Washington Nationals news & notes: Nats lose in extras; Juan Yepez up to play 1st + more…

Notes and quotes on the Nationals and Cardinals series-opener…

CORBIN VS THE CARDS:

Patrick Corbin threw a first-pitch sinker, belt-high outside to Isaac Paredes which landed 415 ft. from home in Tropicana Field, and one out and one single later, José Caballero hit 1-0 sinker up and over the middle 371 ft. to left for a two-run blast and a 3-0 lead in the second inning of what ended up a 5-0 loss for Washington in the series finale last week in Tampa Bay.

“Two missed locations,” manager Davey Martinez said, summing up Corbin’s 17th start of the season. “All of a sudden, that one inning – a three-run inning – got him. But other than that, he threw the ball well.”

“I felt really good with everything,” Corbin said after taking the loss and falling to (1-8) on the season, with a 5.49 ERA, 4.81 FIP, 33 walks (3.13 BB/9), 65 strikeouts (6.16 K/9), and an ugly .301/.357/.513 line against in 95 IP.

Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images

“Fastballs in, cutters were good today, threw a bunch of sliders, got ahead of guys,” Corbin said in assessing his own outing, “… just other than a couple heaters, a little bit elevated that they had some swings on early, so just a team like this that wants to hit the ball out of the ballpark, it’s just maybe being a little more careful on some of those early pitches there.”

“I thought my stuff today was pretty good,” he added.

“Sometimes, it doesn’t really translate to the scorecard.”

Going up against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday night in the nation’s capital, Corbin got off to a good start, with three scoreless innings, throwing 27 pitches in the first, then 21 to get through the second and third, but then he gave back-to-back, one-out singles, a sac fly, and an RBI single in 28-pitch fourth which left him at 76 pitches overall.

A leadoff double and then an RBI single in the fifth added another run to his line, and the left-hander was up to 91 total pitches and done for the night, with the Nationals up 5-3.

Corbin got just five swinging strikes on the night, though he did get 16 called strikes, seven each with his slider and sinker and two with his fastball.

The lead, courtesy of an RBI double by Jesse Winker in the first, an RBI single Luis García, Jr. in the same inning, a two-run double by CJ Abrams in the second, and a home run, (No. 10), by García, Jr. in the home-half of the fourth, held up through seven, but Nolan Gorman hit a run-scoring single in the eighth, and Willson Contreras hit a game-tying homer in the ninth, off Hunter Harvey and Kyle Finnegan, respectively, 5-5.

Each team scored a run in the tenth, when it went to extras, but the Cardinals came out on top when their lead runner scored on a strike three/passed ball to put the visitors ahead for good in a 6-5 win in 11 innings.

“Today, we shouldn’t have put ourselves in that position,” Martinez said of blowing the lead, going to extras, and eventually losing the series opener. “We got the lead like that, the hitting went away for four innings, we tried to come back, we just — we made some mistakes today, it wasn’t a very clean game, so but then again, we battled, we kept battling, we kept battling, we just fell short, but to put ourselves in that situation like that, where we had to play extra innings, it was tough.”

“We made some mistakes,” Martinez said at another point in his post game presser. “But look, the boys are going to play aggressive. I know that. Patrick gave us five really good innings, he really did, couple unfortunate hits, the ground ball. And like I said, we have to come back tomorrow. I love the fact that we scored those runs early first, but we can’t let up. Can’t let up.

“Because you see what happens when we don’t score in the middle innings, we got to put teams away, and put the starters away.”

YEPEZ FOR MENESES:

Joey Meneses went 16 for 81 (.198/.253/.296) with five doubles, a home run, six walks, and 18 Ks in 24 games and 91 plate appearances in June, taking him from a .239/.301/.303 line on the year to .230/.291/.306. He was 4 for 16 in four games to start the month of July, but the Nationals decided to make a change after the July 4th win over the NY Mets in D.C.

Meneses was optioned out to Triple-A Rochester after the series finale with the Nats’ NL East rivals, and before the start of this weekend’s four-game set with St. Louis, the club called a former Cardinal up, Juan Yepez to play first in Washington after the 26-year-old hit .263, “… with 15 doubles, 11 homers, 41 RBI[s], 40 walks, three stolen bases, and 38 runs scored in 74 games for the Red Wings this season.”

Yepez had a .371 AVG , “… (23-for-62), with a .435 on-base percentage (7 BB) and .565 [SLG], (3 2B, 3 HR) in his last 16 games with Rochester,” as the club noted in announcing he’d get a short at first base with Meneses down.

“He hit safely in 15 of the 16 contests, including six multi-hit efforts,” as noted in the press release.

“Yepez has been hitting the ball really well, playing good first base,” Davey Martinez said in his pregame press conference on Friday. “We want to give him the opportunity to come up here and see what he can do. He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do down there, he’s done it really well, so we’re going to give him an opportunity to come here and try to help us win games.”

Yepez signed with the Nats this winter, after the one-time Atlanta Braves’ prospect (signed in 2014 out of Venzuela), acquired by the Cardinals for (former National) Matt Adams in ‘17, got non-tendered by the Cards.

He got off to a relatively slow start at Triple-A with the Nationals, but had a .307/.378/.455 line in June which earned him an opportunity.

“I think I was trying to do too much, in this new organization, trying to prove a lot of things,” Yepez said of the first couple months in the organization.

“And then I just kind of stick to my game and everything started flowing and I was able to have that month.”

“Yepez has been really doing well, he’s been hitting the ball really well, so we’re going to give him an opportunity to play first,” Martinez said.

As for Meneses? Martinez told reporters the move, “It was all really about Joey, trying to get Joey locked in.

“He’s going to go down, he’s got options. He’ll go down and try to work on his swing and just get him back. It’s not like we’ve seen the end of Joey.”

DEVELOPING STARTERS:

GM and President of Baseball Ops Mike Rizzo talked about DJ Herz’s rise in the Nats’ system following a trade from Chicago’s Cubs in 2023, as a success story, for both the left-handed starter and his new organization.

Acquired at the trade deadline in ‘23, Herz started at Double-A Harrisburg last season, went to the Arizona Fall League, began the year at Triple-A Rochester, and debuted in the majors on June 4th.

Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images

Rizzo was talking the morning after Herz struck out 10 of 22 batters faced in a 5 ²⁄₃-inning, 92-pitch, no-walk outing against the NY Mets in the nation’s capital.

“Any time you can strike out 10 and walk none and give up only one run against that lineup it’s a pretty darn good job,” Rizzo told the Junkies.

“He’s really come a long way,” the GM said of Herz’s growth since the trade.

“Our development people have done a great job with him. This was a guy who always struck out people at the Double-A level, but walked a lot of guys, so we’ve really pounded into all these pitchers that we need strikes, we need to be aggressive in the strike zone and really attack the hitters.”

That message, Rizzo said, is now getting through to pitchers throughout the system.

“You can see all these young pitchers in [Jake] Irvin, and [MacKenzie] Gore, and [Mitchell] Parker, and Herz, they all — these young pitchers that have come through our system and brought up that we have to pound the strike zone,” he explained.

Photo by Jess Rapfogel/Getty Images

“To pitch for the Nationals — to pitch successfully in the big leagues — you can’t give free passes, you’ve got to be aggressive in the strike zone and you’ve got to have the stuff to get hitters out over the plate, in the strike zone,” Rizzo added. “Because very rarely do they chase out of the zone and that’s why it’s the big leagues.

“You’ve got to get guys out with your stuff on the plate and these guys have done a terrific job of that.”