PHILADELPHIA \u2013 This series has not gone the way the Nationals hoped it would. They nearly pulled off a remarkable rally in Tuesday\u2019s opener, only to fall in the bottom of the ninth. Then they put up little fight Wednesday during a lopsided loss. So now they have to win tonight or else be swept out of town before heading to Cincinnati for the weekend.<\/p>\n
Brad Lord gets the start, his fifth in the majors. The rookie right-hander has yet to complete five innings or top 80 pitches. The Nats would really love for him to do both tonight and take some workload off the bullpen. To do that, he\u2019ll have to hold in check a Phillies lineup that we know can hit the ball out of the park. (Especially Kyle Schwarber, who has four homers in five head-to-head matchups already this season.)<\/p>\n
Really, though, the Nationals need to score runs, and score them early. They\u2019ve been forced to play catch-up way too much of late. They\u2019re facing a veteran in Taijuan Walker who has an average resume but has found a way to produce a 2.78 ERA through his first five starts this year. The catch: He has only totaled 22 2\/3 innings, and didn\u2019t make it past the fourth in either of his last two outings. The Nats would love to get to Walker early, knock him out and then try to feast on a Phillies bullpen that has been quite shaky as well.<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON NATIONALS at PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES
Where: Citizens Bank Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Partly cloudy, 71 degrees, wind 12 mph out to left field<\/p>\n
NATIONALS
SS CJ Abrams
LF James Wood
1B Nathaniel Lowe
C Keibert Ruiz
2B Luis Garc\u00eda Jr.
DH Josh Bell
RF Dylan Crews
3B Jos\u00e9 Tena
CF Jacob Young<\/p>\n
RHP Brad Lord<\/p>\n
PHILLIES
2B Bryson Stott
SS Trea Turner
1B Bryce Harper
DH Kyle Schwarber
RF Nick Castellanos
LF Max Kepler
3B Alec Bohm
CF Johan Rojas
C Rafael March\u00e1n<\/p>\n
RHP Taijuan Walker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2013 This series has not gone the way the Nationals hoped it would. They nearly pulled off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2398],"tags":[5,1902,1360,908,907,4,415,568,25,414,71,4222],"class_list":{"0":"post-7604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-nationals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brad-lord","10":"tag-lineups","11":"tag-mark-zuckerman","12":"tag-masn","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-nationals","15":"tag-nationals-featured","16":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","17":"tag-washington","18":"tag-washington-nationals","19":"tag-washingtonnationals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114465928986038250","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604","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=7604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}