{"id":11524,"date":"2012-05-08T15:09:23","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T19:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ovathletics.com\/home\/?p=11524"},"modified":"2012-05-08T15:10:30","modified_gmt":"2012-05-08T19:10:30","slug":"11524","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ovathletics.com\/home\/11524\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationals vs. Pirates preview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While it is known that the Pirates haven&#8217;t had a winning season since 1992, the Washington Nationals have yet to have one in their existence. \u00a0Ok, maybe an asterisk should be inserted since they came into existence in 2005 after coming down from Montreal, but the two franchises combined haven&#8217;t had a winning season since 2003. \u00a0Unlike the Pirates, the Nationals have taken strides in the past few years, and currently sit atop the National League East with a 18-10 record.<\/p>\n<p>Normally teams that finish towards the bottom year in and year out will have the chance to land a top prospect. \u00a0For the Nationals, they landed arguably the two most hyped prospects in the past decade in the past three years in Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper. \u00a0Harper, who has raised eyebrows with his cocky play, has been as advertised in his two weeks in the big leagues. \u00a0The 19-year-old phenom has one of the best outfield arms already and has displayed extraordinary hustle on the base paths.<\/p>\n<p>As for Strasburg, he is a year coming off Tommy John surgery and has looked as dominate as he did in his first season in the majors. \u00a0He made his debut against these very same Pirates three years ago striking out 14 batters. \u00a0For those wanting to catch two of the most dominate, hyped stars in recent memory, this series is your chance. \u00a0Strasburg is scheduled to start on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>For the Pirates, they will face the daunting desk of facing the Nationals and their Major League best 2.59 ERA. \u00a0The Pirates currently have five players, two regulars, with a batting average of .200 or lower and are hitting just .228 as a unit. \u00a0They enter play today in fourth place, 5.5 behind the Cardinals.<\/p>\n<p>The probable pitchers for the Pirates are A.J. Burnett (1-2, 8.04 ERA), Erik Bedard (2-4, 2.65 ERA) and Kevin Correia (1-2, 3.38 ERA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While it is known that the Pirates haven&#8217;t had a winning season since 1992, the Washington Nationals have yet to have one in their existence. \u00a0Ok, maybe an asterisk should be inserted since they came into existence in 2005 after coming down from Montreal, but the two franchises combined haven&#8217;t had a winning season since [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-professional"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Nationals vs. Pirates preview - 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