The Nationals plan to keep A.J. Cole and have him start Saturday night against the Rockies, but manager Dusty Baker said that plan remains tentative and Lucas Giolito will be available to rejoin the big league rotation this weekend if needed.
Pressed into emergency duties Monday when Stephen Strasburg had to be placed on the disabled list with a sore elbow, Cole impressed in only his second career big league start, going seven innings in a 4-3 loss to the Orioles. That performance appears to...
The Beltways Series has moved down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway - has anyone ever pointed out you don't need to take either town's beltway to drive from one ballpark to the other? - for the next two nights. The Nationals can only hope the results improve from the last two nights at Camden Yards.
The good news: Tanner Roark and Max Scherzer take the mound for these two games against Wade Miley and Ubaldo Jimenez (filling in Thursday for the injured Chris Tillman). Whether the Nationals can...
Manager Dusty Baker opted to give center fielder Ben Revere the night off in Baltimore on Tuesday. Revere has struggled, hitting .186 (18-for-97) in his last 30 games, with one homer, seven RBIs and nine strikeouts.
Revere has not played as much recently with the addition of Trea Turner and his introduction to center field. His on-base percentage is just .259 this season, well off his career mark of .321.
But Baker said the Nationals need Revere to get more consistent and he will be valuable as...
Left-hander Sammy Solis has been on the disabled list since with left shoulder inflammation since Aug.16. Before today's game, he was in the Nationals clubhouse preparing for another workout.
Solis confirmed that he initially felt soreness in his shoulder after earning the win in a 5-4 victory over the Rockies on Aug. 15. Solis (2-3) notched the victory by pitching one inning, scattering two hits and allowing no runs. He gave up back-to-back singles to DJ LeMahieu and Carlos Gonzalez, but then...
BALTIMORE - The Nationals have spent the better part of a week trying to get their bullpen back in order. Just when it looked they had done it, they were forced to cobble together yet another game Tuesday night, needing 5 1/3 innings from their relief corps after starter Reynaldo Lopez was bumped early.
It could have been a lot worse, though. Matt Belisle (three innings), Oliver Perez (one inning) and Yusmeiro Petit (1 1/3 innings) joined forces to get the staff through what wound up an 8-1...
The Nationals bullpen has been overused the last week, thanks to short stints from starting pitchers. However, since the addition of Mark Melancon, most of the title-worthy roles appear to have stabilized in the 'pen. Except one spot seems to be missing, and it's a need they must address.
Melancon is, of course, the closer. Shawn Kelley seems to have nabbed the role of setup man. Since the beginning of July, he's only given up four earned runs in 20 appearances, held opponents to a .269...
BALTIMORE - Center fielder Trea Turner continues to impact every game he plays at the big league level, and has pretty much erased one of the Nationals' early season weaknesses.
Turner went 4-for-4 in an 8-1 loss to the Orioles. The four hits, three singles and a double, were a career-high. The top of the order is generating offense again, thanks to Turner.
But the offense was never able to really get rolling Tuesday due in part to a pair of calls that went against the speedster.
Turner was...
BALTIMORE - There's no denying Reynaldo Lopez's electric stuff, and that stuff's ability to be successful against big league hitters.
But at the moment, there's also no denying Lopez's inability to have success against anybody other than the worst team in baseball.
The Nationals rookie has now made five major league starts. He's 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA against the Braves, a team currently on pace to lose 104 games. And he's 0-2 with a 10.32 ERA against the Dodgers, Giants and Orioles, all...
BALTIMORE - Apparently, the only way Trea Turner can be called out trying to steal a base is via slow motion replay.
Turner twice tonight has had stolen bases wiped out by replay challenges, a pair of disappointing outs that have contributed to snuffing out potential Nationals rallies and helped leave them in an early deficit against the Orioles.
Turner led off the game with an infield single against Kevin Gausman and then stole second, setting the table nicely for the Nationals out of the...
BALTIMORE - Joe Ross threw off a bullpen mound today, the right-hander's first such throwing session in three weeks, and finally appears ready to ramp up his rehab in an attempt to rejoin the Nationals' rotation for the stretch run.
Ross, out since July 3 with right shoulder inflammation, threw roughly 25-to-30 pitches off the mound in the visitors' bullpen at Camden Yards this afternoon and was admittedly "excited" about how things went.
"It feels really good. That's why I'm pretty...
BALTIMORE - Despite the loss to the Orioles on Monday, Ryan Zimmerman and Daniel Murphy praised right-hander A.J. Cole for his career-high seven innings that kept the Nationals in the ball game. The Nats lost 4-3, but Cole helped give the team's taxed bullpen a day of rest it desperately needed in the midst a stretch that features 20 games without an off day.
Manager Dusty Baker hopes that 22-year-old Reynaldo Lopez is capable of seven innings as well. That would allow the relievers one more...
BALTIMORE - A rough start for Nationals right-hander Reynaldo Lopez in an 8-1 setback to the Orioles.
Lopez could not get through the third inning, as Baltimore scored six runs early to hand the Nationals their third straight loss.
The Orioles scored three runs on four hits in the first two innings, racing out to a 3-0 advantage. Mark Trumbo and Adam Jones smacked RBI singles, while Matt Wieters laced a run-scoring single down the right field line. Lopez walked a batter and allowed two hits in...
BALTIMORE - It's another beautiful day here at Camden Yards, a far cry from the heat and humidity everyone has been dealing with for weeks. The Nationals and Orioles return for the second of their four head-to-head games this week, the Nats needing a win tonight to even up the series after last night's 4-3 loss.
Reynaldo Lopez gets the start, and if the rookie pitches anything like he did his last two times out, the Nationals will like their chances. Those starts, of course, both came against...
The Beltway Series is a special time of the baseball season for the DMV area. No other area in all of sports has as unique a situation as we do with the Nationals and Orioles in terms of the history (or lack thereof) and the fan bases.
So with a special series comes a special podcast as Byron Kerr and I welcome Brian Eller, co-host of the Yard Work podcast with MASNsports.com's Orioles writer Steve Melewski, to a crossover episode of District 34.
To begin, we look back at the O's 4-3 win over...
BALTIMORE - It's been a long summer for Danny Espinosa, one that began with perhaps the best sustained stretch of his career but then devolved into another prolonged slump that made the earlier success feel like ancient history.
Back on July 3, the Nationals shortstop was in the middle of what must have felt like a dream: A weekend series against the Reds that included five homers, 15 RBIs and as much goodwill as Espinosa had received in a long time.
That was the last time he homered. Until...
Last night, situational hitting once again was a focus by the discerning eye as to why the Nationals offense sputtered. The lack of execution in productive outs, and hitting with runners in scoring position was beyond poor. In fact the RISP hitting finished at 1-for-9 and there were no productive outs made in the game by the Nationals, even though three times they had a leadoff man on second base and no outs to start an inning.
We saw it right from the beginning of the game when Trea Turner...
BALTIMORE - The opener between the Nationals and the Orioles slowed down a bit after Baltimore jumped out to a 4-2 lead after four innings.
Danny Espinosa inched the Nationals closer with a solo shot in the seventh to cut the lead to 4-3 Orioles.
Then in the eighth, the Nationals looked to accomplish something that has been difficult for many teams this season: try to find a way to solve right-hander Brad Brach.
Daniel Murphy led off the inning with a double versus Orioles left-hander Donnie...
BALTIMORE - Nationals manager Dusty Baker spoke of the importance of one-run games during postgame Monday following the 4-3 loss to the Orioles.
With the loss Monday, the Nationals are 19-15 (.559) in one-run games this season. Baker likened close games like last night's contest as similar to what you will encounter in a playoff series: Good pitching and crucial late game at-bats spelling the difference.
Baker hopes his team can deliver better in the clutch against good teams, because that's...
BALTIMORE - A.J. Cole didn't expect to be summoned to Atlanta on Thursday and be available to pitch for the Nationals out of the bullpen in case of emergency. So when his services weren't needed and he headed back north to Pawtucket, R.I., to rejoin Triple-A Syracuse, the right-hander figured he wouldn't be seeing a big league mound again for a while.
Baseball, of course, is a funny game. And so it was that Cole found himself tonight not in Pawtucket, not in Triple-A, but on the mound at...
The anticipated matchup between Nationals right-hander Stephen Strasburg and the Orioles' version, right-hander Dylan Bundy, didn't come to fruition Monday night.
Strasburg was placed on the disabled list for a second time this season due to right elbow soreness.
Turns out Bundy was up to the task, as he kept the Nationals at bay in an 4-3 Orioles victory.
The Nationals got to Bundy early. Trea Turner walked and stole second and then later came home on a RBI single by Daniel Murphy. In the...



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