Washington

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

Published

2 years ago

February 14, 2024

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

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

“I told him he’s got to get agile,” Martinez told reporters at the Winter Meetings in early December.

“He’s another guy, we got to get him more to swing less. I don’t want to take his aggressiveness away, but he’s got to learn how to hit the ball in the strike zone.”

García, 23, was coming off a 2023 campaign which saw him optioned to Triple-A at one point before he returned to the big leagues, finishing up his fourth season in the majors with a .266/.304/.385 with 18 doubles, four triples, and nine home runs in 122 games and 482 PAs overall.

Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

He was in an 0 for 12 stretch over four games, and coming off of a rough .217/.250/.301 month of July in which he’d hit just two doubles and one home run when he was optioned to the Nats’ top minor league affiliate (with a .259/.293/.362 line on the year in the majors), and he put up a .268/.315/.381 line, eight doubles, and a home run in 25 games and 108 PAs before he was called back up and put up a .304/.360/.507 line, five doubles, and three home runs in 22 games and 75 PAs down the stretch.

His manager told him to put in the work this winter and come to Spring Training ready to earn a spot on the Opening Day roster for 2024.

“Yeah, look, my message to him was/is no guarantees in Spring Training,” Martinez said.

“‘You got to come and fight for a job.’ I think I sent the message to him when we sent him down. And it hurt me because I love the kid. But he’s got to get better. He’s going on his [fifth] year now with us, and I know what the upside is with Luis, but we got to get it out of him. He’s got to be consistent.”

The manager said he believed his second baseman would come to camp ready to go.

“I believe after what happened last year with Luis that he’s going to come back in Spring Training ready. But only time will tell.”

MLB: Washington Nationals at Pittsburgh Pirates

Josiah Gray, 26, lowered his ERA to 3.91 on the season in 2023 with six strong against the Baltimore Orioles in his final outing (down from the 5.02 ERA he posted in 2022), finishing the year with a 4.94 FIP (down from 5.86), 143 strikeouts (8.09 K/9; down from 9.32), 80 walks (4.53 BB/9, up from 4.00), 22 home runs allowed (1.25 HR/9, down from 2.30 – when he allowed a league-leading 38 HRs allowed in 148 ²⁄₃ IP), and a .251/.345/.412 line against in his 30 starts and 159 IP (after he finished the season with a .239/.324/.489 line against in the ‘22 season).

Though he wanted to work on some things — like improving his changeup so he can use it more often in 2023 — Gray said in an MLB Network Radio interview in late January, he was taking pretty much the same approach to his offseason work this winter as he does every year.

“It’s been about pretty much the same offseason,” the pitcher explained, “… tinkering with the sinker a little bit more to get some more run on it, but everything else has been status quo I guess you could say.

“Obviously, still trying to refine everything in the mix, whether it’s the breaking ball, it’s the cutter, or the four-seam fastball, throwing the changeup a little bit more now too to see if we can get that front/back play. But yeah, it’s been a lot of things I’ve done in the past while trying to tinker with things and not make too many big adjustments but just trying to refine a little bit more.”

Joey Gallo, 30, signed a 1-year/$5M deal in D.C. this winter, and talked in a Zoom call with reporters about wanting to get back to hitting the ball to all fields after he, by his own admission, got a bit pull-happy in 2023, in a season which saw him put up a .177/.301/.440 line, nine doubles, 21 homers, 48 walks, and 142 Ks in 111 games and a total of 332 PAs, over which he was worth 0.7 fWAR for the Minnesota Twins.

MLB: Washington Nationals at Minnesota Twins

“I think a lot of my best years, I was really working the whole field more and I was using the middle of the field more,” Gallo said. “And it seemed like last year I started off that way, and maybe fell into some bad habits or whatnot and I started to pull the ball a little more and got pull-happy. That’s never a good thing when you’re locked into one side of the field. So it’s about just getting my direction back, narrow up a little bit, kind of hit how I used to maybe a few years ago.”

“I would say the biggest priority is probably getting better against right-handed pitching,” Nick Senzel said in his own Zoom call with reporters after he signed a 1-year/$2M deal with the Nats.

Senzel, 28, put up a .236/.297/.399 line and career-high 13 home runs in 104 games and 330 plate appearances last year in what ended up a -0.4 fWAR season with Cincinnati’s Reds.

In 126 plate appearances against left-handed pitching last year, he put up a .348/.389/.619 line with nine of his 13 home runs off of lefties, and the right-handed hitter finished up with a .164/.240/.257 line vs right-handed pitchers, leaving him at .287/.334/.460 in 409 career PAs vs lefties, versus a .219/.288/.330 line vs righties (957 PAs), so the focus there makes sense if he’s going to play third every day as he said the Nationals told him he would. So he put in the work this winter.

MLB: Washington Nationals at Cincinnati Reds

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

“I’m going to head back there in January just to get some work in there.

“If you were picking one specific thing I would say just working on kind of right-handed pitching and the swing in general.”

Dylan Floro, 33, signed a 1 year/$2.25M deal with the Nationals coming off a down year with the Miami Marlins and Twins which saw him post a 4.76 ERA, a 2.96 FIP, and .308/.363/.410 line against in 62 games and 56 2⁄3IP.

Floro said he was trying to fine tune a few things this winter, and looking to bounce back with the Nationals.

MLB: Washington Nationals at Miami Marlins

“I think it’s a little bit of everything,” he said of his offseason work. “There’s a little bit of mechanical adjustment I’ve got to do there. Just executing pitches, when it’s time to expand a little bit more expand a little more, instead of giving up that hit in the gap, expand a little bit more, and just kind of trying to figure out what a hitter is thinking and throwing a better pitch in the right situation.”

His approach this winter?

“I’ve been working on some different things,” Floro said. “Executing pitches a little bit better with two strikes. There’s little things that I can change to hopefully go into next year and it’ll help me out.”

Will the offseason work pay off? Will the Nats get the bounce-back season they hope for from all of the players mentioned above?

Spring Training starts today with pitchers and catchers reporting, and we’ll start to get some of those answers soon…

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Washington

Stars defeat Capitals to end losing streak at 6 | NHL.com

Published

3 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Stars defeat Capitals to end losing streak at 6 | NHL.com

Hintz scored into an empty net at 19:41 for the 4-1 final.

“Everybody played hard, did the right things, got pucks in deep, especially in the third period when we’re trying to close out a lead,” DeSmith said. “So, I thought top to bottom, first, second and third, we were really good.”

NOTES: The Stars swept the two-game season series (including a 1-0 win Oct. 28 in Dallas) and are 8-1-0 in their past nine games against the Capitals. … Duchene had the secondary assist on Steel’s goal, giving him 900 points (374 goals, 526 assists) in 1,157 NHL games. … Hintz has 11 points (seven goals, four assists) in an eight-game point streak against Washington. He had a game-high 12 shots on goal. … Thompson has lost six of his past seven starts (1-5-1).

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Washington

Bridge collapse on Washington Avenue leaves emergency crews racing to rescue victims

Published

15 hours ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Bridge collapse on Washington Avenue leaves emergency crews racing to rescue victims

WHEELING, W.Va. — Emergency crews are responding to a major incident at the Washington Avenue Bridge, which has collapsed into Wheeling Creek.

Multiple police and firefighter units are on the scene, working swiftly to rescue those injured in the collapse.

Three injured workers have been taken to the hospital. Officials say one is a serious injury and two are non-life threatening.

Access to the area has been closed to facilitate rescue operations.

The bridge was closed in early December for a replacement that was expected to take nearly a year.

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Washington

Dynamite, Floods and Feuds: Washington’s forgotten river wars

Published

1 day ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Dynamite, Floods and Feuds: Washington’s forgotten river wars

A look back at Washington’s historic flooding

It’s been a few weeks since the historic flooding hit the streets of western Washington, and if you scroll through social media, the shock still seems fresh. While some insist it was a once-in-a-generation disaster, state history tells a different story.

TUKWILA, Wash. – After floodwaters inundated western Washington in December, social media is still filled with disbelief, with many people saying they had never seen flooding like it before.

But local history shows the region has experienced catastrophic flooding, just not within most people’s lifetimes.

A valley under water

What may look like submerged farmland in Skagit or Snohomish counties is actually an aerial view of Tukwila from more than a century ago. Before Boeing, business parks and suburban development, the Kent Valley was a wide floodplain.

(Tukwila Historical Society)

In November 1906, much of the valley was underwater, according to city records. In some places, floodwaters reached up to 10 feet, inundating homesteads and entire communities.

“Roads were destroyed, river paths were readjusted,” said Chris Staudinger of Pretty Gritty Tours. “So much of what had been built in these areas got washed away.”

Staudinger has been sharing historical images and records online, drawing comparisons between the December flooding and events from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“It reminded me so much of what’s happening right now,” he said, adding that the loss then, as now, was largely a loss of property and control rather than life.

When farmers used dynamite

Records show flooding was not the only force reshaping the region’s rivers. In the late 1800s, farmers repeatedly used dynamite in attempts to redirect waterways.

“The White River in particular has always been contentious,” explained Staudinger. “For farmers in that area, multiple different times starting in the 1890s, groups of farmers would get together and blow-up parts of the river to divert its course either up to King County or down to Pierce County.”

Staudinger says at times they used too much dynamite and accidentally sent logs lobbing through the air like missiles.

In one instance, King County farmers destroyed a bluff, permanently diverting the White River into Pierce County. The river no longer flowed toward Elliott Bay, instead emptying into Commencement Bay.

Outraged by this, Pierce County farmers took their grievances to the Washington State Supreme Court. The court ruled the change could not be undone.

When flooding returned, state officials intervened to stop further explosions.

“To prevent anyone from going out and blowing up the naturally occurred log jam, the armed guards were dispatched by the state guard,” said Staudinger. “Everything was already underwater.”

Rivers reengineered — and erased

Over the next century, rivers across the region were dredged, dammed and diverted. Entire waterways changed or disappeared.

“So right where the Renton Airport is now used to be this raging waterway called the Black River,” explained Staudinger. “Connected into the Duwamish. It was a major salmon run. It was a navigable waterway.”

Today, that river has been reduced to what Staudinger described as “the little dry trickle.”

Between 1906 and 1916, the most dramatic changes occurred that played a role in its shrinking. When the Ballard Locks were completed, Lake Washington dropped by nine feet, permanently cutting off its southern flow.

A lesson from December

Despite modern levees and flood-control engineering, December’s storms showed how vulnerable the region remains.

“For me, that’s the takeaway,” remarked Staudinger. “You could do all of this to try and remain in control, but the river’s going to do whatever it wants.”

He warned that history suggests the risk is ongoing.

“You’re always one big storm from it rediscovering its old path,” said Staudinger.

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The Source: Information in this story came from the Tukwila Historical Society, MOHAI, Pretty Gritty Tours, and FOX 13 Seattle reporting and interviews.

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