6/29 Butt Toots (Lester) @ DBN (Ross) 3:05 CT CSN

[Schwarber Fan]

Welp, that was pleasantly surprising. Anyone who said they saw that coming is lying. Hopefully Candy is OK.

[Cubswin11]

Welp, that was pleasantly surprising. Anyone who said they saw that coming is lying. Hopefully Candy is OK.

I mean if Pedro gets us out of this it's far from over with the Nats pen

[Aaron_Kennelly]

If you can't see a Nats bullpen meltdown coming, then you aren't seeing very well.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Turner broke his wrist.

[17 Seconds]

this game really made me appreciate the chapman and davis trades

[David]

Welp, that was pleasantly surprising. Anyone who said they saw that coming is lying. Hopefully Candy is OK.

 

only all of the negative things, regardless of how likely, can be seen coming.

[Omar]

Nats would have this one had Dusty not been ejected. Mark this one down as an L. Edited June 30, 2017 by Omar

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Turner broke his wrist.

damn my derby team

[raw]

Never been ready to give up on this team the way all the Twitter meatballs do on a daily basis. But every time I'm on the verge of legit disappointment, I look at this team and remember......they are missing the entire opening day OF (including the reigning WS MVP), the 2016 ERA champ, and today were missing the reigning NL MVP.

 

When this team gets healthy and replace Butler and Lackey with Hendricks and a traded SP next month, they will be as good as anyone else in the NL.

[PackLandVA]

Are the SP replacements gonna make them hit better. Because they've been near the bottom basically the whole season, not to mention their constant struggles runner on third

[cubsclapp]

Are the SP replacements gonna make them hit better. Because they've been near the bottom basically the whole season, not to mention their constant struggles runner on third

 

They're 17th in wRC+, or exactly where they were in 2015. This is with Schwarber being a zero, Zobrist not making much of an impact (and zero impact right-handed) which is probably due in part to his injury, Russell and Contreras being awful for a couple months, Happ not playing until mid-May, etc.

 

Bryant and Rizzo are pretty much normal now, Contreras is now hitting like expected, Russell has been much more like himself lately, Zobrist is soon back and hopefully himself again, Heyward is soon back and was showing good signs (and was frankly unlucky), etc.

 

And, it seems that Bryant and Rizzo really haven't been hot at the same time this year (or if they have, it was briefly). They've both gone on their own tears. If they get hot at the same time for a couple weeks, they can basically carry the offense themselves.

 

Also, the offense's overall slash line:

 

.238/.325/.418

 

And their RISP numbers:

 

.234/.336/.409

 

The runners in scoring position stuff is another area Zobrist should help too.

 

So, there is plenty of reason to expect improvement, and perhaps substantially. Barring more significant injuries, it would be hard to see how things could get all that much worse given the talent level in place.