Washington Nationals news & notes: Nats salvage finale with Phillies; Keibert Ruiz is going up…

Notes and quotes after an off-day for the Nationals…

GO UP AND GET IT, KEIBERT:

After his club dropped three straight to the Phillies in Citizens Bank Park and four in a row overall, Washington Nationals’ skipper Davey Martinez had a simple message for all of his hitters going into Sunday’s series finale in the City of Brotherly Love.

“For us, we really have to get the ball up today, in the zone, and not chase,” the seventh-year manager told reporters. “That’s the big thing, you know, we can’t chase today.

“When we do that, we hit the ball really well. The key is to kind of get the ball up today, and get the ball in the zone, and stay, like I say, try to drive the ball in the middle of the field.”

Keibert Ruiz clearly heard the “get the ball up” third of his manager’s advice, though not so much the other two-thirds.

Trailing 2-0 in the third, the catcher, who was 3 for 9 with two homers in the series with the Phillies to that point, stepped in with a man on after James Wood walked to start the top of the inning, and went up for an 0-2 sinker out of the zone and connected for a 386 ft., two-run home run, which tied things up at 2-2.

Turns out, much like CJ Abrams recently, Ruiz, who did chase the ball out of the zone, hit it for the third-highest pitch hit for a home run by a National in the Statcast era:

Ruiz finished the series in Philly 4 for 13 with the three home runs, playing in 3 of the 4 games.

“He’s staying behind the ball a lot better,”Martinez said. “He’s able to use his hands a lot better, and he’s driving the ball, which is awesome. We’ve always thought and we’ve seen it, that this is what Keibert can do. So it was awesome.”

SALVAGE JOB:

Though they dropped the first three with the Phillies, Nationals’ skipper Davey Martinez did like the fight he saw from his club in Citizens Bank Park, talking after their win in the fourth game about his team battling for another comeback win.

“We’re going to play hard,” he said. “No matter what, we’re going to play hard. We got to clean up some things a little bit, but we’re going to go out there and we’re going to compete. I’m proud of the boys to come back today after losing three here, come back today and pull out a W.”

“Any time you finish off a road trip with a win, it’s good for the team, good for everybody,” Sunday’s starter, Jake Irvin, said after throwing six innings on 100 pitches and giving up a total of four runs on eight hits, three of them home runs.

“And it feels great to beat a team like that.”

Irvin did his part. He collected 11 swinging strikes (five on his fastball; three on his curveball; two on his changeup; and one on his sinker), and got 13 called strikes (five on his curveball; three on his sinker; two on his fastball; and one on his changeup).

His goal in the outing was simple after he gave up an RBI single by Nick Castellanos in the first and a solo home run by Trea Turner in the second.

“Trying to mix it up and throw strikes,” he explained. “Just keep us in it long enough for good things to happen. I thought things went well for the most part.”

Irvin held the Phillies to the two runs through five innings, as the Nats rallied to take a 4-2 lead, then he gave up two more on back-to-back, one-out solo shots by Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh before he got the final two outs of the sixth.

His manager talked before the outing about the 27-year-old, 2018 Nationals’ 4th Round pick becoming a reliable starter in his second year in the majors.

“He’s been a student of the game all year long,” Martinez said. “He does his due diligence, but he works hard, and he understands what he needs to do every time he goes out there, and he’s an unbelievable competitor.

“One thing he’s learned a lot this year, is about how to stay in the moment, which has been awesome.’