Photo by Marlene Koenig/Nats.Talk

The Washington Nationals have lost two straight. While the bulk pitchers haven’t been great in the past two games, the Nats offense has only scored 2-runs per game and managed just 1-walk in those 18 innings. Come on.

When hitting coach, Matt Borgschulte, was hired, he gave an inspiring speech about accepting your walks and limiting chases out of the zone. The simple theory is that you have to force the pitcher to stop nibbling or trying to get you to chase — and pitch you over the plate where you do the damage. The Nats are 12-20 when they take 2-or-fewer walks in a game. When they take 3-or-more walks in a game, the Nats are 27-17.

“The overarching philosophy is, the goal of the offense is to score runs. We’re going to value every aspect of hitting that we can to maximize that run-scoring potential of the offense, whether that’s hitting the ball over the fence in the gap and driving for extra bases, or whether that’s taking a good at-bat, taking our walks and really owning the zone.”

“We don’t want to attack the pitcher’s pitches on the corners. Those are pitches that are going to be really challenging to put in play in hard [contact]. As well as laying off those pitches, it sets us up to [not swing] at the chase pitch and force them to the middle. We get into better counts. We make better decisions. And we have more guys on-base, — and force the pitcher to make more pitches, and so on and so forth to help the team offensively.”

“I think that’s going to be something that you’re going to hear a lot this year is, we’re going to own the zone. We’re going to force pitchers to the middle of the plate, and when they go there, we’re going to do some damage. We’re going to hit balls on the line, hit balls in the gaps, run. I think you’ve heard from Blake as well — the ability of this team, that’s a young, athletic team, to continue to take those extra bases — and do the little things to win games is going to be really crucial.”

— Borgschulte said after he was hired

That term “owning the zone” is the theme here. The zone is the strike zone — not chasing out of the zone. This is what has ailed so many of the current Nats and top draft picks. It was drafting and choosing players on power and not so much on plate discipline. The Nats best plate discipline hitter had been Alex Call, and he was traded at the deadline last year. You have to think Paul Toboni would not have traded Call because Toboni wants hitters who own the zone.

The Nationals had their pitching rotation set for this weekend with Cade Cavalli who was moved to today’s game after a bout with food poisoning yesterday. Miles Mikolas took Cavalli’s spot last night, and Andrew Alvarez is set to pitch on Sunday.

On offense, the Nats are at the top of MLB for the most runs scored this season at 407 runs and that is an impressive 5.36 runs per game. With the Nats pitching giving up 4.66 earned runs per game, the difference is really those pesky unearned runs due to the errors. Overall, the Nats have a +12 run differential on the season. Since April 19th, the Nats are the 16th best in ERA in MLB in that span at 4.19.

Here is manager Blake Butera‘s bullpen chart:

The FanGraphs WAR chart is accumulating data. The numbers are getting very large as the season is headed towards the halfway point on June 24. The OAA defense stat is now giving us a picture of what the Nats have — and don’t have.

Washington Nationals vs. Tampa Bay Rays

Stadium: Tropicana Field, St. Petersburg, Florida
1st Pitch: 4:10 PM EDT
TV: Nationals.TV
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 179 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.