Notebook: Nats turn to Fister in Game 3
By THE SPORTS XCHANGE
WASHINGTON -- Doug Fister, acquired in a trade with the Detroit Tigers before the season, will start for the Washington Nationals in Game 3 on Monday in San Francisco.
The tall right-hander was 16-6 with an ERA of 2.41 in 25 starts this season.
"I don't know that we are in this situation without Doug," first baseman Adam LaRoche said Saturday. "I think he's helped our starters a ton."
Fister, who began this season on the disabled list, works fast and gets a lot of groundball outs.
"You know, the guy doesn't break 90 miles an hour very often," LaRoche added. “He has a knack for sawing guys off, which is pretty tough to do, with that velocity."
--Tim Hudson, the Game 2 starter for the Giants, is no stranger to the Nationals.
In regular-season play he is 18-5 with an ERA of 2.35 in 31 starts against Washington, with many of those games coming when he played for the Atlanta Braves.
So how does Washington first baseman Adam LaRoche approach Hudson, his teammate in Atlanta in 2005, 2006 and 2009?
"You have to get to him early," LaRoche said before Game 2. "Huddy, throughout his career, he is known for, once he gets past the third, fourth inning and settles in, he gets to be really tough.
"If you can get to him the first two, three innings, ideally, it is huge. Not to say he can't be beat after that, but once he gets rolling, he's good. Really good.
"So, yeah, I mean, I don't know. He's got it figured out. He knows when to make adjustments. He knows how to read hitters well. He has a knack for that again. He pounds the zone, typically. Be read ready to hit early."
The Giants were 2-5 against Washington in regular-season play this year and both wins came in games started by Hudson.
--Nationals Park is about 107 miles north of The Diamond in Richmond, the home of the Double-A affiliate of the Giants.
And while the Giants are some 3,000 miles away from the Virginia capital the team has strong ties to the Old Dominion.
The Richmond Flying Squirrels have been the Double-A Eastern League affiliate of the Giants since 2009. Many of the current contributors of the Giants came through Richmond on their way up the minor league ladder, including Brandon Crawford, Brandon Belt, Joe Panik and Hunter Strickland.
"It seems like here, it doesn't matter who you are, you are treated like one of the team," Belt said before Game 2. "You are treated like everyone else."
Strickland, who pitched in Game 1 for the Giants, was 1-1 with an ERA of 2.02 in 38 games with 11 saves for Richmond earlier this year. He was then promoted to Triple-A Fresno before he got the call to the Giants in early September.
Panik, the second baseman, had five hits in the first two postseason games this year to set a Giants record. He hit .257 in 137 games with 27 doubles, four triples and four home runs while spending all of 2013 in Richmond.
For good measure Giants reliever Javier Lopez is a graduate of Robinson High in Fairfax, Va., about 30 miles from Nationals Park, and manager Bruce Bochy lived in Falls Church, Va., for part of his boyhood.