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Byline: Scott Allen In early May, a fan on a popular Washington Nationals message board posited that the squad's most glaring weakness wasn't its below average lineup or limited bench [...]

Byline: Thomas Boswell Everybody wants a great starting pitching rotation. But first you have to develop a good one. That's what the Washington Nationals are doing right now, and much [...]

Byline: Cindy Boren After spending the spring watching Paul Skenes carve up minor league hitters, the Pittsburgh Pirates have decided that the time has arrived to unleash the flame-throwing pitcher [...]

Byline: Chelsea Janes Since 2016, five different pitchers have won the National League Cy Young Award. Within the span of about two hours Wednesday afternoon, word came that two of [...]

Byline: John Feinstein Drew Storen was never your typical Major League Baseball player. He always saw playing in the majors as a privilege, not a right, and believed it was [...]

Byline: Barry Svrluga If you root for the Washington Nationals, you should root against the LSU Tigers. The connection is this: The Nationals own the second pick in next month's [...]

Byline: Neil Greenberg MLB futures markets can be fertile ground for finding betting value, especially with end-of-season awards markets like the MVP, rookie of the year and Cy Young winners. [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty LOS ANGELES - Thaddeus Ward worked two scoreless innings at Dodger Stadium on Monday night, retiring each of the six batters he faced. And that means there's [...]

Byline: Andrew Golden WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Matt Cronin was a sophomore at Arkansas when he first heard the comparisons - that his fastball looked like Sean Doolittle's. Both [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty After a packed first round - a three-day stretch last weekend that included a 15-inning game, a seven-run comeback and an umpire rubbing a pitcher's ears during [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty ST. LOUIS - Paolo Espino is nearing the wrong kind of history in a stat he shouldn't, and really doesn't, care much about. But in all the [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty When Cade Cavalli was a junior at Bixby High School in Oklahoma in 2016, he noticed a left-handed freshman at one of the first varsity practices. The [...]

Byline: Scott Allen Pittsburgh Pirates TV play-by-play man Greg Brown didn't hide his disdain earlier this month after Pirates Manager Derek Shelton, with his bullpen overworked and his team in [...]

Byline: Scott Allen In 1985, John Lowe, a 26-year-old sportswriter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, invented a statistic meant to measure a starting pitcher's efficacy. The starter would be awarded a [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty Reliever Matt Cronin has pitched on 14 dates for the Class AA Harrisburg Senators this spring. The whole list -- April 9, April 14, April 17, April [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty Reliever Matt Cronin has pitched on 14 dates for the Class AA Harrisburg Senators this spring. The whole list - April 9, April 14, April 17, April [...]

Byline: Adam Kilgore BALTIMORE - In an uncertain moment this winter, Nestor Cortes called Matt Blake, the New York Yankees' pitching coach. Cortes had pitched to a sub-3.00 ERA over [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty WASHINGTON -- Facing the San Francisco Giants' Wilmer Flores on Sunday, in a spot that seemed big until a blowout formed, Victor Arano threw a remarkable pitch. [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - By metrics advanced and simple, Patrick Corbin was one of the sport's worst pitchers in 2021, surrendering a league-high 37 homers and [...]

Byline: Barry Svrluga HOUSTON - The World Series was just more than an hour old when the first starting pitcher was removed. The reasons for Framber Valdez's slow walk would [...]

Byline: Chelsea Janes LOS ANGELES - When Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts first saw the Tampa Bay Rays using an opener a few years ago, he hated it. 'It wasn't baseball,' [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty WASHINGTON - To stay on the mound, to have a chance at extending this baseball career, the left-hander starts with a pickoff move. Everyone says it should [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty WASHINGTON - When Ryne Harper gives up a home run, it looks different from when almost any other pitcher does. On Wednesday, for example, Corey Dickerson whacked [...]

Byline: Jesse Doughtery PHILADELPHIA - By Wednesday morning, the second since Major League Baseball began to enforce its crackdown on the use of foreign substances by pitchers, part of the [...]

Byline: Scott Allen Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo said umpires shouldn't have honored Phillies Manager Joe Girardi's request to check Nationals ace Max Scherzer for foreign substances during the fourth [...]

Byline: Neil Greenberg In 2020, MLB gave us a taste of what it would be like to have a universal designated hitter. Batters used to replace pitchers in the National [...]

Byline: Thomas Boswell This spring, almost everybody who analyzes baseball has identified but is also mystified by one central question: How will starting pitchers cope with full 162-game workloads the [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty Jackson Rutledge threw a pitch, felt his shoulder move in a way he didn't intend, then turned to Brad Holman, the Washington Nationals' pitching coordinator, to break [...]

Byline: Barry Svrluga So Max Scherzer has what he described as an 'ailment,' and his latest Grapefruit League start was pushed back. Over the past eight seasons, no one has [...]

Byline: Sam Fortier WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. â Joe Ross flashed that he might be fully back from 2017 elbow surgery. The right-hander impressed Manager Dave Martinez recently with three [...]

Byline: Neil Greenberg Spring training is underway, and soon the nation will move past the Houston Astros cheating scandal and focus on what's really important: fantasy baseball. As in other [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - The three locker nameplates are in a row - Joe Ross, Austin Voth, Erick Fedde - and the three names will be [...]

Byline: Scott Allen When Sean Doolittle walked into the visitor's clubhouse at Detroit's Comerica Park after recording his 100th career save and conducting an on-field interview last June 30, his [...]

Byline: Sam Fortier WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- The Washington Nationals are going to look more like the Washington Nationals pretty soon. The team is returning from its second-to-last off-day [...]

Byline: Neil Greenberg Finding below-market pitching can be one of the biggest challenges for fantasy baseball owners. In most standard 5Ã5 auction leagues, optimal budgeting calls for a 70/30 split [...]

Byline: Sam Fortier WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- The Washington Nationals want Wander Suero to throw fewer strikes. If that seems counterintuitive, consider what it sounds like to Suero. For [...]

Byline: Neil Greenberg Spring training is underway, and soon the nation will move past the Houston Astros cheating scandal and focus on what's really important: fantasy baseball. As in other [...]

Byline: Barry Svrluga HOUSTON - The person who will throw the first pitch of the 2019 World Series struck out more batters than any pitcher in a single season since [...]

Byline: Barry Svrluga Here's how much the (always flawed) story line around Stephen Strasburg has changed. He is, currently, the Washington Nationals' best pitcher. At this very moment, he is [...]

Byline: Sam Fortier The Washington Nationals finally won an elimination game Tuesday night, accomplishing the feat in stunning fashion with a heart-stopping, 4-3 victory in the National League wild-card game [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty WASHINGTON - Dave Martinez didn't fully commit to starting Max Scherzer in the National League wild-card game. The Washington Nationals manager knows better than that. The Nationals [...]

Byline: Sam Fortier The Washington Nationals draw closer to a one-game playoff every day, and the scrutiny on the health of their ace who'd likely start it is intensifying. Max [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty Something changed for the Washington Nationals on May 24, something subtle, something that only matters in a world where superstitions are treated like everyday currency: Ali Modami, [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty Patrick Corbin had just shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates for eight innings, and the Washington Nationals won, but the lefty starter was thinking about how little success [...]

Byline: Matthew Gutierrez The tightknit knuckleball community includes Hall of Famer Phil Niekro, 2012 NL Cy Young Award winner R.A. Dickey and two-time World Series champion Tim Wakefield. They showed [...]

Byline: Sam Fortier PHILADELPHIA - The Washington Nationals will start right-hander Austin Voth on Tuesday in the series opener in Baltimore against the Orioles, Manager Dave Martinez said on Sunday [...]

Byline: Sam Fortier The Washington Nationals promoted reliever Jonny Venters to the majors on Tuesday, a person with knowledge of the situation said. The team has not announced its corresponding [...]

Byline: Barry Svrluga WASHINGTON - His normal sneer and snarl weren't enough, apparently, so Max Scherzer added something black, blue, disfigured, badass. Who's to say he didn't whisper to Bob [...]

Byline: Scott Allen The Nationals avoided Lucas Giolito's turn in the rotation during the White Sox's two-game visit to Nationals Park last week and again during the teams's two-game set [...]

Byline: Sam Fortier WASHINGTON - Trouble finally found Patrick Corbin in the eighth Saturday. The Washington Nationals left-hander had breezed through the first seven innings, allowing just three singles and [...]