The Washington Nationals are in their final week of Grapefruit League games that will finish up on Sunday. Today we get to see MacKenzie Gore on the mound, and he is scheduled to pitch next on Saturday as his final tune-up before the regular season starts — and Gore was officially named today as the Opening Day starter.
As part of the Washington Nationals’ 20th anniversary season, the team invited alumni players as guest instructors in camp. Of course Gerardo Parra and Sean Doolittle are on staff as coaches and Ryan Zimmerman is on the team payroll. What has been great to have seen other alumni like Jayson Werth who was there over this past weekend. The other alumni who were scheduled to be in camp included position players: Ian Desmond, Danny Espinosa, Adam LaRoche, and Denard Span. These are the alumni pitchers who were scheduled to appear: Tyler Clippard, Aníbal Sánchez, Drew Storen and Jordan Zimmermann.
Today’s game will be a 1:05 pm EDT start time against the St. Louis Cardinals in CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches. Once again, the Nationals will face Erick Fedde. This is a radio only game with the Nationals coverage available on the MLB app.
The Nationals are at 11-10-1 in Grapefruit League play. Manager Dave Martinez probably knows who his final roster is for Opening Day, but the team may not give clues on some of the roster battles for the remaining spots.
Last week, Martinez was asked about who would be his fifth starter which appears to be a competition between DJ Herz and Mitchell Parker at this point. There might not be enough time for Shinnosuke Ogasawara to show what he has. Let’s look at ERA and WHIP for each: Herz 6.52/1.970, Parker 3.65/1.220, Ogasawara 7.56/2.520.
Unfortunately, starter Michael Soroka had a poor start yesterday, and his Spring Training ERA ballooned from 1.29 to 5.73, and his WHIP from 0.71 to 1.45. Maybe he was the victim of two wind-aided home runs, but what about the six walks?
“This is why we go through Spring Training. The second inning, it looked like he was going to find himself. He just couldn’t sustain that same delivery. It was a rough day for him. What I do like is he threw 90 pitches and at the end he was still strong. But it was all about location. He couldn’t find the strike zone today.”
— Martinez said
One starter who is out of the competition for the rotation is Jackson Rutledge as he will join Cole Henry as former starters who have officially been moved to the bullpen.
With the competition for the starting rotation whittled down, it looks like Parker is the frontrunner — but Martinez won’t name that 5th starter just yet. In fact Ogasawara will get one more start this week in a Spring Training game after he pitched last week in a game on the backfields.
“This is going to be one of those [games] where you watch it, and you get rid of the negative feelings you ran into while you were out there. You’ve just got to flush it and go back to the things I found that got me into a good place the first two outings. Really this whole spring, I’ve been locked in. I just couldn’t find it today. I’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
— Soroka said
RHP Zach Brzykcy has been dealing with a quadricep tendon issue, and he wasn’t projected to make the Opening Day roster prior to the announcement of his injury. Amed Rosario who was scratched due to soreness in his knee earlier in the week was back to play. But we have our first Spring Training injury that will result in an IL move as Andres Chaparro injured his oblique and he will start the season on the IL.
Here is the 40-man roster as well as a list of the NRI players you will be seeing. As you also had been seeing, players from Minor League camp have been subbing in late to get some action.
There are 10-days until the Opening Day, and we get to see a lineup today that was exactly what we penciled up as the Opening Day lineup after Paul DeJong was signed:
