Last night confirmed my suspicion that left handed pitchers are giving the Nationals problems this season
The Washington Nationals offense has been a highly inconsistent unit. One game they are teeing off and hitting homers, the next it is a steady barrage of ground balls. Part of the issue is the teams inability to hit left handed pitching. The Nats inability to get things going against a struggling Cade Povich exemplified the problem.
So far this season the Nationals have a solid .718 OPS against right handed pitching. However, that number drops to .606 against southpaws. Soft tossing lefties like Povich, Andrew Heaney and Bailey Falter have carved up the Nats this season.
The reason that this is happening is that a lot of the Nationals good hitters have only really been good against right handed pitching. Nathaniel Lowe has gotten off to a good start in his Nats career. He has an .817 OPS and is steady as they come at first base. However, basically all of that production has come against right handed pitching.
Lowe is hitting .345 with four homers and 18 RBI’s along with a 1.064 OPS against righties. However, against southpaws he is just 6/36 with no homers and just one RBI. All ten of his walks have also come against righties. Over his career, Lowe has been slightly better against righties, but the splits are nothing crazy. He has an .803 career OPS against righties compared to a solid .760 mark against lefties. That is a fairly platoon neutral hitter with massive platoon splits. I suspect those will even out.
One player who’s splits might not even out is Keibert Ruiz. Despite being a switch hitter, I have always thought Ruiz has a much better looking swing from the left side. His OPS is almost 50 points higher from the left side at .698 compared to .649.
So far this season, it has been even more extreme. He has an .877 OPS against righties compared to a .656 mark against lefties. Just from watching Keibert over the years, he just seems much more dangerous as a left handed hitter. He has a lot more power and is looking to do damage from that side of the plate.
The Nationals also have plenty of hitters who are struggling in general, so to add in two more guys who aren’t good against lefties is not a good recipe. The Nationals also have a left handed heavy lineup, so I can see this becoming a season long issue.
Lefties, especially soft tossing ones who can entice Nationals hitters to pound the ball into the ground will give the team trouble. The Nationals can be a solid offense when they are going right, but they fall into bad habits when things aren’t going well, especially versus southpaws.
Hitting too many ground balls and chasing out of the zone have been core features of Darnell Coles led offenses in DC. With a lot of younger left handed hitters, it seems like these issues are showing up more against southpaws.
Luckily for the Nats, the Mets have four righties lined up, so maybe we will see more offense this series. The one Mets pitcher the Nats are missing in this four game series is David Peterson. I am relieved by that because he is the exact type of crafty lefty the Nats have not been able to hit.
It is possible this is just small sample size noise. After all, it is just April 25th. However, it is something I am going to monitor as we get deeper into the season. Will the Nationals be able to solve their offensive problems against left handed pitching.