Washington Nationals’ lineup for the nightcap of today’s doubleheader with San Francisco’s Giants...

When he spoke to reporters around 12:15 PM this afternoon, in advance of the first game of today’s doubleheader with the San Francisco Giants in Nationals Park, Washington’s fourth-year skipper, Davey Martinez, joked about not really knowing going in who was going to be pitching the second game after a string of roster moves this morning shook things up.

He did, however, acknowledge that he was leaning towards starting Jefry Rodriguez in the second game of the day, after the 27-year-old right-hander (who signed with the Nationals as an amateur free agent out of the Dominican Republic in 2012, debuted in the majors in 2018, and was traded to Cleveland in the Yan Gomes deal that winter, before re-signing in D.C. this winter), was called back up this morning.

Rodriguez was 1-0 with a 7.56 ERA in six games (five of them starts) for Triple-A Rochester this season, with 13 walks, 19 Ks, and just one home run allowed in 16 ²⁄₃ IP, before he got called back up to the big leagues today.

Before he worried about who would start the second game though, Martinez staying on brand, said he wanted to get through the first of two.

“As you know, we’re going to go 1-0 the first game and then we’ll go from there,” he said.

“I mean, that’s how I’m looking at it right now. We’ll have some options, if we need to pitch Jefry in the first game, we have some options that we can do. So we’ll see how the first game goes. I would like for [Erick] Fedde to go five or six innings, and make this a lot easier and then start Jefry in the second game.”

He also made some lineup decisions for Game 1 of 2 based on the fact that they had to play two games today and another tomorrow.

“I wanted to get [Andrew Stevenson] in there against [Kevin] Gausman, a lot of fastballs, let [Victor] Robles play the second game,” Martinez explained. “Get [Kyle] Schwarber up there in the leadoff spot, see if we can get him going again, get him some fastballs early. A lot of this is because of Yan [Gomes], not being able to catch two games. [Alex] Avila is going to catch the first game, so a lot of this is based on, one the doubleheader, and two like I said, I looked at the matchups earlier, with Stevenson and Gausman, I kind of like that matchup, and see if we can get some hits out of Stevenson, he gets on base for the guys up at the top.”

For the nightcap?

HERE’S THE NATS’ LINEUP FOR THE 2ND OF 2 WITH THE GIANTS TODAY: