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

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2 years ago

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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.

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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.

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“‘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.

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“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.

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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

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“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.

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“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…

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Washington

Inside Woodlawn Cemetery’s mission to preserve history

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10 hours ago

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June 24, 2026

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Inside Woodlawn Cemetery’s mission to preserve history


The iron gate to Woodlawn Cemetery is almost always locked shut, but Toni White-Richardson was more than happy to let News4 inside.

As president of the Woodlawn Cemetery Perpetual Care Association, she was excited to talk about what makes this resting place so special.

“It is major D.C. history, first. Then it’s also major Black history, second,” White-Richardson said.

More than 30,000 people, mostly African Americans, are buried among the 22 acres of Woodlawn Cemetery, which opened in Southeast D.C. in 1895. And like so many cemeteries that date back to the 1800s, particularly African American cemeteries, this one has fallen into disrepair, is overgrown and has headstones tumbled over, like those of Wilhelmina and her husband James, and Eliza Spencer, a mother who died in 1887.

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“Let me do a very upfront disclaimer,” White-Richardson said. “We have no idea where these stones go. And when we looked at the grid, it became even clear as mud, it became less clear as to where these stones should really go. Unfortunately, when we look back, we can tell there was a plan, but we could see we never got totally completed. Even back then, there are no markers saying this is Section H or this is Section G or this is 102 and this is, none of that.”

One of the most notable Washingtonians laid to rest here is John Mercer Langston, Virginia’s first Black congressman.

“Langston University came one year because they had a grand reunion in D.C., and we arranged for them to come to see […] John Mercer Langston, the university that was named after this man,” White-Richardson said.

And Blance Bruce, the first Black U.S. senator to serve a full term and register of the treasury, is also buried in the cemetery.

“He’s the signature on our dollar bill, you know, back in the late 1800s,” White-Richardson said. “So, oh, it’s history. It’s capital letters. No getting around it.”

Woodlawn is also the resting place of several of the original founders of two of the country’s most prominent Black sororities, Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta. Both organizations volunteer to help with clean ups.

The Perpetual Care Association recently received a grant from the D.C. Office of Planning to help with upkeep of the grounds and preserving the history here.

“These are important individuals who’ve made contributions to the District a century ago, but today still their history and their stories reverberate and really influence the trajectory of our city,” said Anita Cozart, director of the D.C. Office of Planning.

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The cemetery tucked away off Benning Road is only open to the public five days a year, but groups can request tours anytime. The next chance to visit Woodlawn when it will be open to the public is Labor Day.

They’re always looking for volunteers and donors to help with the upkeep of this sacred ground.



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Parsing Trump’s claims about Washington’s reflecting pool

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20 hours ago

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June 24, 2026

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Parsing Trump’s claims about Washington’s reflecting pool


US President Donald Trump wanted to mark the US’s 250th birthday with a renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.

The makeover, including a new coat of “American Flag blue,” cost taxpayers $16 million (€14.1 million).

But the water is covered in green algae. The blue paint is already peeling. Trump has blamed vandals, while his critics question the project’s transparency and cost.

DW’s Brent Goff and Washington correspondent Janelle Dumalaon unpack the whole fiasco.

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Social media reacts to former BYU star AJ Dybantsa going No. 1 in 2026 NBA draft

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1 day ago

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June 23, 2026

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Social media reacts to former BYU star AJ Dybantsa going No. 1 in 2026 NBA draft


Former BYU basketball star AJ Dybantsa fulfilled his dream of going No. 1 overall in the 2026 NBA draft.

The Washington Wizards selected Dybantsa with the first pick.

Immediately after the pick, reactions poured in on social media about the Wizards drafting Dybantsa.

Social media reactions to the Washington Wizards selecting BYU star AJ Dybantsa

Mitch Harper is a BYU Insider for KSL and hosts the Cougar Tracks Podcast daily on KSL Sports YouTube and KSL NewsRadio (SUBSCRIBE). Harper also co-hosts Cougar Sports Saturday (12–3 p.m.) on KSL NewsRadio.

Follow Mitch’s coverage of BYU athletics in the Big 12 Conference on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram: @Mitch_Harper.

Want more coverage of BYU sports? Take us with you wherever you go.

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