked two or more batters in six of them. Against the Phillies on Saturday, he was cruising for the first three innings, but he needed 37 pitches to finish the fourth and didn’t make it out of the fifth.

While Roark may only be missing out on strikes by a little bit, he needs to do a better job of adjusting to the strike zone that night. Against Philadelphia, he went away from his fastball and that ended up backfiring because the Phillies knew the offspeed was coming.

This season, Roark is averaging over 105 pitches per game and 18 pitches per inning. If he wants to have more success, he can’t have those long innings, which end up shortening his outings drastically. He hasn’t pitched past the sixth inning since April 21 against the New York Mets.

He doesn’t have much experience pitching against the Pirates (two relief outings in 2015), but he does have a favorable pitching matchup as he goes up against one of Pittsburgh’s top young pitchers, Tyler Glasnow.

Glasnow is only 23 years old, but the right-hander is coming off an outing in which he threw out 2.1 innings and gave up seven runs against the Diamondbacks on May 12. Plus, he has 21 walks this season (sixth in the National League) and has given up four home runs in his last three starts.

While Roark hasn’t been horrible, he hasn’t shown the same consistency this season as fans saw last season. If you had to rank the Washington Nationals starters so far out of the main four, Roark is probably fourth.