Washington Nationals news & notes: Pitchers and catchers report; offseason work…

Davey Martinez sent Luis Garcia home with an agenda this offseason, and the Washington manager delivered a message in his exit interview at the end of the Nationals’ 2023 season.

“I told him he has to be agile,” Martinez told reporters at the winter meetings in early December.

“He’s a different guy. We need him to swing less. We don’t want to take away his aggressiveness, but he has to learn how to hit the ball in the strike zone.”

Garcia, 23, was briefly selected to move up to Triple-A before returning to the major leagues midway through the 2023 season, hitting .266/.304/.385 with 18 doubles. Finished my 4th season. He had four triples and nine home runs in 122 career games and 482 PA games.

He was hitless in 12 at-bats in four games and had just come off a rough July where he hit .217/.250/.301 when he was optioned by the Nats, hitting only two doubles and one home run. I couldn’t hit it. Top minor league affiliation (Year in the majors: .259/.293/.362 line.) He hit .268/.315/.381 with eight doubles and one home run in 25 games and 108 PA before being called back and posting a line of .304/.360/.507. He had five doubles and three home runs in 22 games and made 75 PA appearances.

The manager told him to work hard this winter and come to spring training ready to earn a spot on the opening roster in 2024.

“So, look, the message I gave him was, it’s not a guarantee in spring training,” Martinez said.

“‘You have to come here and fight for a job.’ I think I sent him a message when I sent him away. And it hurt me because I love that kid. . But he has to be better. He continues to do his thing [fifth] He’s been with us this year and we know the good side of Lewis, but we had to get it out of him. He has to be consistent. ”

The manager said he believes the second baseman will come to camp ready.

“After what happened with Lewis last year, I believe he will come back to spring training ready. But only time will tell.”

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Josiah Gray (26 years old) lowered his ERA to 3.91 in the last outing of the 2023 season against the Baltimore Orioles in the semifinals (This was down from the 5.02 ERA he recorded in 2022.), 4.94 FIP(down from 5.86), 143 strikeouts (8.09K/9; down from 9.32), 80 walks (4.53BB/9, Increased from 4.00), 22 home runs allowed (HR/9 of 1.25, down from 2.30 when he allowed a league-leading 38 HRs in 148 games. ²⁄₃ IP), .251/.345/.412 line in 30 starts and 159 IP (After finishing the 2022 season with a line of .239/.324/.489.).

Although he wanted to work on some things, such as improving his changeup so he could use it more often in 2023, Gray said in an interview on MLB Network Radio in late January that he didn’t want to work this winter offseason. He said he takes almost the same approach. He does it every year.

“The offseason was pretty much the same,” the pitcher explained.

“Obviously, I’m trying to refine everything in my mix, whether it’s my breaking ball, my cutter, my four-seam fastball, and I’m also throwing a changeup a little bit more to see if I can play around that. But yeah, a lot of what I’ve done so far has been just tinkering with things and trying to refine things a little bit more without making too many adjustments.”

Joey Gallo, 30, signed a one-year, $5 million contract with Washington D.C. this winter and admitted on a Zoom call with reporters that he is bruised and can hit the ball all over the place. He said he would like to go back. In 2023, he hit .177/.301/.440 with nine doubles, 21 home runs, 48 ​​walks, and 142 Ks in 111 games and 332 PA. He was worth 0.7 fWAR to the Minnesota Twins.

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“I think a lot of my best years were just practicing all over the field more and using the middle of the field more,” Gallo said. “And it seemed like last year we started out like that and maybe got into a bad habit or something and started pulling the ball a little more and got pull-happy. If you’re confined to one side of the field, it’s That’s never a good thing. So it’s about getting my bearings back and narrowing it down a little bit and getting it closer to what it probably felt like a few years ago.”

“I think the biggest priority is probably just getting better against right-handed pitchers,” Nick Senzel said on a Zoom call with reporters after signing a one-year, $2 million contract with the Nats. .

Senzel, 28, finished last year with the Cincinnati Reds with a -0.4 fWAR, posting a .236/.297/.399 line and a career-high 13 home runs in 104 games and 330 at-bats.

Last year, he appeared in 126 at-bats against left-handed pitchers and hit .348/.389/.619, with nine of his 13 home runs coming from left-handed batters and .164 against right-handed batters. It ended with /. He has a .240/.257 line against right-handed pitchers, a career .287/.334/.460 against left-handed pitchers (409 PA), and a .219/.288/.330 line against right-handed pitchers (957 PA), so it’s worth focusing on. If he plays third every day, which the Nationals told him to do, it makes sense. So he worked on it this winter.

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“I went to Stillwater, Oklahoma to meet with Matt Holliday and his sons for about a week,” Senzel said.

“I’m going back there in January to do a little bit of work.

“If I had to pick one specific thing, I think it would just be working on my right-handed pitching and swing in general.”

Dylan Floro, 33, came off a slow year with the Miami Marlins and Twins and signed a one-year/$2.25 million contract with the Nationals, posting a 4.76 ERA, 2.96 FIP, and .308/.363 batting average. He had a score of /.410. He has 62 games and he has 56 2⁄3 IP.

Floro said he’s tweaking a few things this winter and trying to bounce back at nationals.

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“I think it’s a little bit of everything,” he said of his offseason work. “It takes a little bit of a mechanical adjustment there. When you just execute the pitch and extend it a little bit more, instead of extending it a little more and giving up the hit in the gap, extend it a little bit more and make sure you don’t have to worry about what the batter is thinking. It’s like trying to understand how you’re pitching. You can pitch better in the right situations.”

What is his approach this winter?

“I’ve been working on a few different things,” Frollo said. “My pitch execution was a little bit better with two strikes. There’s not much I can change going into next year, so I hope that helps me.”

Will the offseason work pay off? Will the Nats be able to get the bounce-back seasons they’re hoping for from all of the players listed above?

Spring training begins today, and pitchers and catchers will begin reporting. We’ll have some answers soon…