Washington Nationals’ lineup for tonight’s series opener with the Philadelphia Phillies

Are there positives to take from an eight-run, 11-hit loss? What are the Nationals thoughts at the just-about-halfway point of the 2020 campaign? Are they going to go 1-0 every day the rest of the way and fight their way up the NL East standings? With an NHL-esque number of teams making the playoffs this year, should they just focus on getting into the postseason?

“No, I think we all should really fight for winning our division,” Yan Gomes told reporters on a Zoom call after his 1 for 5 game in front of the plate last night. “But we understand that there’s more teams making the playoffs this year, which makes things not out of hand. But again, we still need to start having better series and again, we’re like two to three series away from being right in the middle of things.”

Davey Martinez said that while there were positives to pull from last night’s game, the club needs to start winning consistently and turning this thing around.

“I love the fact that we didn’t quit,” Martinez said after the Nationals battled back from 7-0, 9-3, and 11-5 deficits to make a game of it late in the finale with the Miami Marlins.

“We hit the ball tonight, and we scored some runs. On the other hand, we gave up a bunch of runs.”

They lost in the end, falling to 11-15 after 26 games in the 60-game 2020 campaign and as their manager has said since early last season, they need to get over last night’s loss now that’s it’s over, and move on to tonight’s series opener with the Philadelphia Phillies.

“We got to just brush this one off,” Martinez told reporters, “like I said, the offense did well, they didn’t quit, they kept plugging away, we scored a bunch of runs, our at bats were good, so we just come back tomorrow, hopefully [Erick] Fedde can give us five innings, six innings, and we’ll go from there.”

Is there a sense of urgency as the days fall off the 2020 calendar?

“I think that urgency was talked about early on,” Gomes said. “I think we made jokes about we can’t go 19-31 to start the year, but it doesn’t seem like things are out of hand at all. I think there’s like maybe a couple teams that are doing well. Everybody else is just kind of grinding away. And I think we’re a couple good series away from being right in the thick of things.

“We just can’t let things get too far ahead of us. Like Davey said, we’ve got to fight to go 1-0 each day and just fight the series, and just start playing better games in the season. I guess you could call it midway through the season now, so now it’s like our time to start getting hot.”

Gomes gets a night off in the series opener, with Kurt Suzuki catching Erick Fedde, but he’ll be back in the lineup tomorrow with Patrick Corbin on the mound.

HERE’S THE NATIONALS’ LINEUP FOR TONIGHT’S GAME VS THE PHILLIES: