The Washington Nationals travel to Port St. Lucie to face the New York Mets at Clover Park. With exactly two weeks remaining in Florida for Grapefruit League games, starting pitchers might be down to their final-3 starts of the pre-season. Jake Irvin takes the mound for the Nats today.
Tomorrow, the Nationals have a day/night doubleheader against the Marlins. Tuesday is the final off-day in Florida on the Grapefruit League schedule. Mitchell Parker is scheduled to pitch the first game on Monday with Shinnosuke Ogasawara getting the start in the evening game.
This will be a 1:10 pm start and the game will be available on MASN as well as Nationals Radio on the Team 980 AM via the MLB App. The Mets are starting Clay Holmes in this game. He was a reliever with the Yankees who the Mets have converted back to a starter. He’s been almost unhittable in his first two starts of Spring Training going a combined 6.0 innings of scoreless baseball and a 0.33 WHIP.
The Nationals are at 8-6 in Grapefruit League play. Manager Dave Martinez had to watch his team put up their worst defense of Spring Training, and fortunately, none of the players who had the defensive miscues are projected as starters. It wasn’t only the booted balls and bad throws, but it was the inability to get to balls in a normal range of an infielder. The official scorer was too kind to the fielders as if they were Little League kids. In all, only three errors were assessed and only on errant throws. Drew Millas got tagged with two throwing errors and Trey Lipscomb with one. Jose Tena at third base and Amed Rosario at second base were also guilty for not helping out starter DJ Herz. While that wasn’t mentioned in Herz’s struggles in the postgame presser, it should have been.
“[Herz] threw a lot of strikes. The big thing with him is, he got ahead, and then he got hitters back in the count: 3-2, 2-2. Once he gets ahead, he’s got to stay ahead. But he did throw the ball around the plate. It was way better today. A better outing for him today, so we’ll build from that.”
— Martinez said
“Right now, his fastball [velocity] is a little down, but I think that’s going to come. I think also, he’s letting hitters back in the count. Once he gets ahead and stays ahead of them, the strikeouts will come.”
Much of Spring Training is about getting the reps in for the veteran players while working on new pitches and mechanics for the pitchers, and batters are working on increasing contact and power. For the players who are trying to make the roster, they are the players who have to impress.
As we know, the key is also staying healthy. Riley Adams was hit by a pitch on his wrist on Friday and scratched from Saturday’s game. He did have an X-ray which showed no broken bones. Again, health is a key. Players will be ramped up in their workload as Spring Training continues.
“You know what, he’s done this before. He’s had some struggles, but it’s still spring. He’ll be fine.”
— Martinez on the defense
Here is the 40-man roster as well as a list of the NRI players you will be seeing. At some point, you might also see players from Minor League camp get some action.
There are 18-days until the Opening Day, and we get to see this lineup today:
