Last season, the Nationals felt good about Jake Irvin, which is somewhat surprising given that he led the National League in losses. But if you start a lot of games for a bad team, you’re probably going to rack up a decent loss total, and Irvin started 33 games in 2024, the most in the National League. Many of those 33 starts weren’t spectacular, but few of them were dreadful either and he finished with a 4.41 ERA in 187 innings.
That is an “inning eater” type performance, an while you generally don’t want those guys near the front of your rotation, they’re generally useful to have around the back of it. To get through a 162-season, it’s nice to know you’ve got a guy who is going to take the ball every five days and give you about five or six, non-awful, bullpen preserving innings.
But entering his third season, the Nationals were hoping that he could possibly take the next step and become an actual good starter: Someone who could rise above mere cromulence and take a spot near the front of the rotation.
There was legitimate reason for optimism: Most of his poorer starts in 2024 came in the second half of the season, so the thought was that the high innings total wore down the relatively young pitcher, and moving forward, he would be better equipped to handle the workload throughout a full season. There was also talk of him adding a slider to his repertoire and how that might allow him to develop further.
That hasn’t happened. Irvin has once again pitched a high number of innings, but those innings have been of poorer quality than they were last year. His biggest issue has been the home run, as he’s given up a league-leading 29 of them.
He’s fallen apart in the second half of the season, giving up 5+ runs in four of his six post-break starts. And people are trying to figure out what’s happened to him, and if he can reverse it.
If there are answers to be found, hopefully they aren’t found before Sunday when he’s scheduled to start against the Phillies.
X-Men character of the series
Maxwell Jordan, aka Quill has a body covered in porcupine-like quills that he can shoot from his body at high speed. He was a member of the X-Men’s Academy X team, and while never considered the best, nor most powerful member, there was hope that he could one day become a solid X-Man.
And then the school was attacked by the anti-mutant fanatic William Stryker, and Quill died.
There was a character with the same powers in the movie X-Men: The Last Stand, but he was a murderous villain and got disintegrated at the end. That movie wasn’t very good.
Additional thought about the series
Not to pour too much cold weather on the Phillies’ dominating sweep of the Mariners, but sometimes it matters when you play a team. Just like the Phillies had a tough task with a west coast road trip to end the first half, the Mariners were on the final leg of a three-city east coast swing and were clearly flagging a bit.
That said, a win’s a win, and it’s nice to see the Phillies take full advantage of the situation.
Would it surprise anyone if the Phillies suffered a bit of a letdown against the Nationals this weekend? It was disappointing when they could only manage a split in last weekend’s four-game set, mostly because the offense underperformed in two of the games.
In one of those games, they were largely dominated by Nationals’ starter Cade Cavalli who was making just his third start of the season. He’s scheduled to face them Friday night, so we’ll get a quick gauge as to whether they’re going to keep pounding the ball the way they did against Seattle, or if we’re in for another disappointing series.