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District On Deck

Washington Nationals: Good, bad, and ugly from Marlins series

By James Simmons

Kyle Schwarber #12, Trea Turner #7 and Yadiel Hernandez #29 of the Washington Nationals celebrate after scoring in the fourth inning against the Miami Marlins at Nationals Park on May 01, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images)
Kyle Schwarber #12, Trea Turner #7 and Yadiel Hernandez #29 of the Washington Nationals celebrate after scoring in the fourth inning against the Miami Marlins at Nationals Park on May 01, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images) /
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The Nationals still need to improve on their base running.
Victor Robles #16 of the Washington Nationals is tagged out by Miguel Rojas #19 of the Miami Marlins he tries to steal second base during the fifth inning at Nationals Park on April 30, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images) /

The Bad

We’ve talked about the base running before, and it continues to be the achilles heel of the team. Remember when we were kids and we’d have runners on first and third. We’d run the guy on first to get him in a pickle to score the guy from third. Yeah, we get an out but we scored a run. It was a terrible strategy then, and it appears the Nationals are employing the same type of mindset now.

Victor Robles was caught stealing twice. Josh Harrison was thrown out trying for an extra base on a single. Thankfully the mistakes did not cost the Nationals in the win column, though they did run themselves out of an inning or two.

Starlin Castro was 2-12 over the weekend. He is a veteran presence and a stablaizer on the infield,  though his ineptitude of late with the bat has become concerning.

Several times this weekend the Nationals put a runner on third base with less than two outs. Several times they stranded that runner. I’m still looking for this statistic, though I’d have to imagine Castro leads the league in this category. Again, this didn’t hurt the Nationals over the weekend, however, against better teams the Nats have to take advantage of all scoring opportunities.

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