The Washington Nationals have had some great starts this year, but none at the level that Cade Cavalli turned in and his 88 game score stat is Top-25 in Nats history. The Nats record is a 104 by Max Scherzer set on Oct. 3ʳᵈ, 2015.

Tonight, the Nationals will go with Andrew Alvarez in this first of three games against the Mets in CitiField. The Mets will have a right-hander on the mound and manager Blake Butera will go with more lefties in his starting lineup.

❝Coming out of the gates, I thought how efficient [Cade Cavalli] was in the first three innings, I was like, ‘Man if he keeps this up, we’re going to have a decision to make later in the game. This is complete-game type of pitching.’❞

— said manager Blake Butera

On offense, the Nats have the 1st in MLB for the most runs scored this season at 662 runs, and that is an impressive 5.38 runs per game. With the Nats pitching giving up 4.72 earned runs per game, the difference is really those pesky unearned runs due to the errors. Overall, the Nats have a +23 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.

Washington Nationals vs. New York Mets

Stadium: CitiField, Queens, New York
1st Pitch: 7:10 PM EDT
TV: Nationals.TV
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 182 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.

Photo by Marideth Sandler/Nats.Talk