44 games have passed since these two teams last faced off and it has been interesting to see one team basically takeoff and become a surprise and another team perform to their worst possible projection. If you had sent that sentence back to March, you’d say that it was the Giants who were the surprise. Instead, it’s the Nats.
They’re 23-21 since the Giants took 2 out of 3 from them in Washington while the Giants have gone 18-26. The Nats’ pitching hasn’t been the story of their season-long success
(#5 in MLB in hitting), but since they faced the Giants, they have a 4.11 ERA (14th) and 4.46 FIP compared to a 4.65 ERA (25th) and 4.45 FIP for the Giants. That might explain the entire season, even with the Giants’ terrible lineup performance for most of the year factored in.
Of course, over the past month (since May 8th), something very interesting has happened. The Giants have been the best lineup in baseball (.277/.331/.480 — 126 wRC+). The Nats have stayed right there with them at #4 (.246/.322/.447 — 115 wRC+), but let’s stick with the Giants. The Giants haven’t remade themselves so much as they’ve done better at what they’ve wanted to do. Their 6.5% walk rate as a team is close to what it’s been all year, along with the 19.9% strikeout rate. The .277 team batting average leads the sport by a wide margin (Pittsburgh is #2 at .262). It would appear that Buster Posey is successfully recreating the championship era (the Giants from 2010-2016: .258/.320/.392 — 7.8 BB%, 18.3 K%) where the lineup is concerned.
Should we talk about the pitching?
This is a stark battle between old school “Computers Bad” and new school “Computers Good and/or Necessary” where the Nationals have seemed to have done what Farhan Zaidi did when he took over the team: quickly maximize the talent through technology while the Giants are sort of stubbornly sticking to “throw talent into the deep end and see if it can swim.” The tough road trip that saw them do okay — and possibly become a more cohesive unit — might’ve planted the seeds for a more competitive summer, but the Giants also showed that they are deficient enough to be simply a bad team for the next 4 months rather than one of the worst teams ever fielded.
And, yes, it’s because of the pitching.
The Giants have a team ERA of 5.09 over the past month (27th in MLB). They have been the third-least valuable staff in the sport over that same span (+0.2 fWAR) behind just the Cubs (-0.4) and Reds (-0.8). In other words, the Giants haven’t been able to time solid pitching with an offensive streak that has gotten most of the roster back to their career averages or season projections.
The Nats, meanwhile, have been the sixth-worst over this same span and just good enough to not totally work against their lineup. On the other hand, we’ve seen the Giants’ lineup get healthy via some blowouts. There hasn’t been an equal distribution of runs over this span.
Now they return home with some confidence. Maybe that will help the Giants’ bats some more and maybe Oracle Park will be just what the beleaguered pitching staff needs to not be so terrible.
But if you had gone into the season thinking that a new front office would’ve figured out the situation for the Nationals faster than the Hall of Fame brain of Buster Posey and Zack Minasian, you would’ve been labeled a heretic.
Series overview
Who: San Francisco Giants (27-39) vs. Washington Nationals (33-33)
Where: Oracle Park | San Francisco, California
When: Monday & Tuesday at 6:45pm PT, Wednesday at 12:45pm PT
National broadcasts: None.
Projected starters
Monday: Miles Mikolas (RHP 1-5, 6.39 ERA) vs. Logan Webb (RHP 3-4, 4.25 ERA)
Tuesday: Andrew Alvarez (LHP 1-0, 3.54 ERA) vs. Adrian Houser (RHP 2-5, 5.49 ERA)
Wednesday: Foster Griffin (LHP 7-2, 3.63 ERA) vs. Robbie Ray (LHP 4-6, 4.12 ERA)
Players to watch
Nationals
CJ Abrams & James Wood: The two best position players on the Nats have effectively carried the team this season, including the past month (148 wRC+ and 173, respectively)
Foster Griffin:
Curtis Mead:
Giants
Rafael Devers: He’s sort of been forgotten in this Giants’ offensive outburst, and het he’s an important part of it. His 136 wRC+ over the last month is fourth-best amongst the regulars after Jung Hoo Lee (179), Willy Adames (161), and Bryce Eldridge (142). He’s hit for a bit more power at home on the season (.453 slug vs. .395 on the road), but the home/road split is where his season-long problem really shows up: 4 walks against 35 strikeouts. That’s nearly a 9:1 strikeouts to walk ratio. On the road, it’s 15 walks against 52 K (~3.5:1). The Nats’ 7.8 K/9 is 26th in MLB. Will Devers be able to make hard contact in the series?
Willy Adames: He’s slashing an abysmal .195/.288/.305 (.592 OPS) in 146 career PA against the Nationals. It’s his third-worst performance against a team he’s had at least 100 plate appearances against, behind the Phillies (.553) and Marlins (.537). But over the past month he’s hitting .302/.354/5.86 with 8 homers and 23 RBI. This feels like an immovable object versus the unstoppable force situation, but which is which where Adames is concerned?
Dylan Smith: He’s not not the closer now, given Tony Vitello’s determination that the bullpen shouldn’t have defined roles; but, on the other hand, the Giants did throw their ostensible closer Keaton Winn back-to-back days and 2.2 innings, so, he’s almost certainly unavailable for at least game 1 of this series.
Tony Vitello watch
It’s been a minute since he’s made a movie reference. Will he make one this weekend? People are returning to the theaters, not just because of mainstream fare like that Star Wars movie or Masters of the Universe, but also because of stuff like Obsession and Backrooms. Will he make a reference at all? If so, to something more current — or, something that he would’ve seen in a hotel room on a road trip back in the mid-aughts?
Prediction time
I had such a good time negatively predicting what would happen to the Giants against the Cubs that it feels right to keep those bad times rolling in this section. The Nationals are a remarkable 21-13 on the road this season with a +31 run differential. They took 2 out of 3 in Atlanta late last month followed by 2 out of 3 in Cleveland, and this 6-game road trip they’re on right now has already seen them take 2 out of 3 from the Diamondbacks in Arizona.
To put it another way, the Nationals have lost just two series on the road all season (at Philadelphia, March 30-April 1, at Miami, May 8-10). They’re 8-2-1 overall. Meanwhile, the Giants are just 12-16 at home (-29 run diff.) No reason to think they’ll lose this series against the Giants, but it’s worth noting that the Giants are 5-4 in home series and the record really only looks bad because they went 1-6 against the Yankees and Mets to start the season. They’re 11-10 since.
In case I’m unclear, my prediction is that the Nationals will win the series.
