Washington Nationals news & notes: Nats fight for 1st W of 2024, 7-6 over Reds; Trey Lipscomb makes MLB debut…

Notes and quotes from the Nationals’ first win of the 2024 campaign…

COMEBACK WIN:

Davey Martinez’s clubs battle. He is fond of saying it. They never quit. They didn’t quit on Saturday, not after they scored two runs, one each in the seventh and eighth, to tie it up with Cincinnati’s Reds, 4-4, only to give up two in the bottom of the eighth, on a two-run double off of reliever Hunter Harvey by Nick Martini.

Martini homered twice in the home team’s 8-2 win on Thursday afternoon in the season opener, and he made it a 6-4 game with the pinch hit knock in the second of three this weekend in Great American Ball Park.

CJ Abrams walked to start the top of the ninth inning, taking his third free pass of the game, to go along with a triple (1 for 2, 3 BB, 3 R), stole second base (his 3rd SB of the day), and he scored on an RBI single by Jesse Winker, 6-5. Joey Meneses singled as well, and Joey Gallo’s walk loaded the bases in front of Keibert Ruiz (3 for 4, HR, 1 R, 3 RBIs), who was hit by Alexis Diaz on the reliever’s final pitch of the day, 6-6.

Eddie Rosario followed with a bases loaded sac fly to score Nasim Nuñez, who stole a base after coming on as a pinch runner in his MLB debut, then took third on the HBP and scored the go-ahead run, 7-6.

Kyle Finnegan got the save opportunity in the bottom of the ninth inning, and he worked around a walk for a scoreless frame to end it, evening things up before the rubber match this afternoon.

“I give kudos to our whole team,” Martinez said after the first win of the year.

“All 26 guys, they participated, they played, and they did really well. So that’s a good win for us. We battled back — we were behind, we battled back.

“I know one thing about this team: We’re going to fight for 27 outs. And we showed it today.”

“They kept fighting, they kept fighting,” Martinez reiterated, “… and I love that about these guys, and that’s my biggest thing is that we don’t quit, and we keep playing hard, and we keep fighting. We keep fighting till the end and they did that today.”

LIPSCOMB’S OPPORTUNITY:

“I was in Rochester,” Trey Lipscomb, 23, told reporters of the moment he learned he was going to come up and make his major league debut on Saturday afternoon in Cincinnati, OH’s Great American Ball Park, “… and we just got done with BP. [Manager Matt LeCroy] brought me in the locker room, and was like, ‘Hey,’ — because I guess in Triple-A you’ve got to share hotel rooms now, so Lecroy said, ‘I’m going to put some names in a hat, whoever’s name I draw, you’re going to get your own hotel room.’

“He drew my name and was like, ‘Hey, you get your own hotel room, and you’re going to The Show. It was pretty cool. Pretty cool.”

“You never want one of your players to get hurt,” Davey Martinez said of the injury to Nick Senzel (fractured right thumb) which provided the opportunity for Lipscomb, who was in the mix for a roster spot till the end of Spring Training.

“Unfortunately, that’s what happened,” Martinez continued. “But we get Trey up here; we only missed him for a couple days. I’m excited to watch him play. He had a good spring. I wanted to get him out there right away, and let’s see what he can do.”

A 2022 3rd Round pick by Washington out of the University of Tennessee, Lipscomb “… led all of Major League Baseball in batting average (.400) this spring,” as the Nationals noted when the official announcement on his call-up went out on Saturday, “and ranked in the top 10 in on-base percentage (3^rd, .455), hits (T5^th, 20) and OPS (9^th, .995).”

He was the organization’s, “Minor League Defensive Player of the Year and the winner of the Rawlings Minor League Gold Glove Award for third basemen,” last season, playing mostly at third base, and with Senzel, the expected everyday third baseman before the injury, out for the foreseeable future, Lipscomb’s going to fill in at third.

“I told him today he’ll play some third base,” Martinez said.

“We’ll see what transpires over the next few days, but he’ll definitely play third base today, and whenever we get a chance to put him at third — but there’s also the possibility he may play some second [base] as well, against some left-handed pitchers, but I think he’s well-prepared.”

Photo by Nick Cammett/Getty Images

Lipscomb said he was prepared to play wherever he was asked to play.

“I feel like I’m comfortable anywhere out there on the field, but yeah, I played a lot of games last year at third base at High-A and then Double-A,” he said, “… until Brady [House] and Yo-Yo [Yohandy Morales] got there, so it feels good.”

“His focus is to play third base today, after that we’ll see what transpires. But he can play all three positions really well,” Martinez added.

“I do want him to play some second base as well, but like I said, we’ll see how today goes, and then we’ll go from there. He’s a really good third baseman. He won defensive player of the year for us over there at third base, so I know he can handle the position well, and he did really well at second. It all depends on the matchups and lineups and stuff like that. We have options, which is great.”

Lipscomb did get a chance to talk to Senzel too, who encouraged him to enjoy the moment and soak it all in in his MLB debut.

“I got the chance to talk to him, and you can ask anybody in this locker room and honestly anybody out here from Cincinnati,” Lipscomb said, “… he puts in all the work, and it’s so unfortunate what happened to him and I know he’s going to come back even better and stronger.”

There’s no timetable right now for when Senzel might be back from the injury, which he suffered while taking grounders before the season opener.

“A lot of it is apparently, basically, pain tolerance,” Martinez said of when the veteran might be able to return.

“So we’ll see how long it takes. It’s tough to say because the thumb is still swollen, he still has some pain in there, so we’ll see in the next few days how he feels.”

Going forward for now, Martinez said, the plan is to play Lipscomb every day, until he needs a day off.

“He’s a young kid, one of our top kids, so I want him out there. I want to see what he can do,” Martinez said.

Photo by Nick Cammett/Getty Images

“There’s no sense of keeping him on the bench. This game is hard enough. There are going to be days where I probably give him a day off, but I want him out there every day.”

In his first game in the majors, Lipscomb went 1 for 4 with a single and a stolen base, which made him, “the first player in Nationals’ history (2005-pres.) to record a base hit and stolen base in his Major League debut,” as the team noted on X/Twitter.

“I loved watching him out there,” Martinez said after the game. “He made some really good plays at third base. He’s got a cannon over there. It’s awesome watching him move around and throw the baseball. And he had good at-bats. He stayed in there, hung in there, got his first base hit. He played really well for his first game. He was a little nervous.”