Washington Nationals news & notes: Nats swept by Mets with 9-1 loss in finale; Josiah Gray rehab assignment…

Notes and quotes after the Nationals drop three straight to the Mets…

SCORE FIRST = PRESSURE:

New York’s Mets, coming off a dispiriting 3-7 homestand, took three straight games from Washington’s Nationals in the nation’s capital this week, capping things off with a 9-1 win Wednesday afternoon, in the rain-delayed series finale.

Davey Martinez’s ballclub fell behind early in each game, and dropped all three at home, coming off a 4-3 road trip to Atlanta and Cleveland.

“Rough series, right?” Martinez said late on Wednesday.

“We can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We’ve got another tough team [the Braves] coming in,” for four in Nationals Park. “We’ve got to be ready to play tomorrow. We fell behind in all three of these games, and it’s tough playing from behind. We try to make comebacks and we fall short.

“Today, it, we just — we hit some balls hard, we just couldn’t get nothing. Patrick [Corbin], I thought threw — he had four balls that were left up. And he paid the price for it. But we got to forget about this series and come back and start playing strong, good baseball. And try to get that lead early.”

Corbin gave up two runs through five, then gave up back-to-back home runs in the first two at-bats in the sixth, and a double and one-out single before he was lifted from the mound in what ended up a 5 ¹⁄₃-inning, seven hit, three-homer, six earned run outing in which he went up to 77 pitches, 51 strikes.

“Maybe the third time through, pitches were elevated just a little bit,” Corbin said after the outing, as quoted by MASN’s Mark Zuckerman. “We got ahead pretty well today, and then just a couple pitches there late that kind of separated the lead for them.”

The home team managed just seven hits, and one run, off Luis Severino, who struck out four in eight innings without allowing a walk.

Martinez said he thought his club did put together some good-bats, and hit a few balls hard, but it just wasn’t their night.

“Early on, I think we lined out five or six times. We were on the fastball,” he explained.

“We just couldn’t show nothing for it. I don’t mind those at-bats. But we got to start getting things going, relax a little bit. We just got to relax. We get guys on base, and all of a sudden guys are [trying] to hit home runs. Just stay with the plan, try to hit the ball in the gap, and let’s start scoring some runs early.”

“We got to keep fighting,” Martinez said of his club battling in their at-bats, and swinging at strikes. “Like I said, nobody is going to feel sorry for us, we got to keep pushing every day.

“Every day is a different day,” he added. “That’s what I love about this game, we get to come back tomorrow and do it again. The results could be different, but we got to play hard.

“Nobody is going to give us anything. They know that. Those guys know that, and you can see they keep fighting, but come back tomorrow and try to score early.

“The key is to try to put the pressure on the other team right from the get-go, if we can do that, good things happen.”

JOSIAH GRAY TO FREDERICKSBURG FOR REHAB START:

“Jojo is going on a rehab assignment, so he’ll begin his climb back to the big leagues,” Nats’ GM and President of Baseball Ops Mike Rizzo told Audacy’s The Sports Junkies on 106.7 the FAN on Wednesday morning.

A few hours later, manager Davey Martinez provided some details about what’s next for the 26-year-old starter, who’s been on the IL since April with a right elbow/forearm flexor strain.

“He’s going to go out on a rehab assignment. We still haven’t figured out where it’s going to be,” Martinez said, though he acknowledged a preference if things worked out.

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“I would like to send him to the closest affiliate for now, because I want him to come back here after he pitches,” Martinez said.

“So – I haven’t looked at the schedule — if Fredericksburg is home, that’s probably where he’ll go.”

Washington’s Single-A affiliate will be playing at home this weekend, so it looks like that is where Gray will begin his rehab assignment.

To this point, it’s been bullpens and live BP, but Gray’s going to go out and test himself and his arm against another team.

“He’s been good. The good news is that he really feels healthy. So that’s awesome. We’ll get him going, we’ll get him built up. Hopefully he’ll have his first one on Sunday, and then we’ll get him on that five-day rotation and we’ll see where it goes,” Martinez told reporters.

Gray, the Nationals hope, will get four innings in, or around 50-60 pitches the first time out, and the club will keep a close eye on how he looks on the mound.

While he’s been on the IL, and as he’s worked his way back, the Nationals’ coaching staff, and Gray, have tweaked things a bit, so his manager wants to see where he’s at.

“His mechanics are a little bit cleaner,” Martinez said.

“He’s in his legs a little bit more. He looked good yesterday. Yesterday, the ball was coming out easy. His velo was 92-93 [MPH].

Photo by Chris Bernacchi/Diamond Images via Getty Images

“But it was a lot less effort than it was before. His direction was a lot better, which we worked on a lot during his stint here, so hopefully he takes that into the game.”

If things go well, Gray will keep building and hopefully be back on the mound in the majors before too long.

“We made sure that we did everything right, we did our due diligence with him, and like I said, it’s his first rehab start,” Martinez stressed. “If something goes awry, we see something, we can do something else. But hopefully from here forward everything goes good, and he builds himself [up] and gets back here and helps us win games.”