Fla @ Nats

blak_jak_daniel, where was Johnson pitching the last time he gave up more than 3 earned runs in a start?  And how many did he give up?

True, but in both of his starts against the Nats this season, Johnson pitched like shit and his team went on to win in spite of him.

Those "last three games" are his only major league games.  Martin had a rough major league debut against the Mets on July 20th, giving up 5 runs in his first two innings before being lifted after 4 innings with the score 5-2.  In his next start, he threw two shutout innings at the Padres before the rains came and caused a 3 hour delay.  The delay forced Martin from the game.  Last week in Milwaukee, Martin made it into the 7th inning before the Brewers knocked him out with the score 4-3.  The bullpen allowed Milwaukee's 5th run to score which was charged to Martin.

I have no idea how J.D. Martin will fare tonight against Florida.  If anyone out there wants to predict that he'll do poorly based on basically his first two big league starts, go right ahead.  It's just not much data to go on.  His inexperience is a big reason why Nats backers are getting better than +150.

Okay, here's a possible reason.  The Nationals are actually a pretty good team when they're off a game in which they came from behind to win.  In fact since the All-Star break, they've come from behind to win four times, and in their next game they won as dogs of +145 and +165 (both in Milwaukee) and +140 (last night in Pittsburgh).  In their win last night, they fell behind the Pirates 3-0 before blowing past them to win easily.  The scores of the three games were 14-6, 8-3, and 8-4.  Granted, they were facing sorry pitchers, but look what they did to those sorry pitchers.  Josh Johnson is a much tougher assignment, of course, but Josh Johnson also had his worst start by far this season in Washington back in April (6 earned runs in 6 innings). 

Wait a sec........so you think the Marlins, who are -163 right now at Pinnacle, will be more than -200 by the time the game starts?

Really?

See, that's just the kind of overconfident mentality that gets heavily-favored teams in trouble.  The players, like many of us, don't think much beyond "the Nats suck."  Meanwhile, the fact that the Nationals are playing better than they have all season goes overlooked.  This doesn't necessarily mean that the Marlins and their backers are screwed.  Of course not.  But what it does mean is that while Marlins backers are paying a high price (-170 or whatever) for Florida's best effort, they might not get that best effort because too many players on the team might look at this game as a "layup."  And why wouldn't the Marlins be overconfident, given that they're 9-0 this season against Washington and 25-3 in their last 28 meetings?

Those last two stats made me groan a little bit.