Photo by Sol Tucker/Nats.Talk

The Washington Nationals have Foster Griffin on the mound for this series finale against Houston. This will be Griffin’s final showcase before the All-Star break and is his final audition in case an All-Star spot opens up. Three pitching spots actually opened yesterday, and Griffin was not named. You could say that was a snub when you consider his stats are certainly All-Star worthy.

The Nats have a scheduled day-off on Thursday before their weekend series with the New York Yankees at Nationals Park. Zack Littell pitched on Saturday and is scheduled to pitch that series opener on Friday. Cade Cavalli is serving a suspension and is due to pitch on Sunday. Miles Mikolas did not hear on his appeal yesterday. It is now up in the air if he will be able to start on Saturday. The position player that Mikolas scuffled with, Nate Eaton, got his suspension reduced to two games yesterday.

There looks to be no personnel shuffling in the bullpen. Matt Krook made his Nats debut last night. We will see how everything goes tonight with that day-off tomorrow. In other pitching news, Jake Irvin threw to live batters today, and that is an important first step before he heads out to a minor league rehab assignment. Irvin could be back before the end of July.

❝Look, I will 100 percent wear Cole Henry’s poor second inning [on Monday. To be very transparent and truthful, I think we did Cole a disservice because we didn’t have him throw multiple innings at Triple-A. A lot of times when we bring a player up from Triple-A, it’s because our bullpen’s thin and we’re going to need them to throw multiple innings.❞

— manager Blake Butera said yesterday

On offense, the Nats have the 1st in MLB for the most runs scored this season at 500 runs, and that is an impressive 5.37 runs per game. With the Nats pitching giving up 4.80 earned runs per game, the difference is really those pesky unearned runs due to the errors. Overall, the Nats have a +7 run differential on the season.

Here is manager Blake Butera‘s bullpen chart:

The FanGraphs WAR chart is now large in its sample size. You can certainly start to extrapolate the numbers for the full-season. The OAA defense stat is now giving us a picture of what the Nats have — and don’t have.

Houston Astros vs. Washington Nationals

Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 6:45 PM EDT
TV: Nationals.TV
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 181 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.