Photo by Guy Holly/Nats.Talk

The Washington Nationals wrap-up their Father’s Day weekend in Tampa with a chance to win another series. The players, coaches, front office and staff, along with their fathers who made the trip to Tampa, will board the team’s Delta charter jet for a flight back to Washington, DC after this game.

With Saturday’s 1-run win, the Nats now have a winning record in 1-run games at 11-10. The team also improved to 24-15 on the road. Now the team has to improve on getaway games — and they will get that opportunity today.

After the team’s best defensive performance of the season that was highlighted by a game-saving catch in the 8th inning by Jacob Young, the bullpen went 6 1/3 innings, only giving up 1-run to get the win. The defense turned several spectacular plays by Young, Dylan Crews, CJ Abrams, Nasim Nunez, Andres Chaparro, and Keibert Ruiz. Even a hustle play by Daylen Lile to take the ball from Young after he was injured on his highlight reel play was notable.

❝Early on [in the season], we put in a ton of work on defense and we continue to do that. I’m just happy to see some of the success we’re having defensively and how much they’re helping our pitchers. If we want our pitchers to throw strikes and attack hitters, we’ve got to play really good defense.❞

— manager Blake Butera said after Saturday’s game

The Nationals had their pitching rotation set for this weekend with Cade Cavalli who was moved to yesterday’s game after a bout with food poisoning yesterday. He only made it through 2 2/3 innings in the game and was rescued by the bullpen. Miles Mikolas took Cavalli’s spot on Friday night, and Andrew Alvarez is set to pitch on today.

On offense, the Nats are at the top of MLB for the most runs scored this season at 413 runs and that is an impressive 5.36 runs per game. With the Nats pitching giving up 4.64 earned runs per game, the difference is really those pesky unearned runs due to the errors. Overall, the Nats have a +13 run differential on the season. Since April 19th, the Nats are the 16th best in ERA in MLB in that span at 4.17.

After Brad Lord and Mitchell Parker both pitched multiple innings, they won’t be available for a while. 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: 1:40 PM EDT
TV: Nationals.TV
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 176 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.