When the Nats and Padres get together, things tend to get interesting. That could be especially true this time as the two teams are as evenly matched as they have been in a long time. Both are over .500, but have gotten there in very different ways. The Nats are powered by an explosive offense, while the Padres have a lockdown bullpen.<\/p>\n
Blake Butera is making a couple changes to the lineup. Dylan Crews will be back in there in right field, which pushes James Wood to DH. Nasim Nunez will also be at second base and hit 9th. Keibert Ruiz will be behind the dish and hit 8th. Paxton Schultz will be the opener today, but Andrew Alvarez will be coming for bulk relief duty.<\/p>\n
The Padres offense has underperformed this year. Fernando Tatis Jr. does not have a home run, while Jackson Merrill and Manny Machado have also taken big steps back. Gavin Sheets, Miguel Andujar and Ty France have the highest OPS numbers in the Padres lineup. We know that the big names in the Padres lineup can get hot at any time though. Lucas Giolito signed with the Padres very late, but he has been solid in his first couple of starts for the team. He will take the mound and face the team that drafted him.<\/p>\n
The energy in the stadium this weekend should be great, and that fires me up. This team is giving the fans reason to believe. Hopefully the Nats can continue playing better baseball at home, after an awful start to the year at Nats Park. This will be a fun test for the boys. Follow along in the comments down below, and let\u2019s go Nats!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Nats and Padres get together, things tend to get interesting. That could be especially true this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75,139683],"class_list":["post-338817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-washington-nationals-discussions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}