Shoves, whiffs, and inner circle:
MacKenzie Gore struck out 10 of the 28 Miami Marlins batters he faced in the nation’s capital on Friday night, allowing just five hits and one run over seven innings. He threw 103 pitches, 71 of which were strikes. Gore also set a career high in strikeouts, with 25 overall, 12 on his fastball, five on his changeup and four each on his curveball and slider. That’s tied him with Pirates starter Jared Jones for the most strikeouts in the major leagues this season. So, it was a pretty good game.
Gore and his teammates won the series opener at Nationals Park 8-1, scoring seven runs in the third inning to decide the game, but more attention was drawn to an altercation in the dugout in the second inning between Gore and Nationals third baseman Nick Senzel, who were separated after making contact in the dugout.
The shot appeared to capture Gore catching a ball thrown to third base by Senzel with two outs in the top of the second inning, and Senzel’s throw to first base was a step late, allowing a run to score.
If Gore disagreed with Senzel’s effort, he didn’t say so in his postgame comments.
“We handled it here,” Gore said when asked about the conflict. “The biggest thing is, it’s not my doing. But I’ll leave it at that. It’s my responsibility.”
“But it’s here. We figured it out. It was rather unlikely to happen, but we played a great game today and we have a chance to win the series tomorrow.”
When pressed for details, Gore simply said, “I’m not going to say anything other than I was wrong.”
Senzel didn’t acknowledge that his effort on the play was the cause of the friction, but told reporters: Quote from MASN’s Bobby Blancohe has to play better in those situations.
“I think I have to pitch better and get the ball a little better,” Senzel said. “Maybe I was a little lazy, so that’s on me.”
“All I can say is, I don’t know if you have any brothers, but yeah,” manager Davey Martinez asked rhetorically when the topic came up in the post-game press conference. “I fought with my brothers every day. It’s part of life. When we get together for a little bit, I love it. Their competitive spirit and what they did afterwards was great. The rest will remain between us.”
What did they do after the altercation?
“They were holding each other,” Martinez explained, “… Like I said before, it’s not the first time I’ve seen that. I’ve been on really good teams where the guys gave it their all and it all worked out. Like I said before, it’s a competitive game and sometimes you get into those situations with each other, but they worked it out and they held each other and it all worked out.”
His performance on the mound also included 14 strikeout calls (6 points each for the fastball and curveball, 1 point each for the changeup and sliderManager Martinez simply said, “Today was McKenzie’s day to pitch hard.”
The seventh-year captain spoke about Gore’s overall emotions and how Gore has managed them during his second year with the Nationals and third year in the big leagues.
“This is something we talked about at the end of last year, but he has to be able to control his heart rate and his emotions when he’s on the court,” Martinez said.
“Especially when things are falling apart, you just stay focused on the next pitch. He’s done that. He’s done that really well. And he’s pitched really well. But if he can just get that emotion under control, that aggression under control, I think he could be an All-Star. He could definitely be an All-Star. But he’s done a great job. He knows he’s going through it and he talks about it. That’s great, but I like the fact that he goes out there every day and wants to compete and win.”
Gore said the whiff was the result of a good game plan heading into the game against the Marlins.
“I thought we had a good game plan and we played well,” Gore said. “We knew who we were playing. They’re an aggressive team and we can get strikeouts if we play well. That was kind of the game plan going into this game, that they were going to try to get strikeouts.”
Joey Gallo Update:
Joey Gallo was placed on the injured list this week with a hamstring injury, but manager Davey Martinez said it was a significant injury and the veteran will likely be out for some time.
“He has a muscle injury, a pretty bad muscle strain so he’ll be out for a while,” Martinez said in last night’s post-match press conference.
“So we’re going to get him back healthy, hopefully soon.”
SAC FlyAplus in Detroit:
After his team won two of three games against the Tigers on the road this week at Comerica Park and hit six sacrifice flies, Davey Martinez was asked a simple but very interesting question.
Did the Nationals make contact when they needed to score?
Or did they just miss out on some big hits that could have resulted in multiple runs in those at-bats?
What is Martinez’s take?
“The great thing is we’re starting to figure out how to score from third base with two outs or less,” he said. [Ildemaro] “Vargas hit a couple of doubles, and we’re getting the ball going. But we struggled before. And our emphasis now is trying to move the ball to guys in scoring position. And we’ve done that. And if we keep doing that, the next minute another guy hits a double, the ball moves a little bit. We’ll start scoring some more runs. But aside from today, the first two games offensively have been good. We’ve scored some runs. So we’ve got to keep doing that.”
