- 1 day ago
Fans in D.C are starting to buy in to what's happening in Nats town.
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00:00In 30 minutes, manager of the Washington Nationals, Blake Butera,
00:04is on the show with us here on Grant and Danny.
00:07And in 90 minutes, a chance for you to win tickets to Hardy,
00:11the country country tour over at Merriweather Post Pavilion.
00:17Better be listening, 4 o'clock, ahead of the Beltway Blitz right here on GND.
00:21Speaking of the Nationals, though, how about that series this weekend?
00:25I took my little guy out there.
00:26A lot of baseball for him.
00:28He's hooked right now.
00:29On Saturday and on Sunday, we were at Nationals Park,
00:32and that means we saw two wins.
00:34They beat the Padres 9-4, came back with a dramatic and an impressive
00:40six-run seventh inning to win the first of their two victories
00:45over the Padres this weekend.
00:46And then yesterday, a 4-2 win behind Zach Littell,
00:49throwing the ball really well, who's completely turned his season around.
00:52Six innings, two runs.
00:53For him, he was scoreless through five before running out of gas late in his outing.
00:57But Danny, another home run from James Wood, who's got 16.
01:00Another series win against a winning club.
01:04And that's what the Nats are doing.
01:05They're playing one of the hardest schedules in baseball recently,
01:08and they've been fantastic.
01:09Finishing off a month with 17 wins for the first time in three years.
01:15This team's playing excellent baseball.
01:17They have won five of six of their last, or five out of the last six series.
01:20The other was a draw, two games apiece to the Mets.
01:23The big deal to me is they're winning games like yesterday, too.
01:27For a while, when they were, you know, four or five, whatever, six games under 500,
01:31the offense was really good, but you had to win eight to seven.
01:34You had to win ten to four.
01:36Now, you can find a well-pitched ball game.
01:38You can find a two-to-one victory, a two-nothing victory,
01:40like those games in Atlanta or a game yesterday where Zach Littell is kind of back to his old self.
01:44He almost like he unzipped out of this imposter suit that he was in April,
01:48and in May, he's pitching to a two-three over the same number of starts as he was in March
01:52and April.
01:52He's been really, really good, so now all of a sudden, you're not hiding him.
01:56You're not that panic when he's on the mound,
01:57knowing you've got to get a touchdown and go for two in order to have a chance in that game.
02:01You're now able to, you know, be fast and fancy free.
02:04It's been really impressive where it's a different guy every day that's kind of either been the hero.
02:09It's been Wood a lot and Abrams a lot, but, you know, Curtis Mead is having a renaissance month.
02:14Remember the first weekend of the year?
02:15It was the Joey Weimer show where he's Mickey Mantle.
02:17He's in Rochester now.
02:18It's awesome to watch this group go about it, man.
02:20They have a positive run differential right now, meaning they have scored more runs than they've allowed,
02:26which is not something this organization's been capable of for several seasons.
02:33It's amazing.
02:34Right now, in the American League, as an example,
02:37there are six teams with a positive run differential in the entire league.
02:41The National League's a much better league where there's more winning teams,
02:44and still there are only seven teams, including the Nationals, with a positive run differential.
02:50They're plus one.
02:51But what's really interesting is you could be 31-29,
02:55but based on run differential or some metrics, your expected win-loss could be like six games worse than that.
03:01You're struggling to actually, you know, be in some of the games where you lose.
03:07Not this team.
03:08Their expected win-loss is 30-30, basically right where they are, essentially.
03:12And on top of that, if you look at how they've lost recently this month,
03:16when they go down, Danny, they go down swinging.
03:19Yep.
03:19In fact, I saw this stat circulating online today.
03:22The Nationals have either won, been tied in the final inning,
03:26or had the tying run on base to end the game in every single game they've played since May 17.
03:31For two straight weeks, win or the tying run at the plate were tied in the final inning
03:36of some of these games that went to extras in every single game.
03:41That is the quality of baseball that they're playing right now.
03:44And fans haven't completely gotten in yet.
03:46The diehards that never went away are out there.
03:47They're enjoying this.
03:48They're having a blast.
03:49But I'm out there.
03:51Yesterday, there was only about, I think they announced 24,000.
03:53Maybe there was 22,000, 23,000 there, something like that.
03:56You know, same thing Friday and Saturday.
03:58Could have been bigger crowds.
03:59Friday night was awesome because they had a concert after.
04:02And normally on those concert nights, you get a lot of the young people
04:05that will come out to drink and party.
04:06And there happens to be a baseball game in the background.
04:08There's also a game, yeah.
04:09It's funny, the second inning versus like the eighth inning on those concert nights,
04:13the ballpark, where it feels like the World Series or the NLCS or something
04:17by the end of the night.
04:18And the noise is mostly being made by people that don't care about the Nationals.
04:21But it doesn't matter because it's so fun to be there.
04:23The environment's great.
04:24I was doing postgame that night, of course.
04:25And I'm, you know, doing moments of wrap-up, and this is how we got here
04:29while Tyo Cruz was spinning his hits, you know, a couple hundred yards behind me.
04:33But, yeah, I mean, just go back to that night, though,
04:36just as an example of what you're talking about.
04:38They lost that game 7-5.
04:39In the eighth inning, you get the bases loaded against the best closer in baseball.
04:43Luis Garcia tattoos the ball, takes a great play by the left fielder,
04:47basically up against the wall, to rob you of a hit that we either would have tied the game
04:50or given the lead going into the ninth.
04:51After a fantastic at-bat.
04:53Yes, this is who they are and what they do.
04:55It's no longer endless fun.
04:57In the night, they're doing this for a couple of weeks.
05:00This is the team.
05:01This is what the team does.
05:03And they are relentless.
05:06They battle, to go back to the last regime, what they always used to talk about,
05:09but they really actually do it.
05:10Instead of just saying they do it or the manager in a postgame
05:12talking about how much they're battling when Miguel Carwood said they battled,
05:15they literally do.
05:16They make it hard on you.
05:17In that sixth inning on Saturday when they scored, or was it the seventh inning,
05:20who scored a million runs, it's not four straight homers, it's not something crazy,
05:24it's hit by pitch, grinded out at bat, everybody's kind of passing the baton,
05:28making it hard on the opponent.
05:29You do that enough times, you win games.
05:31I know we were all at the game on Friday.
05:33There's five of us in studio right now.
05:35Dad, Toby, Strobes, Danny, and myself.
05:38All of us were there.
05:39Friday night, Tyo Cruz, concert after.
05:42I did not stay for that, but I know you boys did.
05:44Did anybody go to the game Saturday?
05:46Toby would have done postgame, so you were there.
05:47The tarps-off section on Saturday was a smash.
05:52Love it.
05:52This thing that's happened in baseball has become a really fun, spontaneous,
05:58natural, innate thing.
05:59It's not forced, but basically, for those of you that haven't tracked this,
06:04this started in St. Louis where a college baseball team,
06:08not an actual NCAA team, but what is a club team at a university,
06:13went to a Cardinals game.
06:14And the dudes were enjoying their night and having some drinks, probably.
06:18The next thing you know, they rip off their shirts,
06:20and they're waving them around their head,
06:21and they're just very little body fat,
06:24and they're out and about on a pretty night in St. Louis, Missouri,
06:27at a Cardinals game going ham sandwich.
06:29Well, by the end of the game, a bunch of people had joined in,
06:31and they're filling up this section,
06:33this tarps-off, as they're calling it, section,
06:35ripping off their shirts.
06:36Well, that story ended very cool because the manager of the Cardinals loved it
06:40and brought the guys down to meet the players.
06:42And over the next two nights, this section grew massively in St. Louis.
06:45But because of that neat thing happening as kind of a spontaneous one-off in St. Louis,
06:50all over the baseball, every ballpark, every fan base has kind of tried to do their own version.
06:55Well, the Nats started on the end of the last homestand.
06:58Didn't go great.
06:59There were a few people doing it.
07:00But on Saturday, they filled up all of Section 236 and the third level out in right field,
07:06the seats that only, like, Soto and maybe James Wood and BP or Kyle Schwerber.
07:12Adam Dunn back in the day.
07:13Bryce Harper have ever visited, right?
07:15At the very, very top.
07:16But they got so many people doing it that it spilled over into the next section.
07:22And I'm telling you, it felt like a soccer game a little bit
07:24because they were chanting, and you could hear them,
07:27and they started doing the Baltimore-esque, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.
07:32But you're just sitting there with almost like this now natural soundtrack to the baseball game.
07:38It was amazing.
07:39I mean, Toby, you saw it.
07:40How cool was the Nats tarps-off Saturday vibe?
07:44It was literally fun to be at the ballpark again.
07:47I couldn't believe it.
07:48It was incredible to watch because as it started to grow,
07:51as you started to see some more people,
07:53you would literally look over there and you'd see that tunnel to that section.
07:57And dudes are running up the tunnel, ripping their shirts off,
08:00and it grew to almost be two full sections by the time the game was over.
08:04It was incredible to watch.
08:05Toby, where did you put your shirt?
08:06Like, I was worried about the guys getting their shirts back when it's over.
08:09Like, so when you went out there and did it, where'd you put your shirt?
08:11Yeah, so, uh, I kept my tarp on for the sake of everybody at Nationals Park.
08:15But, uh, it looked like a great time up there.
08:17You have to have very little body fat to do.
08:20Ah.
08:20It seems like the average age, I wasn't up there,
08:22but I saw a video from, like, in the trenches.
08:24It seems like the average age is, like, 17 or 18.
08:27I mean, it's very young people.
08:29I would not probably let my kid run eight sections over to do it,
08:32but people seem to have no problem.
08:34Maybe I'm just the unfun dad.
08:35I don't know.
08:36But it looked like they were having a blast up there.
08:39And we actually had a listener who was, like, in his 50s
08:41who, like, sent me a picture from the section.
08:43He did it, too?
08:44He did it.
08:44I love it.
08:45This was too cool not to join.
08:46But it was, it just added to the experience.
08:51And it's not forced.
08:52That's what I like.
08:53Same here.
08:54It's a very natural thing that's sweeping baseball.
08:57But whether it was the Orioles series on,
08:59I believe it was the last homestand before this one,
09:01when they got 40,000 a couple times, 30,000 plus.
09:06Like, the Nats are one of the bottom attended teams in all of baseball.
09:09I understand why.
09:11They've been terrible for years.
09:12Ownership's not that invested.
09:14And people have checked out.
09:15But if you want to try to find correlation between excitement of a ball club,
09:20quality of young talent, offensive production, runs scored,
09:25and people coming out to see the team, it's not there.
09:28Because this lineup, just in a vacuum,
09:31deserves so much more than it's getting right now.
09:33It's the best offense in the sport.
09:35Yeah, and that's not hyperbolic.
09:36It's a tree falling in the woods on most nights.
09:37Yeah, 13th out of 15 in terms of National League attendance at this point.
09:41But I do think business will continue to pick up
09:43as people are kind of coming to realization.
09:46Like, hey, wait a minute.
09:47This isn't just two weeks.
09:49This isn't just a fun weekend.
09:50This is now who this team is, and they're pitching better.
09:53Again, we talked about this a couple weeks ago.
09:55The bullpen, they were just walking around with Molotov cocktails,
09:59looking for fire to add to fires.
10:01They were so horrendous.
10:03It's now kind of quietly been building back
10:05into the middle of the pack in the National League.
10:07And then you add in starting pitching that, again,
10:10two of the five guys were just a disaster in waiting
10:13where they had to hide Miles Michaels.
10:14You've got to hide Zach Littell.
10:15You don't need more, right, to a certain degree.
10:18You've got a baseball team here.
10:19Again, they're not a World Series contender.
10:21Nobody's saying they are.
10:22But given that the over-under win-loss expectation
10:25was in the mid-60s,
10:28they're sprinting towards that by the All-Star break, dude.
10:30How about James Wood, dude?
10:33James frickin' Wood.
10:36How about all the people that were upset about him?
10:39But he strikes out sometimes.
10:42I'm sorry, what?
10:45Oh, 1983 called?
10:47They want their complaint back?
10:48What a stupid thing to care about.
10:50What a stupid concern to have.
10:5416 bolts, hitting over 270, 30 points above league average.
10:59Ops plus 173, 73% better than a league average baseball player.
11:04Thank God he's on my side.
11:06You guys keep worrying about five years from now.
11:09I'll be the guy watching him hit the home runs at the ballpark.
11:11Blake Butera in 20 minutes.
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