The Washington Nationals were scheduled for a split-squad afternoon/evening doubleheader that started for the team in Jupiter, Florida against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Nats lost in the 9th inning by a final score of 3-2.
This evening game features several starters with MacKenzie Gore making his Spring Training debut. He had been pitching in unofficial outings to ramp up to at least two innings today. Michael Soroka had been doing the same, and he pitched the first game today and went three hitless innings and exited with a 2-0 lead thanks to a Josh Bell 2-run homer.
The Nationals started off Spring Training going 3-0, and now have dropped four in a row. You don’t mind as much when your minor leaguers lose the game, like what happened today. But you also want to see progress.
This will be a 6:05 pm start and the game will be available only on Marlins’ radio via the MLB app. In fact, no TV for the Nats the rest of this weekend.
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.
“I felt pretty good, and a little amped up early. I was kind of throwing through a couple things and just couldn’t quite find that tensionless delivery that I kind of found earlier. Then kind of clicked it all into place at the back-end of the first inning and let it ride. So I felt pretty good about the adjustments I made. That’s just kind of everything I guess you could ask for in your first time out there.”
— Soroka said
“If anything, velocity got better the more I settled down. I think early on, it was just a little tight, coming out a little stiff. And I think it’s just, again, you’re out there for the first time in new jersey and you want to impress and you want to show the people that gave you this opportunity that they made a good decision. Once I kind of found that foot strike, found the tempo down the hill, it kind of started to click.”
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. Players will be ramped up in their workload. The team is going to be cautious for instance with James Wood and his sore quadricep.
“It being synced in is what I really like today. Soroka’s mechanics were really good. He wasn’t rushing anything. That allows the velo to stay consistent, and that’s what he was. He was 94-96 (mph) every batter. So that’s very encouraging, especially his first time facing another team. I know he’s been throwing. He had been throwing some live [batting practices], but to see him go out there and compete like that is very encouraging.”
— Martinez said
There are 26-days until the Opening Day, and we get to see this lineup early in Spring Training:
