Washington Nationals news & notes: Nats’ rotation talk; Jesse Winker, his knee, and his first season in D.C.

Notes and quotes before the Nationals start a three-game series with the D-backs…

ROTATION ROLLING:

Mitchell Parker kept things rolling for the Nationals’ rotation with six strong innings of work on Sunday afternoon, over which he gave up just one earned run.

Washington’s starters, the club’s PR folks highlighted in the post game notes after the win, “… have pitched to a 1.03 ERA (4 ER/35.0 IP) with a .198 opponents’ average, 37 strikeouts, and seven walks,” over the last six games, with the Nationals 5-1 in those games.

The win in the series finale with Miami gave the Nats a three-game sweep of their NL East rivals, against whom they are now 7-0 this season, after going 2-11 against the Fish in 2023.

“You’ve got to beat teams in your division in order to know where you’re at,” Davey Martinez said after Sunday’s win, which left his club 4.0 games out of second in the division (12.0 games out of first) and tied for the final Wild Card spot after 71 games. “We’ve done that with [the Marlins]. It’s the only way you’re going to win your division, right? You’ve got to beat the teams in your division.”

“This weekend was an all-around good weekend,” Martinez said at another point in his post game press conference on Sunday.

“Pitching was good. We scored runs when we needed to. Defense played well. We’ve got to clean up some things, but I’m very proud of the way guys played.”

Martinez was especially proud of the way his starters pitched in the series, with left-handers MacKenzie Gore (7.0 IP, 1 ER, 10 Ks), DJ Herz (6.0 IP, 0 ER, 13 Ks), and Parker leading the club to the clean sweep.

With all three lefties 25 or younger (Gore, 25 years old, Herz, 23, and Parker, 24), Jake Irvin, 27, the lone righty in the rotation at the moment, and Josiah Gray, 26, and Cade Cavalli, 25, working through their respective rehab assignments, Martinez talked about having all these young arms come up and make an impact in the last year-plus.

“I still feel like they are learning. What I love about this group in general is how well they just compete,” Martinez said.

“They’re absolutely going out there, they’re competing, they understand what we’re trying to do. They follow what we’re trying to talk to them every day about, and it’s been great, it really has.

“Just to watch them and the growth, and staying out of those big moments and learning how to pitch in high-leverage situations, they’ve been unbelievable.”

The starters, the seventh-year manager said, clearly got the message about the need to pound the strike zone if they’re going to succeed in the majors, and stay part of the big league rotation.

A lot of the credit, Martinez said, goes to Pitching Coach Jim Hickey and Sean Doolittle, the Assistant Pitching Coach and Pitching Strategist (as well as the minor league coaches and player development people throughout the organization).

“[Credit goes to] Hickey and Doolittle, and the fact that we continue to preach about, ‘Hey, you’ve got to get the ball in the zone if you want to pitch here.’ That’s just it. You follow suit with these other guys. We talked to Jake Irvin last year about it. ‘You’ve got to throw the ball in the zone.’ Here, hitters are a little better, they understand the strike zone, so you got to be in the strike zone, because you know what, it’s tough to pitch 2-0, 3-1, 3-0, you start doing that, you start walking guys, and it becomes a problem.”

Parker, he said, took the advice to heart in Spring Training after Martinez and Co. made it clear for him.

“This all started in Spring Training,” the skipper said, when they broke it down simply as possible, telling him, “‘Hey, you limit your walks, you’ll pitch in the major leagues.’

“His stuff was always good, ‘But you got to limit your walks. No free passes up here, it’ll get you. And he’s done the job. He understands, ‘Hey, I got to throw strikes.’ And he’s always around the plate, and he’s giving us the innings we need and he’s pitching really well.”

With Irvin, last season, and both Parker and Herz this season, coming up and really fitting in immediately and contributing, Martinez was asked before Sunday’s game if it was a sign of a shift in the organization as a whole which has their young arms developing into more effective pitchers.

“Organizationally we are really, really harping on throwing strike one, really getting ahead, understanding fastball usage, when and how to throw your fastballs, how to locate your fastballs, but mainly being over the plate,” Martinez explained.

“We’re really trying to get these guys to understand efficiency is really the key, and I always say hitting is hard, and it’s especially hard when you’ve got to hit at two strikes.

“So the whole emphasis of our organization is really to get these guys to throw the strikes. Look, we all know they throw hard, we all know they throw — talk about the spin rate and the horizontal and the vertical and everything, but it’s about throwing strikes. No matter what you do it’s about getting ahead and throwing strikes. We are teaching our guys a lot more about breaking ball usage, and how effective it can be when you can land it for a strike early in counts. So they’ve done that fairly well, even with changeups or breaking balls. But it’s definitely been an emphasis in our organization, and getting these guys up here, and getting them to understand that nothing changes neither. That when you come up here it’s about throwing strikes and throwing the ball over the plate. We talk a lot about the misses. Once you establish that you can throw strikes, when your misses are around the plate, you get swings and misses, and that’s been happening quite a bit for us.

“You can throw 100 MPH, but if you’re constantly ball 2, ball 3, it doesn’t do us any good.”

WINKER’S KNEE:

“I think we dodged a bullet, I really do,” Davey Martinez told reporters, after an MRI on the right knee of Jesse Winker revealed no structural damage. Winker tweaked the knee as he slid back into second base, retreating after taking too big a turn around the bag Saturday afternoon in the nation’s capital.

“Yesterday, he was hurting pretty good and we thought it could be something damaging to his knee, but obviously it wasn’t, so that’s good,” Martinez said.

“It’s definitely nothing major, nothing that’s going to prevent me from playing,” Winker said, as quoted by MASN’s Mark Zuckerman on Sunday. “I think I just need a couple days of rest.”

“Everything looked pretty clean,” Martinez added. “He’s got a little bit of inflammation, but he feels like he’ll be good to go in a couple days.”

Photo by Jess Rapfogel/Getty Images

“That’s good news. I thought, when he told me it was knee, it was going to be a bigger issue. So far, so good.”

In 68 games and 268 plate appearances this season, Winker, who signed a 1-year/$2M deal in D.C. this offseason, has a .265/.378/.390 line, 10 doubles, and six home runs, coming off his .199/.320/.247, five double, one home run run with Milwaukee’s Brewers in 2023.

Martinez said he’s come to appreciate what Winker brings to the club a few months into the season.

“He plays hard. He loves to play the game, and he gives you everything he has every day. So I love that about him.

“And like I said before, he’s been really good in the clubhouse, on the field, he’s intense, which is good, so hopefully we get him back soon.”

And when he does come back, the Nationals’ skipper will be watching closely to make sure he’s healthy and hopefully good for the rest of the season.

“We’re going to keep an eye on him for sure, hopefully this is nothing that is going to linger.”