rank fourth<\/a> \u2014 and can make that number minus-77.<\/p>\nIn spring training, Butera stated in no uncertain terms that framing is a developmental item that can improve quickly with the right instruction. It should be treated, then, as a barometer for development. So far, they\u2019ve nailed it.<\/p>\n
Why does this matter? The Nationals have cost themselves dozens of runs over the years with poor framing. Keibert Ruiz has struggled forever in this facet, and he\u2019s made a massive leap. Moreover, the team acquired top prospect Harry Ford this winter and acknowledged that he had the most room to grow as a receiver. Now, they have shown they can teach it.<\/p>\n
4. CJ Abrams pull-air rate: 25 percent<\/p>\n
Some metrics feel unsustainable. After he sent a 99.5 mph heater from Paul Skenes into the right-field seats on Monday, it\u2019s safe to say this one feels feasible.<\/p>\n
There is a nonchalance with which Abrams describes his ability to pull the baseball. Sometimes, it happens when he is trying to hit the ball to the opposite field. Ultimately, he\u2019s just relaxed at the plate and uber-prepared heading into each at-bat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been there, but being able to swing at pitches I can do it with is big,\u201d Abrams said. \u201cIn the past, I would kind of swing at balls outside the zone. I\u2019m shrinking it this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s good news for the Nats. Abrams is a good power and contact hitter, but those have never been his outlier tools at the big-league level. Some of the most valuable hitters in baseball are not the lumbering sluggers, but players like Abrams who can consistently pull the ball in the air. Abrams is sticking to that swing, and not budging, no matter how many breaking balls teams throw him (and there are a lot of them).<\/p>\n
The most popular pitch in MLB has seemed to dictate every Nats game this season. The offense is crushing fastballs. The pitching staff is getting crushed by those same heaters.<\/p>\n
Washington is throwing far fewer heaters this year, hoping its pitchers lean into throwing their very best stuff. That is great when it works, but it hasn\u2019t dissuaded teams from going up to bat with a plan to hit the fastball anyways. It is why the Nats pitching staff ranks 29th in MLB in this metric. The offense, which ranks second in the same metric, is trying to make up ground.<\/p>\n
6. Relievers K\/9: 7.09<\/p>\n
Relief pitchers throw harder than starters. They inherit runners, who can\u2019t score if the baseball isn\u2019t put in play. In short, relievers must strike out hitters. This is the job.<\/p>\n
Washington\u2019s relievers are not doing that job. In the ninth inning on April 1 against the Philadelphia Phillies, they got six batters to two strikes, and none struck out. In the eighth inning on April 5 against the Los Angeles Dodgers, they faced three batters with a runner on third and fewer than two outs, threw nine pitches and didn\u2019t miss a single bat. On April 7, when the St. Louis Cardinals sent the tying run to the plate in the eighth, they couldn\u2019t miss a bat.<\/p>\n
Each time, that flipped the game from a win to a loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 The Nationals are an enigma. Their offense is a steamroller. Their pitching staff has often run…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85,5264],"class_list":["post-606587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-washington-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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