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.

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.”

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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.

“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.

“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.

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“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…