The Nationals came home feeling pretty good about themselves, but they have since lost four of five on this homestand and now need a win today to avoid a weekend sweep at the hands of the Cardinals.<\/p>\n
Offense is key, especially early offense. The Nats need to find a way to jump on Miles Mikolas and play out in front instead of behind for a change. History isn\u2019t on their side: In five starts against them over the last three seasons, Mikolas owns a 2.15 ERA and 1.023 WHIP. Even when the veteran right-hander has struggled in the larger picture, he has always seemed to pitch well against this particular opponent.<\/p>\n
So the pressure may be on MacKenzie Gore to author one of his gems. The left-hander continues to lead the majors in strikeouts (68 of them in only 46 innings), and he\u2019s done an excellent job of minimizing damage, even when he\u2019s perhaps not in peak form.\u00a0The Nats hope he can be at least that today, though they surely would love for him to be in true peak form and help them salvage a Mother\u2019s Day win before hitting the road.<\/p>\n
ST. LOUIS CARDINALS at WASHINGTON NATIONALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 1:35 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Partly cloudy, 81 degrees, wind 4 mph out to center field<\/p>\n
CARDINALS
LF Lars Nootbaar
SS Masyn Winn
2B Brendan Donovan
3B Nolan Arenado
1B Willson Contreras
DH Iv\u00e1n Herrera
C Yohel Pozo
RF Jordan Walker
CF Victor Scott II<\/p>\n
RHP Miles Mikolas<\/p>\n
NATIONALS
SS CJ Abrams
RF Alex Call
LF James Wood
1B Nathaniel Lowe
DH Josh Bell
2B Luis Garc\u00eda Jr.
CF Dylan Crews
3B Jos\u00e9 Tena
C Riley Adams<\/p>\n
LHP MacKenzie Gore<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nationals came home feeling pretty good about themselves, but they have since lost four of five on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2398],"tags":[5,1360,771,908,4,415,568,67,414,71,4222],"class_list":{"0":"post-19192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-nationals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-lineups","10":"tag-mackenzie-gore","11":"tag-mark-zuckerman","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-nationals","14":"tag-nationals-featured","15":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","16":"tag-washington","17":"tag-washington-nationals","18":"tag-washingtonnationals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114490674517376944","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}