Game 66 lineups: Nats at Astros

By Mark Zuckerman

Nationals

June 14, 2023, 4:37pm

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HOUSTON – Josiah Gray enters tonight’s start with a 3.00 ERA, which is quite good. Good enough to rank sixth in the National League, in fact. His 1.403 WHIP, however, is worse than it was in either of the last two seasons. So, how do we reconcile those two facts?

Gray’s peripheral numbers aren’t great because he’s walking a lot of batters (4.6 per nine innings). But he’s not giving up runs because he’s managing to get outs when he needs to (opponents are batting and slugging .145 against him with runners in scoring position) and he’s avoided the home run (1.0 per nine innings, down from 2.3 last season). Can he keep that up? We shall see, but the test tonight against the Astros is a good one for the young right-hander.

A little run support wouldn’t hurt, either. After an uptick in production that included 5.4 runs per game from May 15-June 2, the Nationals are averaging only 3.1 over their last eight games. Is it any wonder they’ve lost seven of those games?

WASHINGTON NATIONALS at HOUSTON ASTROS
Where: Minute Maid Park
Gametime: 8:10 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, MLB.com
Weather: Indoors

NATIONALS
RF Lane Thomas
3B Jeimer Candelario
DH Joey Meneses
LF Stone Garrett
C Keibert Ruiz
2B Ildemaro Vargas
1B Dominic Smith
CF Alex Call
SS CJ Abrams

RHP Josiah Gray

ASTROS
SS Mauricio Dubón
2B Jose Altuve
3B Alex Bregman
RF Kyle Tucker
1B José Abreu
DH Yainer Diaz
LF Corey Julks
CF Jake Meyers
C Martín Maldonado

LHP Framber Valdez