The Morning Briefing: August 19th

Good morning, Washington Nationals fans.

Here are the latest headlines and analyses around the Washington Nationals and Major League Baseball for today, August 19.

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Welcome to the Morning Briefing!

Leading this Morning's Briefing: Wood Gets Around on One

The Nationals entered the top of the ninth last night clinging to a one-run lead and not having presented Kyle Finnegan with a save opportunity in two weeks. An insurance run or two was going to be very welcome, and boy did James Wood provide it, turning on a 98-mph fastball over the inside edge from Jeff Hoffman and sending it off the facing of the second deck. If he starts doing this with any regularity, watch out:

Wood is hitting .284/.373/.458 (135 wRC+) and has 5 homers and 28 RBI in his 42 games (19 & 108 over a 162-game pace). That will play.

Last Game Out

After looking like a junior varsity team for the first three games against the Phillies (losing by ten, gagging away a tie game without recording an out in the ninth inning, and getting two-hit on 99 pitches by arguably the least impressive member of the Phillies' rotation, respectively), the Nats managed to salvage the mopportunity (getting mopped in four games is worse than getting swept in three, h/t Cespedes Baseball BBQ) by beating the Phillies 6-4 thanks to home runs from Keibert Ruiz, Alex Call, and Wood. Jake Irvin gave up a couple of solo shots among the four runs he allowed over six innings.

Nationals Headline of the Day: It's Gotta Be the Shoes!

This past weekend was Players' Weekend, with different themes for each day. Saturday's was causes that are meaningful to the players, and Jacob Young donned mismatching cleats, one purple and one green, to honor his wife Caroline (who went through Hodgkins' lymphoma when they were in college) and sister Stacy (mitochondrial disease, which if it rings a bell might be because it prematurely ended the playing career of Rocco Baldelli, now the Twins' manager). Check out Jessica Camerato's column on Young's cleats.

Down on the Farm

Check out The Future for more, but Rochester's offense went off, Daylen Lile homered for Harrisburg, and Tyler Stuart is getting promoted from AA to AAA after four solid to very good starts for the Senators since coming over from the Mets' organization.

Featured Baseball Story of the Day

Over at Yahoo! Sports, Russell Dorsey wrote a column about the seven players entering free agency who have done the most to help themselves in their walk years. This is hopefully relevant to Nats fans because their payroll obligations are such that they should be making a serious offer on at least one of these guys if not two. The seven? Juan Soto, Anthony Santander, Willy Adames, Jack Flaherty, Blake Snell, Teoscar Hernández, and Corbin Burnes.

Former National of the Day

Doug Fister was the second major outside acquisition on the pitching front during the Nats' 2012-19 competitive era, brought over from Detroit prior to the 2014 season in exchange for Ian Krol, Steve Lombardozzi, and Robbie Ray. Fister was superb in his first season with the Nats, giving them 164 innings with a 2.41 ERA and 1.079 WHIP, finishing eighth in the Cy Young voting. The wheels came off the bus in 2015, however, and after 103 innings of 4.19 ERA/1.398 WHIP in 25 games he was allowed to depart in free agency. The soft-tossing, 6'8" Fister was good at inducing ground balls for most of his career and was both a good fielder and good hitter for his position (he played a lot of soccer and basketball growing up, which probably helped him with his agility). He was also the inspiration for a host of punny fantasy baseball team names, particularly the all-time classic Fister? But I Hardly Even Know Her!

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