Nationals Hit Two Pairs Of Back-To-Back Jacks Including a Bryce Grand Slam To Punish The Marlins Behind Another Strasburg Gem
I don’t know where I should begin with the game. Should I begin with the fact that Wilson Ramos and Jayson Werth went back to back, or Harper’s 2nd career grandslam, or Stephen Strasburg’s shutdown outing, or the fact that I couldn’t even watch the game because I’m in college and had an exam. So while Harper and co. were mashing homers and celebrating their 4 homer inning and Strasburg was K-ing double digit Marlins, I was clicking away subtotalling data, and making VLookups and Pivot Charts in Excel.
And while I LOVE Excel as much as the next guy, I love the Nats lineup and power even more. Wilson Ramos had that offseason LASIK and has improved so, so much. Sure he doesn’t have a single walk this year but who needs walks when you hit .341? Digging into statistics, Ramos is making contact on 85.9% of pitches that he swings at which is a huge step up from his career mark of 79.3%. It is still early in the season but contact rates are typically the types of statistics that stabilize quickest and, in this scenario, we have a clear reason for Ramos’ improvements. Werth, who hit his 200th homer right before Ramos, has caught some flack for just not being all that good but a lot of it has been bad luck. Entering the day, Werth’s BABIP was just .200 – he is striking out more often than in years past but we can expect that .171 average to rise up to the .250-.260 range.
Wilson Ramos and Shawn Kelley Celebrating the Win
Harper keeps making my job as a blogger tougher and tougher because he just keeps hitting homers and its tough for me to come up with new ways to praise him and his incredible abilities without constantly repeating myself. He is somehow looking like he’s going to have a better season than last year. I officially called the #TripleCrownWatch on last week, and that’s no joke. In this young season he has 7 home runs to only 6 strike outs. He has more grandslams in his last 6 games (2) than Ks (1). And he’s hitting with RISP, which he didn’t often get the luxury of last year.
And to cap off the inning, Ryan Zimmerman. Zimmerman is just 4/24 since the 12th and has definitely slowed down since a hot start, but as long as he can stay healthy, the production will be there. Love him getting his 1st of the season.
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Strasburg has been great in his 3 starts. Really, really great.
I’ve been warning the world about the Stras-surgence for months. As for the rest of the rotation, is there a way to let an entire staff share the Cy Young? Ok let’s not get ahead of ourselves because the Nats have been playing weaker teams like the Braves and Marlins, but everyone has looked very good so far.