Nationals Clips

Saturday, July 6, 2019

*Washington Post
Anthony Rendon, a first-time selection, won’t attend All-Star Game
By Jesse Dougherty

Washington Nationals fans and players have been saying for years that Anthony Rendon should be an all-star.
But after being selected for the first time Sunday, as a reserve for the National League, Rendon and the
Nationals decided he won’t travel to Cleveland for the game next week.

Rendon met with Manager Dave Martinez and other Nationals officials ahead of Friday’s 7-4 loss to the
Kansas City Royals. They made an “organizational decision," according to Martinez, that it would be best for
Rendon to stay in Washington to rehab minor injuries to his left quad and hamstring. Rendon first felt pain in
those areas during a road series against the Cincinnati Reds in the first days of June. Rendon has made 53
consecutive starts since returning from the injured list May 7, that trip for a left elbow contusion, and now
hopes to get healthier ahead of the second half.

The 29-year-old third baseman had quipped across the last month that he’d rather not play in the All Star
Game. He enjoys his privacy and time with family. He regularly expresses that he prefers to not speak with
reporters or about himself. But he insists these ailments are a legitimate reason to hang back from Cleveland,
reinforcing that by staying here instead of traveling to his hometown of Houston like many expected. He has
been replaced on the National League roster by Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Max Muncy.

“It’s kind of ironic, because I always joke with you guys saying I don’t want to go and just kind of give you
guys a hard time,” Rendon said after going 0-for-5 in Friday’s loss. "But I am honored to be able to be chosen,
especially being a player vote, that my peers have that respect for me and I appreciate it a lot.

"But since the game really doesn’t mean too much at the moment, except for personal reasons, we have bigger
fish to fry here in D.C. So we’re trying to get everyone healthy and I’m a part of that as well, so I want to be a
big threat for the second half.”

Rendon entered the weekend with a .310 batting average, 1.022 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, 20 home
runs, 21 doubles and 60 RBI in 72 games. That earned him an all-star selection alongside teammate Max
Scherzer and the rest of baseball’s best players. He just won’t be making it because of nagging pain that’s
slowed him on the base paths in recent weeks.

He has not considered sitting, saying he has learned how to deal with these types of injuries, but Martinez
noted that it’s been a daily conversation. It may seem counter-intuitive for Rendon to need four days of mid-
season rest and recovery, but also appear for two months without taking a day off. But Rendon and Martinez
maintain that he’s both fine to play and shouldn’t push himself next week. When asked if there was a chance
Rendon could go to Cleveland and not play, Martinez said that MLB made the decision to replace him with
Muncy when the Nationals informed the league of their decision.

“It’s definitely feeling better. I mean, I can’t lie about that,” Rendon said. “But it’s definitely not over that
hump, per se. And I know if I had these next four days, it would kind of get me there and I’d be running to first
base. Put it that way. And I’d be running from first to home, and kind of being the player that I need to be.”

“We talked this out with him. He asked what we think and we told him ‘I think rest would be good for you,'"
Martinez said. “He’s been playing with it for a couple weeks, and he agreed. It stinks, but he was very adamant
about wanting to be ready to play after the all-star break for us. I think that’s a really great decision. I really
do. I think he’s thinking about the team and the organization.”

Rendon expects to play the next two games against the Royals before the break, and then feel better for when
the Nationals face the Philadelphia Phillies next weekend. He won’t be 100 percent — noting that that’s
impossible this far into the schedule — but still wants to give his body some time to heal before Washington
tries to parlay a pre-break surge into a pennant push.
The Nationals finished Friday seven games behind the Atlanta Braves in the division, and right in the thick of
wild card contention.

“It may not be 100 percent, we always say that you’re only 100 percent in spring training and it’s just
downhill from there,” Rendon said. “We’re just trying to get back to kind of even, I guess you could say, trying
to feel good and trying to be a threat on both sides of the ball and that includes running the bases.”

Nats rally in ninth, fall in 11th as offense fails to capitalize on

chances
By Jesse Dougherty

When the Washington Nationals were finally out of chances, when their effort had fallen one swing short,
over and over again, it was reliever Jonny Venters who took the loss in the box score.

But it should have gone to the Nationals’ offense, if that were possible, after it couldn’t turn repeated
opportunities into a win over one of baseball’s worst teams. Instead, the Nationals lost in 11 innings on Friday
night, 7-4, to the Kansas City Royals, in a contest that mercifully ended after 4 hours 40 minutes.

The Nationals, by game’s end, had stranded 19 runners to waste a 13-hit effort. They left the bases loaded in
the sixth, seventh and 10th innings, their best chance to walk off after they mounted a comeback against
Royals closer Ian Kennedy in the ninth. Ryan Zimmerman was at the center of their late push, kick-starting it
in the seventh with his 1,000th career RBI, prolonging it in the ninth with another run-scoring double, then
scoring from second to knot the score.

But Zimmerman also helped Venters bury the Nationals at the finish. Venters loaded the bases in the 11th and
gave up a go-ahead single to Adalberto Mondesi. Then Zimmerman made a play on a sharp grounder and
threw wide of home, allowing two more runs to come in and the Royals to create separation. And that was
enough to pin blame on the bats, again raise questions of rotation depth and snap a four-game winning streak
in the process.

“That’s a lot,” said Nationals Manager Dave Martinez, cutting off a reporter’s question, when 19 runners left
on base was first mentioned. “Couldn’t get hits in the big moment.”

The Nationals planned this season around their starting rotation, expecting five pitchers to pace them,
spending close to $96 million on Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Patrick Corbin, Aníbal Sánchez and Jeremy
Hellickson, who has been on the injured list since May 21 with a right shoulder strain. That investment has
proved wise, especially in recent weeks, and even more across the past four games. Scherzer, Strasburg,
Corbin and Sánchez combined to give up three runs in their last 29 ⅓ innings heading into this series. That
was good for a 0.95 ERA. It was also good for those four consecutive wins.

But the fifth starter is still a puzzle as the first half comes to a close. Washington has lost just 11 games since
May 24, against 26 wins, and five of those defeats have come in the fifth spot of the rotation. Two of those
were started by Erick Fedde. The other two were started by Austin Voth, who took the ball Friday to continue
an audition that’s trending in the wrong direction.

Voth’s first opportunity came June 23, and he impressed by holding the Atlanta Braves to two runs in six
innings. His next came last weekend, against the Detroit Tigers, and he sputtered through 4 ⅓ innings while
allowing three runs on six hits. So here was another shot for Voth to prove himself, against another light-
hitting team, with the Nationals looking to steamroll right into the break. But he couldn’t help them do that,
his command wavering, his final line including 4 ⅓ innings, four earned runs, five hits, three walks and 96
pitches that only led to trouble.

“I’m a little bit, a tick off, I would say,” Voth said after the loss. “Definitely with my fastball command, you can
notice that.”
The offense would bail out Voth, five frames after he exited, but first saw two rallies fall short of a comeback.
Then came the ninth, and Zimmerman’s third double, and his acrobatic slide into home plate, and extra
innings once the Nationals failed to bring the winning run in from second. That was a theme that, eventually,
the Nationals could not recover from as a large crowd of Kansas City fans yelled “Let’s go, Royals!” into a
humid night.

Fernando Rodney, 42, pitched a scoreless 10th while appearing for the third straight day. Washington loaded
the bases in the 10th, after Brian Dozier walked with two outs, but Victor Robles grounded out on the first
pitch to leave everyone stranded. But even before that Robles at-bat, Adam Eaton stood on third with one out,
90 feet away from a victory if the Nationals could just get a deep fly ball.

The Royals intentionally walked Juan Soto to bring up Zimmerman against the left-handed Brian Flynn. Then
Zimmerman popped out to shortstop with runners on the corners and the last, best scoring chance was a
wash.

“It would’ve been better to get it in a win,” Zimmerman said, gritting his teeth, of reaching 1,000 RBI. “But the
team fought tonight. It was a great back-and-forth.”

Once that final threat ended, with Robles’s groundout providing a dull punctuation mark, Venters entered and
couldn’t hold the Royals down. They scored three runs and, by that point, the Nationals had nothing left.
Those Royals chants grew louder. The stadium soon emptied out.

It was almost Saturday morning, and, in some 16 hours, Washington’s offense would have the benefit of
another chance.

Fernando Rodney emerges as Nationals’ backup closer. At least for

now.
By Jesse Dougherty

Sean Doolittle was gassed, clenching his fists and letting loose a scream, then crouching on the mound after
striking out Yadiel Rivera to finish off the Miami Marlins on Wednesday night.

It was, by any measure, a hectic save for the Washington Nationals’ closer. Doolittle loaded the bases. He gave
up a run by hitting a batter. He got up to 33 pitches, a season high, and finally beat Rivera with a high fastball
to sidestep disaster. Doolittle later admitted his heavy workload might have caused fatigue, and the July
humidity didn’t help. But the larger point is that the Nationals cannot rely on just one reliever in big
situations, as they have all year, or Doolittle will get burned out.

So about 16 hours later, in the series finale with the Marlins on Thursday afternoon, with Washington holding
a three-run lead, 42-year-old Fernando Rodney rode the bullpen cart into a save opportunity. Doolittle was
unavailable. Manager Dave Martinez had mapped out his relievers that morning, beginning with Tanner
Rainey, then Wander Suero, then Jonny Venters and Javy Guerra when Suero wilted, then Rodney for the
ninth. Auditions to be the Nationals’ setup man/secondary closer have been simple this season: Pitch a
scoreless inning, and you get another chance and another and another until either your arm tires or you
prove fit for the job. Trevor Rosenthal had failed and was released. Kyle Barraclough struggled, too, before
landing on the injured list. Suero is in the midst of fumbling away his opportunity.

And Rodney, baseball’s oldest pitcher, might just be getting started.

“If he can do that and Doo can’t go, he’s going to be the guy,” Martinez said of Rodney on Thursday, and no one
could have expected to hear that July 4.

What Rodney did, really, was enter a game with a lead and exit it without starting a fire. That may seem like a
low bar — and it is — but it also makes him one of Washington’s relievers of the moment. Martinez has
searched all year for anyone who can get outs with consistency, strand inherited runners and minimize the
need for Doolittle every night. That pitcher has emerged only in flashes before waning, leaving the manager
with a new puzzle to solve. Now the additions of Rodney and the 34-year-old Venters, however odd or
uninspiring, seem to be pointing the bullpen in a better direction.

Rodney got two quick outs against the Marlins, allowed back-to-back singles, then got Harold Ramirez to
ground into a forceout to push Washington into second place in the National League East at 45-41. His four-
seam fastball got up to 99 mph on his second-to-last pitch. He used his change-up when in trouble and looked
entirely calm in a jam. He has only recorded 327 saves across 17 major league seasons. And he has now
finished three games for the Nationals, two saves and a mop-up inning of a 6-1 win, and he got a big double
play to end the eighth Wednesday.

The veteran right-hander started this season with a 9.42 ERA in 14⅓ innings with the Oakland Athletics, so
any progress should be viewed with apprehension. But these are encouraging signs.

“It’s a lot of trust. [Martinez] knows I can do my job in any inning they can give me,” Rodney said after
Thursday’s win. “ ‘The closer’s down today,' he says. ‘You got it today.’ I feel good because he’s comfortable
with how he’s been using me.”

How this translates to less work for Doolittle — and a fresher arm the rest of the way — is still tricky.
Doolittle was unavailable Thursday because of how many pitches he threw in that rocky save Wednesday.
Using Rodney in the ninth, in a three-run game, wasn’t the same as Martinez staying away from a rested
Doolittle and crossing his fingers. But if Martinez can do that more and lean on Doolittle less in three-, four- or
even five-run games, then Rodney’s importance will grow.

Doolittle, 32, has made 38 appearances with three games left before the all-star break. His career high is 70,
when he was 26 in 2013, and he otherwise has been much lower because of injuries. And even though he’s
the Nationals’ closer, they have often used him outside of save opportunities because few other relievers — if
any — have been trustworthy. He has made four multi-inning appearances, all in April or May, and has
topped 30 pitches four times. He leads the National League with 34 games finished. But 13 of those finishes
were in non-save opportunities, meaning Martinez missed 13 or so chances to give Doolittle a day off.

Those will add up by the end of the season, especially with the Nationals back in contention, and especially
with the postseason looking like a renewed possibility. By calling Rodney his “guy” when Doolittle is
unavailable, Martinez also is implying that he could pitch the eighth and, just maybe, the ninth when
Washington has a bit of a cushion. That’s the role Rosenthal was supposed to fill this season. Now it’s
Rodney’s to lose, a plan that will be tested when the Nationals face the Philadelphia Phillies, Atlanta Braves,
Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Dodgers over five series coming out of the all-star break.

“Here’s a guy that’s done it and was really effective doing it,” Martinez said. “And you know he comes out and
pumps strikes, that’s what he does, and I like what I’m seeing from him.”
*Washington Times
Anthony Rendon will skip All-Star Game, MLB says
By David Driver

Anthony Rendon is playing like an All-Star, but he won’t take part in the Midsummer Classic on Tuesday in
Cleveland.

Major League Baseball announced Friday that the Nationals’ third baseman would be replaced on the
National League’s All-Star Game roster by Max Muncy of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Rendon said this week he is playing through some injuries and “little ailments.” He entered Friday’s game
with the Kansas City Royals with 20 homers, 60 RBIs and an average of .310.

“I’d love to be an All-Star, but without going, if that’s possible,” Rendon said earlier this season.

It was the first time Rendon had been named to the MLB All-Star roster.

Rendon hit a homer Thursday and Trea Turner led off Friday’s game with a longball as the team went deep
for the 19th straight game, extending the franchise record.