Washington Nationals news & notes: MacKenzie Gore sticks with it; Nats beat Giants, 11-5…

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No wins in the last 8 games (0-4; Nationals are 3-5 in those games), Mackenzie Gore (During this period, he had a 7.25 ERA, a 4.36 FIP, and a .311 ERA/.397/464 on-base percentage in 36 innings. After a few slump periods in the rotation, he bounced back a bit at number five. ¹⁄₃During his last trip, he pitched one inning in Arizona, giving up eight hits and three runs.

“It was great,” manager Davey Martinez told reporters after Gore’s performance against the Diamondbacks.

“He was much more efficient. He took us to the sixth inning. [84] I think the pitching was like that, but he was a lot better today, he was a lot more efficient.

“He was attacking the strike zone. I thought it was a really good pitch.”

“He was throwing most of his pitches low,” Martinez added, “throwing them higher when he needed to and his slider was a little bit better, so I thought he pitched well today.”

“I didn’t get many strikeouts or strikeouts,” said Gore, who only struck out one batter and only seven times, but overall he threw 63 of his 98 pitches for strikes, 14 of which were strikes, including 10 fastballs and four curveballs.

“There weren’t a lot of two-strike counts,” Gore said, “and that was kind of the game plan they had throughout the whole series. I think it was a little bit of a combination of me not pitching that good and them being aggressive.”

His manager said this is certainly a step towards future developments.

“We’re hopeful we’ll have him back in the next five or six days and finish the season strong,” Martinez said.

“He has the makings of being a No. 1 player, he really does, and an All-Star,” Martinez told reporters before Gore took on the San Francisco Giants in the nation’s capital last night.

“We have to keep training with him. For sure, I know something will come out of him. And when it does, he’s going to be a great player. I like him because he competes. He loves to compete and, as we all know, he hates failure. But he’s a good player. So, we’re going to keep training with him and develop him even more.”

Gore gave up a solo home run to the second batter he faced on Tuesday on a 3-1 fastball in the zone with one out. It was 1-0. With one out, he walked and was hit by pitch, and Michael Conforto hit a three-run homer, his second of the inning, to put the Giants up 4-0.

Gore gave up two more two-out hits and threw 33 pitches in the first inning, but settled, avoided an error in the second, took the mound with a 5-4 lead in the third, avoided a walk and a double after that, and with a 7-4 lead in the fourth, he allowed two singles and a run to start the inning, then got three outs before allowing a leadoff double in the fifth to finish off his day.5.0 innings, 8 hits, 5 runs, 4 runs allowed, 2 walks, 6 strikeouts, 2 home runs, 98 innings pitched, 66 strikeouts, 5/3 ground ball/walk, 15 strikeouts swinging, 13 fastballs, 12 called, 7 fastballs).

Gore finished the game with the Nationals leading 8-5, but the home team saw six batters hit multiple hits and went on to win the game 11-5.

“Like I told him when he came in from the game, ‘Forget about the first inning. You played pretty good after that. Really good,'” Martinez said of his message to his starting pitcher after Gore’s game.

“He could have collapsed but he hung in there and started throwing the ball where he wanted it and gave us the innings we needed.

“I think it was five for 96, but he worked hard in the last four innings and we really needed that. We got the runs but without that I don’t even know what I’d do now.”

“That’s what I have to do,” Gore said of hanging in there after a tough start, “but I got off to a bad start in the first inning and that’s where I stopped.”

“I thought in the last four innings we got back to what we did for a long time earlier in the year, but it had been a long time since we last did that,” Gore explained.

“But it didn’t happen, and I felt it and I was like, ‘Yeah, of course I want to pitch better.’ But I figured out how to get through five innings and put them on the line. Hopefully I can build on that.”

How could Gore have limited the damage after the initial incident?

“We spoke to him after he came out. [after the first] And I said, ‘We’ve got a lot of games left to play. Just let us pitch some innings. Forget about that and pitch us some zeroes.’ And I told him, ‘If you do that, we can score runs.’ And he was really good. Really settled down. Started throwing strikes. Started believing in his fastball, threw a really good fastball and got some good outs for us.”

Lewis at bat:

Catcher Keibert Lewis, 26, went 1-for-3 with 1 double and 1 walk in Monday’s series opener against the Giants before snapping a modest four-game hitting streak.

Lewis is batting .222/.254/.338 with 11 doubles and eight home runs in 85 games and 319 at-bats this year.

There are also questions about the defense.Especially Lewis’ pitch framing skills.), Nationals captain Davey Martinez was asked this week for his thoughts on the development of the team’s No. 1 (long-term contract) catcher.

“You know, I try to just look at the positives,” Martinez explained. “I try not to dwell on the negatives. We care a lot about him. We watch his development as a catcher, as a young catcher. He has his days where he’s up, but right now we’re just trying to get him going because we know he can do better, but you look at the pitchers, he’s doing better. Our conversations with him are about getting better at dealing with pitchers. His swing, it’s all about swing judgment. He loves to hit, he can hit. We all know he has great bat-to-ball skills. We’re just trying to get him to understand, ‘The balls that come up in the zone, I can hit them really hard.’ So we’re just trying to keep going. There’s eight weeks left in the season. We want him to finish strong and keep building on that momentum.”

“I’d like to let him play a little bit more and see how far we can go with him.”

Martinez said he is looking to give Ruiz more at-bats later in the game to help him finish the season on a positive note after missing a long-term illness, but he said he will be careful with the catcher.

“It really depends on the conversation and how he feels,” Martinez said when asked how he decides which catcher to use. “I watch his swing a lot. You can see his lower body and you can really tell when he needs to rest. He’s feeling good right now and he understands it. We talked about playing today and he was very keen. And he comes to me every now and then. Even when there’s a 12 o’clock game after a night game, he wants to play. I say, ‘You’ve got to give him a little rest.'”

He focused on the positives, noting improvements in the way Lewis handles his staff.

What’s different?

“It’s conversations, it really is. He has conversations with the pitchers during every inning, how he wants to attack, what he wants to do against each batter that inning. And then pre-game pitcher meetings. He’s a little more vocal than he’s been in the past, and I like that,” the manager said.

Lewis had a strong performance in Tuesday night’s 11-5 win, going 3-for-5 with a home run and two runs scored, and as the Nationals highlighted in their post-game notes, he has now gone 8-for-20 (.400) with two doubles, one home run, one walk and five runs scored in his last five games.

“I tell him not to put his hands down too much, keep his hands above the ball,” Martinez said after the win. “He did a good job of doing that today and hitting the ball well. He was really good.”

“He can hit it. His thing is he can get the ball up in the air. He can hit it. He can hit anything.”

“He’s getting back on track. He’s getting back on track. He’s got it. I know it. He can hit. He’s always been a good hitter. Today was a good day for him. He just needs to be consistent from now on.”

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What does Martinez think about Abrams hitting a home run on a high pitch? “I just sat there and laughed, I really did. The kid’s so talented, he stays there, he stays there. And when he gets a pitch like that and he swings like he did, it’s really like, ‘Wow!’ But he’s that good. And his hands are so quick, so we keep telling him, ‘You don’t have to try to pull the ball. Just stay in the middle of the field and you’ll be fine.'”