This morning at Nationals Park the Nats played the first-ever “On Deck: Nationals Futures Game” for their final exhibition game before starting the regular season Thursday in Cincinnati. The game was set up in a cool way to give the organization’s top prospects who have spent time with the big league camp an opportunity to face off against the organization’s big leaguers who have all played during spring training.
The Nationals big leaguers won the game 13-1 flexing their muscles on the rising youngsters behind a solid start from Mckenzie Gore who threw 65 pitches over four frames of work while striking out seven. Gore set the tone early in his final tune-up before the regular season facing top prospects Robert Hassell III, Dylan Crews, James Wood, and Trey Lipscomb. The left-hander managed to record three strikeouts in the first inning and only surrounded an opposite-field double to James Wood.
“They’re good players,” Gore said. “It’s a spring training start, but it’s cool for them. Cool to play against them, they’re good. But yeah, it was a spring training start. They just need to keep getting better like everybody else up here and we’re gonna have some fun.”
Gore finishes the spring strong and adding in today’s four scoreless frames he wraps up the exhibition games with a 4.66 ERA across 19.1 innings and 26 strikeouts. He will pitch next when the Nationals play host to the Pittsburgh Pirates in their home opener next Monday.
One of the final competitions this spring was determined out of the game today with the looming decision on what to do between Luis Garcia Jr. and Trey Lipscomb. Not much can be made out of one singular game to determine a roster spot, it was close but Garcia ultimately snagged the second base job from him going 3-for-4 with a run scored and an RBI. Lipscomb went 0-for-2 with a throwing error trying to make a play in the dirt. The Nats officially transferred Lipscomb to a minor league game following the conclusion of the game.
Lipscomb made a legit case to make the Opening Day roster giving Davey Martinez another hard roster decision to make before Thursday. All month he had been hitting at an elite rate and finished the spring hitting .400 (20/50) with a .955 OPS, with a home run and seven RBI. Not too surprising that this was the route the Nationals decided to go down but Lipscomb will for sure get his opportunity in the very near future. He needs to play every day, which he will now be able to. The only issue is that Garcia is out of options heading into the season, he would have to be set to waivers before anything.
The Nationals also selected the contracts of RHP Derek Law and also placed RHP Cade Cavalli to the 60-day injured list who is making his way back from Tommy John surgery.
Opening Day rosters will not be announced until Thursday morning in Cincinnati.
On the other side, the Nationals future’s sent out Jackson Rutledge to start this morning. He started out well striking out Lane Thomas and Jesse Winker looking, but from then on it was a nightmare of an outing. The lengthy -righty managed to make it into the fourth inning giving up 14 hits, 12 runs, one walk, and two strikeouts over 74 pitches (46 strikes).
Dj Herz, who was acquired in the late summer trade with the Chicago Cubs for Jeimer Candelario, made an appearance and the lefty threw two scoreless innings and punched out two. 20-year-old international RHP Jarlin Susana also showed out and was one strike away from an immaculate eighth inning, but settled for two strikeouts with one coming down the pipe as a 102.4 MPH fastball. Susana’s fastball averaged out at around 101 MPH making his slider at 88 MPH even harder for hitters to sit back on.
Other notable prospects performed the best they could against the big-league pitching. Dylan Crews who has had a slower spring than maybe he would liked to have had went 1-for-3 and James Wood went 1-for-2 as well.
Tj White took Trevor Williams deep in the seventh and again singled off him in the ninth finishing his day going 2-for-4 with an RBI. Cristhian Vaquero (1-for-3) hit a single off Williams as well in the eighth and Elijah Green drew a walk an inning later in the final frame.
The Nationals will begin the ’24 season in Cincinnati against the Reds on Thursday afternoon at 1:10EST for the first of three at Great American Ballpark. Opening Day at Nationals Park will be next Monday (4/1) against the Pittsburgh Pirates for the first of a six-game home-stand and later welcoming the Philadelphia Phillies for three.
