You can try, but you are really not going to get Davey Martinez to budge from his 1-0 every day mentality/mantra/message/whatever. Martinez, in his fifth season on the bench in D.C., doesn’t really like to look back, or look too far ahead, instead remaining focused on what’s got to be done to win each game the Washington Nationals play, and he didn’t break from his usual response when asked before Thursday’s series finale with Miami how important a trip the Nats were set to embark on after the third of three with the Marlins at home.
“I try not to look ahead of — past today,” Martinez said.
“We need to get through today, and go out there and try to end this homestand with a curly-W.
“That’s what I’m looking for, and then we’ll worry about going to San Francisco.
“Every day to me is important, it really is. What I want to see is these guys play consistent baseball.”
An eighth-straight loss is consistent baseball, in a way, but obviously not what the Nationals’ skipper was looking for from his team, which finished their 10-game homestand 2-8 with a 6-15 record overall on the season. How is his club handling their rough start to the season and all the losses they’ve suffered in the first month of the 2022 campaign? Is it wearing on the team at this point?
“We got to stay positive for sure,” Martinez told reporters. “As I said before, we’re all about competing and trying to win every game. It’s been tough. I’m not going to lie, it’s been tough, I’ve been staying up I’ve been looking at a bunch of different things, trying to get guys better, but right now we’re just not having — throughout our lineup there’s no consistent at-bats. We’re taking some walks, we’re not getting that big hit, we’re not having that big inning, so we need to start swinging the bats a little bit better. I think our pitching for the last few days has kept us in the game, so for me that’s a positive, so if we keep our pitching right there, I’ve said all along, we’re going to hit. [Juan] Soto is going to hit. [Josh] Bell has done well. [Yadiel Hernández] is swinging the bat pretty good.
“We got to get [Nelson Cruz] to hit, we got to get Soto on track. The good thing is Nellie took his walks today, Soto took his walks today, and then the bottom of the lineup they’re going to do what they do, and for me it’s whatever they can do to help us offensively, they’ll do that.
“[Victor] Robles got on top of a fastball after we talked to him the whole day about getting on top, and drove a ball to left-center field, so if he can continue to do that, he’s going to be okay. But we got to get some consistency out of our lineup and start hitting the balls. It’s hard to win when you’re scoring 1-2 runs again.”
The club has scored one or two runs in six of their eight straight losses, with three runs in the other two, and Martinez is waiting for the lineup to get going as a group, stringing the hits together for that big inning or game that will change things, or spark something with the offense.
Tonight in Oracle Park they start a three-game series with the Giants, after San Francisco’s sweep of the matchup in Nationals Park last weekend.
HERE’S THE NATIONALS’ LINEUP FOR THE OPENER WITH THE GIANTS:
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism