Washington Nationals news & notes: Nats avoid sweep with 5-2 win over Guardians; Jake Irvin solid again…

Notes and quotes on the Nationals’ series finale with the Guardians in Cleveland…

IRVIN IN CLEVELAND:

Given a 4-0 lead to work with in the top of the second inning of the series finale with the Cleveland Guardians on Sunday afternoon, Jake Irvin pounded the zone throughout a six-inning, 98-pitch, 68-strike outing in which he gave up five hits, one walk, and two earned runs.

Irvin struck out six of the 23 batters he faced, collected 11 called strikes, six with curveball, which he threw 41% of the time, up from a season-average of 32.1%, and collected 20 total called strikes, with nine on his curve.

“I feel like I’m just kind of keeping guys off-balance with it, mixing that between the heater and curveball, if I’m able to land it for strikes it’s a good weapon for me,” Irvin said of using his curveball as much as he has in recent outings.

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“So, being able to do that, get ahead in counts, and even finish guys off with it, it’s just something that I have a lot of trust in.”

“He’s throwing it — he’s getting ahead with it sometimes, he’s throwing it in big moments, but it’s good, it’s a good pitch,” manager Davey Martinez told reporters after a 5-2 win over the Guardians.

“Cutter — he got a couple of outs on the cutter today as well, which was nice. But his ability to attack the zone has been the key, it really has.

“He’s not afraid to throw the ball over the plate, which is awesome. And he’s getting quick outs at times, and he’s making pitches when he needs to, but he pitched really well.”

Irvin said getting the four-run lead early definitely helped him settle in and attack hitters.

“It’s awesome,” the 27-year-old starter said of the run support. “It makes my job a lot easier. I just go up there and continue to pound the zone and keep us in that game. Props to those guys, man. They take a little bit of the weight off my shoulders, and it was really awesome to see.”

“We harp on trying to score first, let our pitchers settle in,” Martinez told reporters. “They’re going to keep us in the game. We’ve done this all year.

“It’s really important that we understand that we got to beat up the starter and let our pitchers settle down.”

Joey Meneses doubled to drive in two runs for the Nationals in the top of the second, then he scored on an RBI single by Ildemaro Vargas, who scored on a two-out RBI line drive out to right by Lane Thomas, 4-0.

“The offense was good today, they came out swinging the bats, stayed in the middle of the field again, doing those little things,” Martinez said.

“Vargas had a good day, all of them, they all did. Joey had a big hit for us. It was a good win.

“This team is tough, and coming in here, and being able to scratch one out, and starting the road trip going 3-1 over there with Atlanta, coming out 4-3 was awesome.

“We get back home, we got another team that’s coming in that we got to get ready for and prepare for, but it was a good win for us.”

CJ ABRAMS – 2024 EDITION:

CJ Abrams, 23, finished up the first month-plus of the 2024 campaign with a .295/.373/.619 line, five doubles, four triples, seven homers, 11 walks, and 20 Ks in 119 plate appearances.

In May? Abrams put up a .205/.216/.304 line, five doubles, two home runs, one walk, and 29 Ks in 116 PAs.

Manager Davey Martinez told reporters on Saturday he was going to talk with his shortstop and tell him to put the second month of the season behind him and try to get back to what he was doing in March/April which led to success.

“I’m going to talk to him a little bit today about, ‘Hey, that month is over. We start a fresh month, let’s get off to a good start.’” Martinez said.

Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images

“The biggest thing that we need him to do is understand that he’s in a little funk, he’ll get out of it, but just focus on hitting strikes, swinging at strikes, and if they walk you they walk you. I tell him all the time, ‘When you get on first base, it’s probably a double.’ So take your walks and just get ready to only swing at strikes.”

The eighth-year skipper said there wasn’t any one thing he could point to as the reason for Abrams’ struggles, but a combination of things, including the pitches he was seeing.

“One, yeah, they are throwing him breaking balls,” Martinez said, “… and sometimes in your mind you start sitting on them, and two is that he’s getting ready really late. He really is. We got to get him [to] being on time, and getting on top of the baseball. You know, they’re throwing him a lot of fastballs up, there’s no difference — I’ve looked at all the numbers. There’s no difference of how many fastballs they’re throwing him, it’s when they’re throwing them.

“So he’s got to be ready to hit the fastballs, and take his walks. His walk percentage is really, really down, so he’s got to take his walks.”

Abrams did go from a 9.2% BB% in March/April to 0.9% BB% in May. From a .373 OBP to .216.

Martinez talks often about the Nationals’ leadoff man setting the tone for his team, and he was asked on Saturday if Abrams was feeling the pressure now that things aren’t going as well as they did at the start of the season.

Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images

“No, I mean he goes out there and he tries to play the game every day,” he said. “He’s really good about that. He just tries to help us win games, and I know he’s had some struggles lately, but when he does something, he does help us win. The kid’s come a long way, he’s very mature, he’s grown quite a bit. Like I’ve said, ‘Hitting’s hard.’ We always talk about it — that’s the one thing that always seems like it goes up and down with every hitter, you fall in a funk. Pitchers sometimes do too, but more so hitters. So he’s just got to understand what he was really good at, and that’s really hitting the fastballs, staying on top of the fastballs, and getting ready early, and when he does that he’ll start hitting.”

According to Baseball Savant, Abrams hit .373 on fastballs in the first month-plus. He hit .262 on fastballs in May.

On breaking balls, he went from .257 to .146.

So where is the line between trusting Abrams’ obvious talent and starting to tinker with a few things to help him turn things around?

“He’s very talented,” Martinez said, stating the obvious, “… and he’s a big part of our lineup.

“What I start noticing is if he starts taking it out on defense. That’s when we have to reel him back in a little bit. Maybe give him a day off or two.

“And maybe — he plays every day, and there’s times where I have to — he doesn’t want to sit — there’s times I have to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to give you a day.’

“But those are the things that we kind of look for. Thus far he’s been really good. He really has.

“When he does get on base, he makes things happen, so he’s fun to watch every day, he really is.

“So we’ll get him out of it and he’ll start doing things we know he’s capable of doing.”

Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images

Unfortunately, in Friday’s series opener in Cleveland, Abrams (in Martinez’s own words) face-planted in the field on a ball deflected towards short by third baseman Nick Senzel, and the shortstop was stunned for a second before he recovered to make a play.

“He smashed his face into the ground,” Martinez said on Friday night, “so you get that — he said he got that look where everything blacked out before he could go get the ball. But he hit his face pretty hard on the ground.”

Abrams also apparently banged up his shoulder on the play, and when he tested it before Saturday’s game, something wasn’t right.

“He took some swings,” Martinez said after the game, a 3-2 loss. “He took that fall yesterday, he said his shoulder was bothering him, so I wanted to be careful and take him out. His left shoulder has been — he was taking some swings and it was aching a little bit, so take him out and we’ll see how he feels tomorrow.”

While he was initially pencilled into the lineup for the finale in Cleveland, Abrams was scratched once again before the start of the game.

“Hopefully CJ could be back in there tomorrow, he said he felt better today, but I didn’t want to push it, so we took him out,” Martinez said.