ADON and in-game adjustments:
Joan Adon played against the road at PNC Park last week, throwing 93 pitches over four innings to 26 batters, allowing eight hits, six walks and four earned runs, ultimately improving from five points. . 1 loss pittsburgh pirates.
“He couldn’t get the ball in the strike zone,” Washington coach Davey Martinez said after the Nationals’ 25-year-old right-hander’s shortened game.
“He fell behind. He kept going back to breaking balls and breaking balls and never really attacking hitters, so we’re going to talk to him over the next few days and get him back on the offensive line.”
“He was playing well, but he just couldn’t find the strike zone when he needed to.”
“It’s just bad. The whole thing is bad,” Adon said of his start. Quoted by MASN’s Bobby Blanco.
“What can I say? I don’t even know how to explain it,” Adon continued.
“It felt good, but they were just hitting my pitches. They saw everything very well.”
Martinez said this is a problem with Adon trying, but struggling to make adjustments during games.
“He needs to understand that he has to make adjustments,” Martinez explained.
“For an inning or two there, he started throwing his fastball a little more. It was great, but then he still wasn’t. He got two strikes and then started throwing a breaking ball again. But he has to understand, sometimes the fastball works, and when he can’t overcome other issues, he needs to utilize the fastball.”
Adon returned to the mound last night, this time in the nation’s capital, and pitched four scoreless innings with a few hits and a walk, but after erasing the leadoff batter on a double play in the fifth inning, the visiting team chicago white sox Tim Anderson singled and Andrew Benintendi walked to get 2nd down, and Luis Robert Jr., who had a strong swing in the first two innings, hit a three-run hit to left-center field from 0-1. Curve down the 398-foot elevation zone at Nationals Park.
Adon returned to the mound in the sixth inning, but gave up three consecutive hits and one run before leaving, allowing one of the runners he left behind to reverse and score, giving him five earned runs over five innings pitched. He walked two and struck out five, throwing 87 pitches overall and striking out 58, in a 6-1 loss to the Sox.
“It’s just a matter of location,” Martinez said of Adon’s struggles late in last night’s outing. “I just missed the spot. I hit a curve ball. [Robert], A person who hits a lot of home runs. In high leverage situations like we talked about, he has to make pitches. He threw a really good ball right off the bat and took the lead. His pitching efficiency was really good. Then suddenly he was in trouble. That’s part of what we talk about with him and when he gets into trouble, he needs to slow down the game a little bit. ”
Martinez also talked about the fact that he had Robert Jr. swing the first two innings, the first with a 2-for-2 changeup, the second with an 0-for-2 fastball, and then a curveball. An example of how pitchers sometimes think a little too much.
“I think you’re overthinking it,” he explained.
“[Robert, Jr.] Obviously I couldn’t see his fastball/changeup. They tried to throw something different. He can hit a breaking ball in the zone, I’ve seen him do it. So we just have to, like I said, understand what we’re going to do in those situations and do it. ”
“During that at-bat, Keibert [Ruiz] That came up, we talked about it, we had a game plan, and I actually executed that game plan,” Adon told reporters.
“He just had a better game plan and was able to execute it better than I could.”
It was clear that the young starter was not at all satisfied with the overall result.
“Giving up four runs in five innings is not good pitching,” he said.
Wow, what a difference:
In the game, which they lost 6-1, the Nationals had a total of six hits, going 0-for-6 with five at bats left on base, and only scored one point when Dom Smith hit a home run off starting pitcher Mike Clevinger in the bottom of the 9th inning. , and Smith took some time to get into the batting lineup. He impressed with the explosion that tossed his bast aside after hitting a 419-foot shot to right-center field, but the White Sox starters didn’t appreciate it.
Smith rounded the bases and veered sharply to his left when he heard a chirp from the mound as he crossed the plate.
The benches (and bullpens) were silent, with only harsh words exchanged between the two teams.
Dominic Smith said he doesn’t know why Mike Clevinger was upset about his ninth-inning home run. Mr. Smith heard him say something as he was going around third, so he wanted to know what he was saying as he crossed the platform, he said.
— Bobby Blanco (@Bobby_Blanco) September 19, 2023
“Dom was standing there watching the home run,” Nats skipper Davey Martinez said of the two sides getting into a bit of a heated battle. “He started saying something. I don’t know what he said, but it’s just part of the game, right?” I’ve seen much worse. Players stand there for half a minute and throw their bats 40 feet. So, that’s part of the game. ”
“He ran around the bases,” Martinez continued. Our team jumped out there, but we stopped it. I didn’t want any trouble, so I put everyone in the dugout and finished the game. ”
Trevor Williams ?:
Trevor Williams, who has made three starts this month, has raised some questions about whether he has hit a wall in his first season as a full-time starter since the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
Williams, 31, split time between the bullpen and the rotation in 2021, practiced mostly in the bullpen in 2022, and signed with Nas this winter as a starter on a two-year contract.
Williams has pitched no more than five innings in seven of his 11 second-half starts, including all three games this month, and has an ERA of 14.81.18R, 17ER in 10 1⁄3 IP), 10.03 FIP, and a brutal .472/.525/.793 line over that stretch.
“For me, he just has to hold the ball down and do his job,” coach Davey Martinez told reporters ahead of Williams’ third of three starts in September.
Photo by G. Fiume/Getty Images
“Work left and right, inside and outside. Look, he did a lot for us, he really did. The guy took the ball away every five days. We did that for a while. We haven’t done that, so I’m really proud of the fact that he’s been able to maintain himself, stay in shape, work hard every day and give us innings every five days. , he needs to work hard, hold the ball down and utilize his changeup and slider.”
Martinez made it clear going into the game that it wasn’t a question of whether Williams would do the work, but he expressed concern about the workload catching up with the veteran.
“He works really hard. He is,” Martinez said. “And it’s long — when you’re not doing it, [in] That’s a lot of innings that we’ve asked him to accumulate for a while. Going forward, I think he’s gotten a little bit stronger this winter and he understands what he has to do to throw every five days, but he’s done a really great job. ”
Williams threw 70 pitches in two innings later that day, allowing five hits, two walks and three earned runs, but his manager canceled his 29th start of the 2023 season.
“He was missing,” Martinez said. I think he fell behind five of the first seven batters, which is tough. He has to bang the strike zone. He has to get forward and stay ahead and really get the ball over the white part of the plate. He pitched a lot. He wanted to go back outside, and I said, “I’m not going to do that to you at this time of year.” That’s a lot. ‘And like I said, he’s been our mainstay all year and I wasn’t going to send him out there. ”
The next day, Martinez said he planned to talk with Williams about the next steps for the starting pitcher.
“I haven’t talked to him yet,” he said. “But we’re going to talk to him today and see how he feels. He’s indicated that he wants to finish the season. But I’m going to talk to him and see how he feels. And where we think he’s at. He’s given us a lot of innings. This is the most innings he’s pitched in a long time. I I’m going to talk to him and see what I can get and go from there.”
Williams’ 141 total IP is the most he’s pitched since last year in 2019, when he was a full-time starter, so the club and pitchers will have to make decisions about the last few turns of the rotation.
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Photo by G. Fiume/Getty Images
“This is actually new to me and how we’re going to use him,” the sixth-year Nationals captain said.
“We gave him a little bit of a break early on, but it’s tough. Like I said, he’s not doing that.
“He was a guy who bounced around a lot. I know he probably started as the opener in some games or started in spot starts, but if I remember correctly, he was a guy who bounced back a lot.” I think it was ’19 or ’19, so I haven’t pitched a full season here.
“But the guy here, who takes the ball away for me every five days, never complains, who is ready to go every five days and always to stay there even when he’s behind. He fought me. He wants to finish. He understands how important it is to keep the bullpen fresh, but he wants the ball. But we’re at a point where we talk to him. He’s here. He’s been throwing a lot, so maybe we can do something different, just to give him a little bit of a breather.”
