Did you expect to see Shinnosuke Ogasawara pitching on the second game of Spring Training with basically the Opening Day lineup behind him? With the exception of James Wood nursing the mild tendonitis in his quadricep, every other part of this could be what would we see on Sunday, March 30 at Nationals Park. Here we are at the CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches complex.
This will be a 1:05 pm start and the game will be available on TV via MASN as well as you can get the Nats Radio feed via The Team 980 AM.
This will be our first look at Ogasawara pitching in a game. He is the first direct signing of an international free agent in Nationals’ history. Ogasawara will be competing for the fifth starter’s spot with DJ Herz and Mitchell Parker. Some feel like the only three starting spots that should be guaranteed should be for Jake Irvin, Trevor Williams, and MacKenzie Gore with the fourth and fifth spots a competition to also include Michael Soroka. From the sounds of it, Soroka was all but guaranteed that he will be pitching in the starting rotation even after his struggles in the White Sox rotation that led to his demotion to the bullpen in 2024.
To repeat yesterday’s message, these early Spring Training games come with the strict pitch counts as starters build up their stamina to get to that 70-80 pitch count late in March. Now Jarlin Susana did face six batters yesterday, and he labored through 34-pitches which seemed excessive. By the way, he was averaging nearly 101 mph with a 103 top velo on his fastball with 99 as his minimum on the stadium radar gun.
By plan, the first time through the starting rotation, most pitchers will throw no more than one inning and the starters will look like openers in early Spring Training. Manager Dave Martinez will pencil up his plan.
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. Yesterday, it was Robert Hassell III as the star of the game. He missed a grand slam by a few feet, and got the game-winning RBIs on a bases clearing 3-run double. We saw quick work from Jake Irvin and Jose A. Ferrer. Then we saw some struggles. Three Nats pitchers issued lead-off walks (LoW), and two of those players scored.
“We’ve got to get [Susana] ready for the season, so we’re not going to baby him. That’s why we left him out there for that many pitches, because we know he can throw that many. We’ve got to build him up and get him ready for the season.”
— manager Dave Martinez said
Much of Spring Training is about working on new pitches and mechanics for the pitchers. Irvin added a slider to his repertoire, and since his one inning of work was so quick, he was only able to throw one of them among his eight pitches to complete his work. He did go to the bullpen to simulate more pitches to get his pitch count to 27.
Irvin’s repertoire brings back his fastball, curveball, changeup, and cutter from last year with this new slider will hopefully allow him to throw an arsenal that matches up what another Nats’ pitcher, Max Scherzer, used to throw in the same uniform.
“I struggled a lot with getting in-zone swing and miss last year. This is something that will kind of balance out the really slower curveball and the harder fastball. And then my cutter and changeup are both a little harder, too. I wanted something that’s in that middle ground there.”
— Irvin said yesterday
There are 32-days until the Opening Day, and we get to see this lineup early in Spring Training:
