Washington Nationals vs Philadelphia Phillies: Exhibition Baseball GameThread

Washington Nationals’ manager Davey Martinez wanted to give both Juan Soto and Howie Kendrick something of a break on Friday, on their second day of workouts after two weeks of quarantine, but they were not having it.

“I didn’t want them to play the field,” Martinez explained. “I just wanted them to get at bats today, and they both were adamant about going out there and playing the field.

“So that just tells me that they feel pretty good.

“I talked to them today. They’re going to be in the lineup tomorrow. We’ll see how far they can go, but at least get them a couple at bats, a few innings, and we’ll go from there.”

Martinez was asked if most of his regulars would be in the lineup for tonight’s matchup with their NL East rivals, in the first exhibition game of Spring Training 2.0, and he said he had to put them in.

“We’ve only got three games against different teams,” the manager explained, “... so you’ve got to get them out there, so barring nothing happens from now until tomorrow, they’ll all be out there.”

Since tonight’s game is the first with another team since baseball started back up, Martinez was asked if he was comfortable with the protocols put in place to keep everyone safe in an ongoing pandemic.

“We actually covered what we need to do here playing at home,” Martinez said, “... all the protocols. The question is when we go to Baltimore on Monday what we have to do going there. We’re still trying to find out whether we get screening here before [we get] on the bus, do we get screening over there ... so hopefully we’ll have that answer maybe tomorrow hopefully or maybe Sunday, but those are the things, going into the other stadiums is more of a concern than here.

“We basically know what we want to do at home, we’re going to follow the protocols as we were told, which we’ve abided by so far. It’s been a good camp so far in regards to keeping everybody in-house safe.”

How will things go for the Nationals and Phillies tonight. You can listen in on 106.7 the FAN in D.C. at 6:05 PM.

HERE IS THE NATS’ LINEUP FOR THE FIRST OF 3 EXHIBITION GAMES: