Notes and quotes after the first off day for the Nationals in a long while…
ROTATION :
Patrick Corbin, if he’d stayed on his regular schedule, was lined up to start Tuesday’s series opener in Detroit, MI, but before the finale of the four-game set with Atlanta in the nation’s capital on Sunday, Washington’s manager Davey Martinez announced the Nationals’ trio of starters against the Tigers as Mitchell Parker, Jake Irvin, and MacKenzie Gore.
So… no Corbin this time through? What is the thinking there?
“Just to give him a little bit of a breather,” Martinez explained. “We take care of all our young guys, but we’ve got to take care of our veteran guys, too. So we’ll go with Parker, Irvin, Gore for Detroit.”
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Corbin, 34, is 13 starts and 71 2⁄3 innings into the final year of his 6-year/$140M deal in D.C., with a 6.15 ERA, 5.23 FIP, 27 walks (3.39 BB/9), 44 Ks (5.53 K/9), 12 HRs allowed (1.51 HR/9), and a rough .321/.374/.558 line against, and he’s (0-4) in his last five starts (though the seven runs total scored by the Nats in those outings is at least in part responsible for the club going 0-5 in those games).
Corbin has put up a 6.52 ERA, a 6.84 FIP, and a .288/.350/.586 line against in 29 IP in the outings.
So is this “breather” more of a mental or physical break?
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“A little bit of both, and rightfully so,” the manager said.
“He’s part of our pitching staff. He’s been pitching quite a bit. He’s a guy that’s been going five, six, seven innings all the time for us. So I wanted to give him a little break.”
“He’s been pitching a lot.”
With Josiah Gray and Cade Cavalli both in the process of working their way back from their respective injury issues, is Corbin’s time as part of the Nationals’ rotation going to end before his contract does?
SPEAKING OF PITCHING:
Davey Martinez talked at length before the 4th of 4 with the Braves about the pitching staff as a group, and the job his Pitching Coach Jim Hickey and Pitching Strategist Sean Doolittle have done with their pitchers this year in Hickey’s fourth and Doolittle’s first season in their roles.
“They’ve been really good, they really have,” Martinez said. “I’ve known Hickey for a long time, and his attention to detail, and mechanics, and teaching these guys how to utilize all their pitches, it’s always been good. And he’s been good with young players too. We’ve had such a young staff in Tampa when we were together, and he worked with all those guys. He specifically worked with all those guys — if you know those guys — [Alex] Cobb, [Jeremy] Hellickson, [James] Shields, they all had really good changeups and he helped them develop some of those pitches, but really, all in all it’s about throwing strikes. He’s a firm believer on attacking the strike zone, and as you can see we’re doing a lot better with that.”
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And Doolittle, the Nationals’ reliever turned (effectively if not in title) assistant pitching coach?
“And then we bring Doolittle along, which he’s really helped the sequences of pitches, and what to throw, and also working with catchers as well,” Martinez explained, “… just talking to him about game planning, game calling. So those guys both together, with [Bullpen Coach] Ricky [Bones] in the bullpen, they’ve all been really, really good.”
Martinez also talked on Sunday about the personalities of all of the young starters who are currently holding things down in the rotation, with DJ Herz (23), Mitchell Parker (24), and Jake Irvin (27) taking the ball every five days along with Patrick Corbin (34), and MacKenzie Gore (25).
But the young trio of Herz, Parker, and Irvin in particular, what is the personality of the group of younger members of the starting rotation right now?
“They’re all different, but they’re all very competitive in their own way, they really are,” Martinez said. “I mean, every one of them are — you see Parker, [who is] very poised, very calm. Nothing seems to rattle him, but he’s very, very competitive. Herz has a little fire in him, I can see that already. Irvin, again, another guy that’s very quiet, but he gets emotional at times, especially in the dugout, and then as we all know, Gore is a different breed. He’s very emotional. But I love them all, but they all compete, they all want to do well, they all want to help us win, so it’s awesome.”
Is Gore, behind only Corbin as the pitcher with the most experience in the young core, something of an elder statesman in the rotation now?
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“I still consider him young,” Martinez explained, “… but he does have — he sits down and he watches the game, he goes to the iPad when things happen, when pitches come, and he starts talking to the other pitches about that, or what he sees in the hitter. So he has good game awareness, even when he doesn’t pitch, he’s sitting there and he’s studying hitters. Because there is going to come a moment where he’s got to face these guys as well. And he really pays attention to when other lefties pitch. He really likes to see other left-handed pitchers. I know these guys made a comment about having five lefty starters, and I said, “It’s weird enough to have four. To have five? That’s a lot.”
How did he assess the starts by Parker, Irvin, Gore, and Herz in the series with Atlanta?
“I can’t say enough about them,” he told reporters after Sunday’s game. “It’s a good-hitting team over there, and they come out — and I’ve said this before, when we’re aggressive in the strike zone, we pound the strike zone, our defense has been really, really good too, and that does help. They threw the ball well. We got a long way to go, but I love where they’re at right now, I love how they’re attacking hitters, so it’s fun to watch them.”