WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — In 24 hours, there should be 62 players in Washington Nationals camp, and spring training will really ramp up. Position players are scheduled to report Monday. The first full-squad workout is scheduled for Tuesday. Trea Turner, Ryan Zimmerman, Victor Robles, Howie Kendrick, Carter Kieboom, Eric Thames and Starlin Castro have all appeared in the Nationals’ facility, and the rest will soon follow.
This is the second Nationals spring training notebook, a space for insights, analysis and tidbits that fall outside of the rest of our coverage of the team. Please keep reaching out on Twitter or by email — jesse.dougherty@washpost.com — if there’s anything you’d like to see in the next one.
Inside the Nationals’ clubhouse, the consensus on baseball’s new three-batter-minimum rule for relief pitchers is two-pronged: Bad for the sport, good for Washington.
After speaking with a handful of relievers this week, it is clear that they don’t think this will have its intended effect. Major League Baseball implemented a new three-batter-minimum rule in its ongoing effort to quicken the pace of play. Some nuances are that a reliever can always be removed after an inning — even if he hasn’t faced three batters — and an intentional walk does not count toward the minimum. The idea is that if teams can’t use bullpens to match up one batter at a time, a few minutes will be shaved from the length of games. But players believe the difference will be negligible and are bummed to see any strategy removed.
They do, however, believe this will benefit the Nationals in a few ways. The expected bullpen is full of relievers with close to even splits. Will Harris is effective against both right- and left-handed hitters. The same went for Daniel Hudson last season. Washington likes Wander Suero, its cutter-heaving righty, against hitters on both sides of the plate. Tanner Rainey is a question mark because lefties crushed him last season (a .942 on-base-plus-slugging percentage vs. .526 for righties). Lefty Roenis Elías, who had confounding trouble retiring righties in 2019, has solid splits in a six-year career. In theory, he is a pitcher the Nationals would worry about with a three-batter minimum. But a larger sample size suggests otherwise.
Elías’s career numbers against facing right-handed hitters: .244 batting average/.318 on-base percentage/.399 slugging percentage.
Elías’s career numbers against facing left-handed hitters: .262/.342/.398.
Factor in the Nationals’ offense and the depth of their perspective bench, and they begin to really like the rule. Manager Dave Martinez imagined Washington is facing a left-handed starter, and that starter is eventually relieved by a right-handed reliever. There is a good chance Martinez would have both Eric Thames (a powerful lefty) and Asdrúbal Cabrera (a switch hitter) available to plug in, depending on which part of the order is due up. And if Martinez decided to use both Thames and Cabrera, firing two pinch hitters in an inning, the reliever would have to endure the tilted matchups.
Which brings us to the last points made by members of the Nationals’ bullpen: It is inevitable that teams will look to counter this measure when necessary. Even if an intentional walk doesn’t count as a batter faced, one reliever noted that “unintentional intentional walks have been part of the game forever.” If the bases were empty and a matchup was entirely skewed, there is nothing stopping a reliever from burying four pitches in the dirt to issue a free pass. One reliever joked that he would just chuck four fastballs 10 feet above the catcher’s head if he had to, giving the batter absolutely no chance to hit.
Another complication centered around injuries. If a team is in a big spot and a pitcher is stuck on the mound, how could the umpires decipher a faked injury from a real one? The reliever could grab his arm and exit the game, and then the club could announce he left for precautionary reasons that will not require a trip to the injured list. A Nationals reliever suggested giving each pitcher one “free pass” per season, then require him to go to the IL — for the minimum 15-day stint — each time he is subbed out for health concerns.
These are the concerns with baseball’s latest attempt to improve its on-field product. We’ll soon see how justified they are.
Martinez indicated that Max Scherzer will be on the mound for the Nationals’ exhibition game against the Houston Astros on Saturday. The matchup comes amid the sign-stealing scandal that has blanketed baseball in general and the teams’ shared facility in West Palm Beach specifically. Martinez told reporters that Scherzer is “adamant about being the first guy out there” and that the ace will prepare by throwing a live bullpen session during the week. Martinez will make his official decision based on how Scherzer’s arm responds.
One unique element of spring training is the interaction between veterans and minor leaguers. After Sunday’s workout, Stephen Strasburg and Wil Crowe sat in folding chairs and discussed pitching nuances, including how to best use a slide step with a runner on first base. Crowe is a 25-year-old righty who finished last season with Class AAA Fresno. Strasburg is the reigning World Series MVP. A similar conversation played out in the bullpen last week, when Sean Doolittle, a 33-year-old closer, asked Jakson Reetz, a 24-year-old catcher, for feedback on his fastball.
Last March, Crowe called spring training to a “PhD course” in pitching. He and Reetz are just two of the many young players taking full advantage.
Suero, a 28-year-old reliever, displayed critical versatility Sunday afternoon. Catcher Welington Castillo needed a haircut. So Suero got out a pair of clippers, put Castillo in a chair in the bathroom and went to work. This drew a crowd of Latin American players, and Elías, a native of Cuba, shouted that it was the “Latino shop!”
Hugo Tandron — known around baseball as “Juice” the barber — is supposed to visit from Miami on Wednesday. That is a regular occurrence in spring training, when Juice is only 70 miles away, but it seems Suero is trying to cut into his customer base.
There is a trophy in the Nationals’ clubhouse, but it’s not the one you probably think it is. The winners of last year’s fantasy football league had their names engraved on a replica of the NFL’s Vince Lombardi Trophy. Catcher Yan Gomes and batting practice pitcher Ali Modami co-managed the team that won the title. But they are joined on the hardware by a piece of tape with “TREA TURNER” written on it. The suspicion among players is that the shortstop put it there himself. A person familiar with the final standings indicated Turner’s team was not very good.
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