Nationals injury notes: Giancarlo Stanton definitely turned toward second; Anthony Rendon day-to-day with neck injury...

First things first, Giancarlo Stanton definitely made a movement like he was going to go to second on his two-out grounder to third base in the third inning on Monday.

He turned toward second when Anthony Rendon made a diving play to his left on the 113 mph grounder and then flipped over and threw from his back toward first base, but wide, forcing Ryan Zimmerman to make a diving play on the other side of the field.

You can watch the play here.

There’s no embed and it probably would get pulled out of Google AMP anyway, so just click that link if you don’t believe us... or scroll down for Don Mattingly’s admission.

Ryan Zimmerman tagged Stanton just in case, and Dusty Baker came out to discuss the play with the ump... but they decided Stanton hadn’t turned toward second.

He did, but we digest... [ed. note - “We mean, digress, but that’s a joke sort of thing.”]

[ed. note - “Quick aside, kind of, but basically unrelated, when did MLB decide that you don’t have to always turn right after passing first base so there’s no confusion ever? It was always the rule when I played baseball... as a kid... and when I watched it growing up... was it ever an MLB rule... when did it change? But anyway...”]

Meanwhile, while all this was being sorted out, Anthony Rendon was on the other side of the field, trying to stretch his neck to get rid of what Baker said after the game, an 8-7 walk-off loss to the Fish, was a stinger in his third baseman’s neck.

Rendon left the game in the fifth, replaced by Stephen Drew, who went 2 for 3 the rest of the way, driving in a run with an RBI double in the fifth that put the Nationals up 7-6 at that point...

Baker addressed the apparent injury to Rendon after the game.

“On the dive on Stanton’s ball,” Baker explained, “he had a stinger in his neck and he’s day-to-day, we think he’ll be okay tomorrow. He’s never had that before, so it scared him and it scared us when you’ve got that pain in your neck, so we’ll see tomorrow.”

Asked about the fact that Rendon tried to play through the issue for an inning-plus afterwards, Baker said he stayed in until the trainers told him Rendon could not continue.

“The trainers came to me and then I went to him down the tunnel because he was trying to get rid of it, and they said, ‘Hey, man he can’t go anymore.’”

Washington Nationals Rumors - Two relievers mentioned as targets:

Photo by Duane Burleson/Getty Images

LINK: Nationals Rumors: Rosenthal mentions two targets for Nats

“If anybody’s ever hurt their neck, it’s not only frightening,” Baker explained, “but it could be a serious thing, so you don’t want to take a chance and his replacement, Drew, came in and did a great job, so I’m just glad that we had Drew.”

[ed. note - “One last note - before you say, ‘Oh, these homers, of course you think Stanton turned toward second, you’re Nationals fans! Homers!’”]

First, stop yelling at us. And second, Marlins’ skipper Don Mattingly kind of admitted that Stanton got away with one.

“I saw he didn’t turn,” Mattingly joked when asked what he saw on the play. “It did look like he had a little bit of a jab that way, I didn’t see him like turn the body, but you did see that one step.”

“I looked like we caught a little break there,” Mattingly added.

“MATTINGLY!!” - [ed. note - “Imagine Seinfeld saying ‘Newman!’ but instead it’s us saying, ‘Mattingly!’”]