Washington Nationals (39-36, third in the NL East) vs. Tampa Bay Rays (41-30, second in the AL East)<\/p>\n
St. Petersburg, Florida; Friday, 7:10 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
PITCHING PROBABLES: Nationals: Cade Cavalli (4-4, 3.98 ERA, 1.39 WHIP, 81 strikeouts); Rays: Griffin Jax (1-5, 3.68 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, 41 strikeouts)<\/p>\n
LINE: Rays -132, Nationals +108; over\/under is 8 runs<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: The Tampa Bay Rays begin a three-game series at home against the Washington Nationals on Friday.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay is 41-30 overall and 24-9 in home games. The Rays have a 29-10 record in games when they record eight or more hits.<\/p>\n
Washington has gone 23-14 on the road and 39-36 overall. The Nationals rank third in the NL with 96 total home runs, averaging 1.3 per game.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s game is the first meeting between these teams this season.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Junior Caminero leads the Rays with 15 home runs while slugging .485. Jonathan Aranda is 11 for 40 with a double and four RBIs over the past 10 games.<\/p>\n
James Wood has 17 doubles and 20 home runs for the Nationals. Nasim Nunez is 13 for 33 with a double, two triples and seven RBIs over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Rays: 4-6, .249 batting average, 3.86 ERA, outscored by five runs<\/p>\n
Nationals: 6-4, .257 batting average, 5.01 ERA, outscored opponents by seven runs<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Rays: Jon Heasley: 60-Day IL (elbow), Michael Grove: 60-Day IL (shoulder), Jesse Scholtens: 15-Day IL (wrist), Manuel Rodriguez: 60-Day IL (elbow), Jonny Deluca: 10-Day IL (hamstring), Steven Wilson: 60-Day IL (back), Gavin Lux: 60-Day IL (shoulder), Jake Fraley: 10-Day IL (groin), Ryan Pepiot: 60-Day IL (hip), Edwin Uceta: 60-Day IL (shoulder)<\/p>\n
Nationals: Max Kranick: 60-Day IL (elbow), Jake Irvin: 15-Day IL (shoulder), Trevor Williams: 60-Day IL (elbow), Ken Waldichuk: 60-Day IL (forearm), Josiah Gray: 60-Day IL (elbow), DJ Herz: 60-Day IL (elbow)<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington Nationals (39-36, third in the NL East) vs. Tampa Bay Rays (41-30, second in the AL East)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[20509,1558,7847,204210,151030,37888,5629,61433,91508,7851,102535,296861,12942,244313,197445,9878,143488,307526,157863,307527,363,2008,235305,139730,99,99308,974,197341,2331],"class_list":["post-713312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-athlete-injuries","tag-baseball","tag-cade-cavalli","tag-edwin-uceta","tag-gavin-lux","tag-griffin-jax","tag-illinois","tag-jake-fraley","tag-jake-irvin","tag-james-wood","tag-jesse-scholtens","tag-jon-heasley","tag-jonathan-aranda","tag-jonny-deluca","tag-josiah-gray","tag-junior-caminero","tag-ken-waldichuk","tag-manuel-rodriguez","tag-max-kranick","tag-michael-grove","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-baseball","tag-nasim-nunez","tag-ryan-pepiot","tag-sports","tag-steven-wilson","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-trevor-williams","tag-washington-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}