Washington Nationals news & notes: MacKenzie Gore vs the Astros; Celebrating 2019’s World Series win + more…

Notes and quotes from the series opener with the Astros in the nation’s capital…

FOULED OFF:

When 25-year-old starter MacKenzie Gore is at his best, as he was at times while striking out 11 over five innings on the road in Oakland during the last road trip, he’s really something.

“It’s beautiful,” Davey Martinez said after the southpaw dominated the Athletics and kept the home team off the board in a 3-1 win in Oakland Coliseum.

“He goes out there and he attacks the strike zone, you know?” Martinez said.

“He goes out there and competes. This is — hopefully, we can now see that consistency.”

Gore went fastball heavy against the A’s, throwing his four-seamer for 52 of his 90 pitches, (58%), and generating 28 swings and 12 whiffs on the pitch, which averaged 97.1 MPH, and got up to 97.8.

Just five fastballs were put in play, with 11 fouled off, as he limited A’s hitters to just four hits overall, and one walk, while he was on the mound.

He wrapped up his outing with five consecutive strikeouts, on 29 pitches.

“I didn’t know that till now. But I knew I was missing bats,” Gore said after the start, when the streak of Ks came up.

“I knew we were locating well, [catcher] Riley [Adams] was really good today, we had a good game plan, and I was able to execute it good enough to where we kind of got in rhythm.”

“I know he struck out a lot of guys,” his manager said of the impressive K total in the outing.

“I’m really talking to him about pitch efficiency is going to be the next key for him, trying to get to six innings at this 90-pitch mark.”

Gore threw 92 pitches in four innings against Houston’s Astros last night, with opposing hitters in the series opener in the nation’s capital, fouling off 26 of the 92, including 17 of Gore’s fastballs, which the Nats’ lefty threw 59% of the time in the outing.

Gore gave up seven hits, one walk, and three runs, generated just eight swinging strikes on the night, five on his fastball, and got 14 called strikes, 10 on the heater, which sat 96.3, and got up to 97.9, but the pitch count was up, after three consecutive doubles and RBI single in the second put the visitors up 3-0 early in what ended up a 5-3 loss.

“MacKenzie, I thought, threw the ball well,” Martinez said after the game. “The three runs: a couple of bleeders in there, which is part of baseball, but I thought he threw the ball well.”

“Frustrating,” Gore said, summing up the outing. “I need to be a little bit better. But it was kind of one of those things where it wasn’t bad … I just wasn’t good enough. But it wasn’t terrible, just need to be a little better.”

Gore threw 37 of his 92 pitches in the long second.

“They just got hits,” he said of what went wrong. “They just kind of hit a couple balls hard, and they also just hit a couple where we — hit it in some grass. A lot of foul balls tonight. It’s funny, it’s not like I was walking a lot of guys, but I still threw a lot of pitches, so just going back and looking at and understanding why there were a lot of foul balls, and trying to just be able to put guys away in whatever way that is a little quicker.”

His stuff still played though, and there were positives to take from the outing.

“I felt good. I just, I didn’t — if it was execution, or you know, I mean, they’re also good, so it was just kind of one of those nights where I just — I think it was [a José] Altuve at-bat in the fourth inning where it was like ten pitches, and it was like 0-2 the whole time, so it was like kind of that, they fouled a lot of pitches off, and I didn’t put guys away.”

PARTY LIKE IT’S 2019:

If you somehow weren’t aware, this weekend in Washington, the Nationals are celebrating the five-year anniversary of 2019’s World Series win, with a number of the players back for the festivities. Davey Martinez, who was then in his second, and is now in his seventh year on the bench in the nation’s capital, told reporters before the series opener on Friday that he still thinks about that ‘19 club on a daily basis.

“Every time I look at my ring and my trophy, I always feel like it was yesterday, so it’s a good feeling,” Martinez said, and he is happy to have so many friendly faces in Nationals Park this weekend, to relive some of excitement of the 19-31 to the first World Series by a D.C.-based team since 1924 run.

Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Every team that wins a World Series is special, but Martinez said what really set the ‘19 Nats apart from other clubs he’s been involved with, was the sense of family they established on their way to the championship.

“Teams build an identity together, right?” he explained in his pregame press conference on Friday.

“And this team particularly was unbelievable, it really was. I can’t — they were a family. They did things that I thought, ‘Wow.’ We had some instances, you know, but they kept it together and they had a great time together, but they knew why they were there, and that was to win. We started 19-31 in case anybody forgot. And I’m not going to lie to you, I’m sorry to say this, but they played their asses off, they really did, and it was fun to watch this group.

“Everybody picked everybody up. When one guy had a bad day, the next guy stepped up and did their job, so it was a great group.”

There’s a lot of luck involved in winning it all in the end, a reporter suggested, and the ‘19 club had their share, he said, but what really made them unique?

“You say ‘luck’, and I’m thinking to myself, I don’t know how much luck we really had,” the now-59-year-old skipper said, “because of the way we started, I think it was 25 guys really competing every day at the highest level, to do what they did. We were beat up earlier, it never seemed to faze them, right? They kept playing, they kept playing.”

If there’s anything the current club can take from their predecessors, Martinez said, it’s the passion they played with in 2019.

“They played with a lot of passion. They really did. Every day. They were on a mission, and … incredible.”