Nationals Opening Day Lineup: 3/30/18
The rest of the MLB had its opening day yesterday, but the Reds postponed their matchup with the Nationals until today at 4:10 due to inclement weather. The Nationals lineup is as follows:
- Adam Eaton-LF
- Anthony Rendon-3B
- Bryce Harper-RF
- Ryan Zimmerman-1B
- Howie Kendrick-2B
- Trea Turner-SS
- Michael A. Taylor-CF
- Matt Wieters-C
- Max Scherzer-P
A couple of surprising things to take away from this lineup–first of all Rendon hitting second. This has a few upsides and downsides. An upside is getting Rendon more at-bats (his OBP was over .400 last year), while a downside is having less runners on for him, which might take away from his RBI total.
Another interesting piece to this lineup is that Trea Turner and Michael A Taylor–two of the fastest guys in baseball–are lining up in the sixth and seventh spots in the lineup, while both of them saw time toward the top of the order last year. This sends us the message the new Manager Dave Martinez is going to use statistics (such as OBP in the case of Rendon) over traditional methods (your fastest guy and best base stealer has to go at the top of the lineup). I think most of the world expected Trea Turner to hit leadoff or second.
Howie Kendrick has surprising pop, so he fits in the fifth spot well, and this requires minimal lineup-shifting when Daniel Murphy returns from injury.
