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

The Ugly

When a team struggles to hit home runs (the Nationals have hit more homers than just two teams in the Majors) they better make sure they can play small ball. We have already touched on the base running woes of the team, now we shine a spotlight on the bunting issues. Twice, pitchers had the opportunity to bunt a runner over. Twice, they failed.

We know pitchers practicing bunting before they hit in the cage each day. For this reason, Scherzer himself pitched with a black eye and broken nose a year ago. Until the designated hitter becomes an official entity in the National League, pitchers have to be able to bunt runners over.

In game one, the Nationals grounded into four double plays. No better way to kill a potential rally then a twin-killing. In a scoreless game, the Nats put runners at the corners in the sixth inning. Starlin Castro bounced into a double play (the second time in the game he failed to score a runner from third base with less than two outs). The following inning it was Alex Avila’s turn and in the eighth inning a leadoff runner was erased when Andrew Stevenson did the honors. Had Kyle Schwarber not come through with an extra inning bomb, we’d be looking at any of these opportunities where the Nats let a win slip away.

Brad Hand allowed a run. Not an earned run, but a run nonetheless. He inherited a guy at second base as per the extra inning rule. After a sacrifice bunt gave Hand the first out of the inning, he induced a ground ball out which froze the runner at third. He was close to stranding the runner before giving up a base hit. The run doesn’t count against his ERA, though the rule itself, definitely ugly.