Tuesday’s News & Notes
| Team | Yesterday | Today | Pitching Probables |
| Rochester | OFF DAY | vs. Toledo, 7:05 p.m. | vs. Wentz (1-2, 3.66) |
| Harrisburg | OFF DAY | @ Richmond, 6:35 p.m. | S. Romero (0-0, 0.00) vs. Teng (5-10, 5.11) |
| Wilmington | OFF DAY | @ Brooklyn, 7 p.m. | Saenz (2-5, 7.24) vs. J. Santos (6-12, 4.76) |
| Fredericksburg | OFF DAY | vs. Delmarva, 7:05 p.m. | Gillies (1-0, 2.16) |
Editor’s note: The matchups above are based on last Wednesday’s starters if the information was not available in Sunday’s press notes.
Rochester Red Wings, 55-68, 8th place, 13GB
With the rosters expanding by just two (2), the “drama” for which Red Wings might get called to the big club is gone. Why quotes? Well, with the constant shuffle between Rochester and Washington, and another month to go, September 1 is really just another Thursday. This week, the Mud Hens come to town with a day game tomorrow.
Harrisburg Senators, 16-34, 6th place, 16½ GB (46-73 overall)
With a tragic number of three, Harrisburg will most likely be eliminated by Thursday or Friday. This week, the last-place Senators visit the 5th-place Flying Squirrels.
Wilmington Blue Rocks, 25-29, 5th place, 6GB (60-59 overall)
For most of the second half, Blue Rocks seemed to be just a hot streak away from making a run at the second-half title. Well, it’s put up or shut up as they face the second-place Cyclones this week and the first-place Renegades next week. Unfortunately, with six games to make up in two weeks it’s going to have to be at least 10 wins down the stretch combined with the teams they’re not playing going cold against teams who are in last place or next-to-last place.
Fredericksburg Nationals, 33-20, 1st place, 3½ GA (66-53 overall)
Like most of the season, the relief from the frustration of the upper levels has been on the fourth capsule down on the page. While Fredericksburg faltered in the first half, they were in contention until the final day. They’ve led nearly end-to-end in the second half, now up 3½ games with 13 to play and a magic number of ten. This week, it’s six against the Shorebirds, a team they’ve beaten nine times out of nine in the second half.
Is there any logic to them STILL trying to make Seth Romero a starter?
Around 15 mph faster than Seth, the electric Susana man will be towing the rubber in Fredericksburg tonight.
Tommy Milone didn’t throw very hard and has parlayed good command into a 12 year career. nothing (x20) about Romero says Milone to this point but there aren’t many soft tossing relievers
After one appearance in a year and probable start today, would dial it back on assessing:
1) Whether the Nats view Romero as a starter or a reliever going forward (the currently plenty of available rotation spots at 46-73 H’burg right now). He needs innings.
2) Romero’s top end velo. FWIW, Romero did K five out of six batters faced last time out, and his career K rate in the minors is an impressive 13.5 per 9 innings. He misses bats.
Realize that there is lingering frustration over the Nats decision to take SR with pick #1 in the 2017 draft, and his history of bad behavior, but not beyond the realm that he has matured and salvageable.
if you take one look at him you’ll see a changed physique. hopefully there are more changes he’s made beneath the surface. he’s still one of our boys so I’m rooting for him.
Also, under the radar the Nats are starting to stretch Patrick Murphy out as a starter. He went 4 innings last start; curious how this plays out the rest of the season.
Curse of the working class; can’t head down to Fredericksburg tonight to watch Susana.
after being a starter exclusively in the minors (with reasonable success) he was never given a single start in the show. even the great Mariano Riviera got 10 starts before they switched him to his HOF career path.
If you’re talking about Seth Romero, even when they called him up and used him solely in a relief role they expressly said that they were still interested in developing him as a starter long term. IIRC the only reason that they called him up is that the Nats had so many players on the COVID list that they were running out of options.
I was going, but weather looks iffy for F-burg tonight
The tale of the farm system : can any affiliate consistently beat a Mets affiliate
( not to mention a Pirate or Tiger affiliate especially @ AA?)
Murphy and Romero . Why ? Met a guy yesterday whose business company is named Why .
Let’s see what consistency can come out of the five lefties in the
Wilmington rotation from here on out .
all four clubs on MiLB.tv for the first time in weeks, hope the storms hold off and the only thunder is from the good guys’ bats!
after the first day off for Hassell looking for him to get it in gear for the stretch run to AZ fall league
after showing some promise Jose Sanchez seems to have hit the wall. just turned 22 and they also gave him a couple days off. still has a chance for a good season
go get ’em boys! hit ’em where they ain’t!
It may seem like a “duh” statement, but there’s a completely different mentality and rhythm to being a reliever. There are stories from the 2019 playoffs of Max asking the bullpen guys about how to warm up, as he genuinely didn’t know. As noted above with Murphy, the Nats did the same with Romero in 2020 — he had never been a reliever, yet they called him up as one.
As we’ve discussed here many times, the Nats (like every team) always seem to be in desperate need of relievers, yet they’ve done little to develop them. Even guys who were effective relievers in college (Evan Lee, Andrew Lee, and Todd Pederson to name three recent ones) have been tried as starters. They keep trying Fuentes as a starter. They kept guys like A. J. Cole and McGowin as starters long after their futures seemed to be in the bullpen.
With Romero specifically, there has been discussion of him potentially ending up in the bullpen even before he was drafted. I think Keith Law was advocating that the Nats call him up to the majors in that capacity in 2017. Romero has always gotten a lot of strikeouts, but whether that also equates to “missing bats” is debatable, as his minor-league career hits-per-nine is 8.7.
Maybe he’s finally in better shape now. Maybe he’ll turn into something. We can only hope. He’ll be 27 in April at the start of next season.