Taylor’s outburst marked the fourth time a Nationals player has had a four-hit, two-home run game this season. No other team has accomplished that feat more than twice.
The Nationals already had 12 runs by the end of the fourth inning. Surprisingly, this was not their highest-scoring game of the season. They dropped 23 runs on the Mets back on April 30.
Reds pitcher Homer Bailey did not fare well in his first start of the season. Bailey gave up eight earned runs off of six hits and three walks in just 1 2/3 innings.
Washington already has a pretty firm grasp on the NL East. The Braves trail them by nine games, and the Marlins, Mets and Phillies are all struggling. Relief pitching has been an issue for the Nationals this season, but that problem was thrown out the window Saturday with such a large margin of victory.
Still, it is likely the Nationals make a move or two before the July 31 trade deadline to shore up their bullpen for the postseason.
In 2016, despite going into a slump in the second half, Na showed an Cheap Hockey Jerseys Youth overall improvement with his walk rate, bumping it up to 10.3 percent. In 2017, however, his walk rate has gone down a bit to 8.0 percent so far. This might be because of the league’s new strike zone, which is noticeably wider than in Cheap High Quality Soccer Jerseys the past. The overall offensive production has gone down in the league this season. Meanwhile, the overall walk rate in the league has decreased from 9.3 percent to 8.2 percent, so Na’s decreased walk rate shouldn’t be cause for alarm.
However, his average, power numbers and overall offensive production have gone up, which may indicate that he went back to the aggressive approach and has used his hit and power tools to combat the bigger strike zone. In fact, according to Statiz swing rate strikezone charts, Na has been swinging at fewer pitches outside the zone while being more aggressive with the ones in the quadron.
