Stephen Strasburg Returned To Form For The Victorious Nats Who Have Now Won 7 Of Their Last 10

MLB - “I thought he pitched well,” manager Matt Williams said. “I thought he was in command out there. His fastball was sitting 95 and touching 97, 98. He can do that. I just think this was a real good step for him.” Braves first baseman Chris Johnson said this was vintage Strasburg. “He’s pretty good. This guy had his good stuff,” Johnson said. “He was throwing the ball real hard and his curveball was looking pretty good. He was working both sides of the plate.” While that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s about to get on a roll, to snap back to the form he had in 2014 when he tied for the league lead with 242 strikeouts, there was nothing about his outing that suggested he couldn’t, either. Atlanta was able to foul off enough pitches to raise his pitch count, but the Braves only got a runner past first once. Strasburg threw 64 of his 94 pitches for strikes. And the only time he was in a jam, with runners on second and third and one out in the fifth, he responded by striking out Jace Peterson and Cameron Maybin to end the inning.

—–

And the roller coaster of a season continues for the Nats. To recap, they started off the season 7-13. Then they won something like 20 of their next 25. Then they had a stretch where they dropped 12 of 15. And now they are coming off of a sweep of the Pirates and beat the Braves last night, improving their lead in the NL East to 2 1/2 games after taking 7 of their last 10. Up and down, up and down, up and down.

Though it was only one start, Strasburg looked to almost be back to his dominate self last night. After a slow start last year, he was lights out in the second half of the season and ended up leading the league in strikeouts. Before hitting the DL he had been pure shit this season with no command at all and had failed to pitch deep into games at all. Last night he was calm and firing with confidence, giving up only 4 hits and no walks over 5 innings. His fastball stayed down and was buzzing in the upper 90s. Once he gets complete demand of his 12-6 curve back, we could be looking at vintage Strasburg, which paired with Scherzer is the best 1-2 punch in baseball.

Advertisement

The other key takeaway from last night’s game was Anthony Rendon going 4-4. He was sitting at a .230 average since coming off the DL (peaking at .267 after a 7 game hit streak), but raised it a casual 47 points last night. The Nats lineup with a healthy Rendon is plain scary. The top 4 of Span, Rendon, Escobar, and Harper is as good as it gets.

PS: Bryce went 0-4 last night. Is it too early to blame Nina? Despite that, he’s still hitting .373 for the month with a 1.178 OPS. With a week to go he could very well win back-to-back player of the month awards from Major League Baseball.