After a convincing 8-0 win in their wild card game over the Pirates the Giants have earned the right to live on in the playoffs and face the best team in the NL, the Washington Nationals. The Nationals, who won the NL East this season finished their regular season off with a 1-0 win over the Marlins courtesy of a no-hitter thrown by Jordan Zimmerman. On Friday the Nationals (96-66) will host the Giants who finished the regular season 88-74 with Steven Strasburg taking the mound for the Nationals and likely Jake Peavy toeing the rubber for the Giants.
Washington Nationals vs San Francisco Giants
Starting Pitching
As it is in most playoff series, starting pitching will be key to this postseason battle. The Nationals are built around their starting pitching and for good reason as they rank among the top rotations in all of baseball in several key categories. Strasburg and Zimmerman were joined over the course of the regular season by Gio Gonzalez, Doug Fister, and Tanner Roark in a rotation that had the best ERA, fewest BB/9, allowed the fewest HR/9 and ranked in the top 5 in K/9. Their playoff rotation will likely feature Strasburg game 1 with Zimmerman in game 2, Gonzalez in game 3, and most likely Fister in game 4. The Giants rotation, which is not as dominant as the Nationals is still rather talented in it’s own right. Madison Bumgarner, Jake Peavy, and Tim Hudson are the foundation of the rotation with Ryan Vogelsong likely to be the fourth starter if Bruce Bochy decides to feature a four man rotation. The Nationals rotation currently has more talent but the Giants have the advantage in postseason experience. The top four starters have combined for 25 career postseason starts, while the Nationals arms have only combined for 10 postseason starts with Fister accounting for 7 of them.
Bullpen
Often times in postseason contests the game is won or lost in the late innings and the bullpen is often is big key to this. Both of these teams feature strong bullpens with the Nationals ranking 4th in bullpen ERA (3.00) and the Giants ranking 5th (3.01). The Nationals bullpen is built around Drew Storen, Tyler Clippard, and Rafael Soriano closing games out. A key for them in the bullpen will be lefty Jerry Blevins who has limited lefties to a .153 AVG and will be important against the several lefties the Giants have in their order and could also flip switch-hitting Pablo Sandoval to his weaker side. The Giants pen is bolstered by several different arms with Sergio Romo and Santiago Casilla both closing out over 15 games this season. They also have lefties Jeremy Affedlt and Javier Lopez for face Harper and other lefties in the Nationals lineup. Additionally, Jean Machi and Yasmiero Petit have been excellent for them out of the bullpen and could provide them with significant innings.
Lineups
In Tuesday night’s game manager Bruce Bochy submitted a lineup as follows: Blanco CF Panik 2b Posey C Sandoval 3b Pence RF Belt 1b Crawford SS Ishikawa LF Pitcher Spot. The lineup succeeded scoring 8 runs and leading the team to victory. Besides the obvious threats in the lineup for the Giants-Posey, Sandoval, and Pence–a few key players are Panik and Belt. Panik, who has stepped in at second and in the two hole extremely well for the Giants is a key becuase of his ability to get on base in front of the middle of the order run producers. Belt drove in two runs on Wednesday started off the season very hot before injuries robbed him of a breakout campaign. Ishikawa who has only started 5 career games in LF, is forced to play there due to the loss of Agel Pagan who was a key member of the Giants’ lineup.
On the other hand the Nationals lineup will likely be: Span CF Rendon 3b Werth RF Laroche 1b Desmond SS Harper LF Ramos C Carbrera 2b Pitcher Spot. The keys for the Nationals will be Rendon who had a breakout season and is a big reason that they are here and Ian Desmond who quietly had a 20-20 season and is among one of the best offensive SS in baseball. While both lineups have a similar batting average .255 for the Giants and .253 for the Nationals, the Nationals have more power, with 20 more HRs and more speed with 101 steals while the Giants only had 56 this season.
Defensively the teams were similar this season both finishing the year with a fielding percentage of .984. However, the loss of Pagan hurts the Giants as Ishikawa- a first baseman- is now forced to play out of position in LF. Additionally, the Nationals has saved 10 runs this season according to defensive runs saved and the Giants defense has cost the team 5 runs.
Bench
As the Royals showed in their Wild Card game the bench plays a key role in the postseason often in terms of pinch runners but in the National League pinch hitters play an even bigger role. The Nationals will have Ryan Zimmerman on the bench who although he has regressed due to injury and age is still a very good hitter posting a .280 Avg this season in limited time. Danny Espinosa is also on the bench and although he has struggled this season he has had productive seasons in the past. The Giants’ bench is not as strong with the best pinch hit option being Brandon Hicks but Bruce Bochy does expect to get Michael Morse back which will allow Ishikawa to return to the bench.
Bottom Line
The Nationals on paper seem to be the better team in almost every aspect of the game and I fully expect them to win this series behind strong starting pitching and timely hitting. Nationals will win the series in 4 games with the Giants only winning game 3 behind another dominant postseason performance from Madison Bumgarner.
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