But it is certain that, as of Saturday, reliever Tanner Rainey had yet to appear in a game. He also is not scheduled to in the immediate future.
The 28-year-old has been slowed by what Manager Dave Martinez called a “minor” muscle strain by his right collarbone. On Saturday, after a 4-3 exhibition win over the New York Mets, Martinez said Rainey is still inching toward facing opponents. The righty threw a 30-pitch bullpen session in the afternoon. The next step was facing teammates in live batting practice Sunday morning, and he logged 20 pitches at about 80 percent. With less than three weeks before Opening Day, it’s become fair to question whether Rainey will start the season in Washington’s bullpen.
“Once we get him through this next one, we should be able to plop him into a game here soon,” Martinez said Saturday night. “I talked to [pitching coach Jim Hickey], and we still could get him ready for the season.”
Like any year, and like with any team, the Nationals’ bullpen will click if a lot goes right: Lefty Brad Hand has to live up to the one-year, $10.5 million deal he signed in January. Daniel Hudson has to bury a down 2020 — the year of the dreaded small sample — and has vowed to be better in put-away counts. Will Harris, a 36-year-old righty, has to find the right blend and shapes for his cutter and curveball. And depth arms Wander Suero and Kyle Finnegan have to build on what they started last summer. Suero’s cutter began behaving like he wants. Finnegan was a reliable middle reliever. Both could be cost-effective keys to future success.
But Rainey may be the linchpin of this group. He was undoubtedly the club’s best reliever in 2020. He finished it with a strikeout percentage of 42.7 in 20⅓ innings. His walk percentage (9.3) was nearly half of what it ballooned to in 2019. By refining his slider and learning how to regularly throw it in the zone, his two-pitch arsenal was devastating.
His slider can look as if it’s being yanked down by an anvil. His fastball averaged right below 97 mph. But his breakout year was cut short by forearm tightness in mid-September. The Nationals are again toeing the thin line between needing him and not going too fast with a recovery. Martinez originally wanted Rainey to get five to six appearances and a back-to-back in West Palm Beach. Now, the window to make that happen is almost closed.
“He’s matured a lot, as you can tell,” Martinez said earlier this month. “Last year he was doing really well until he got hurt. We just want to continue with his progression, and I think he’s got all the makeup to be a closer and a back-end guy. But he’s a younger guy, so we’re going to take it slow with him.”
Washington thinned its bullpen depth by releasing Jeremy Jeffress on March 7. But even before that move, Martinez, Hickey and General Manager Mike Rizzo had floated the possibility of carrying nine relievers to begin the year.
The idea is tied to not knowing which pitchers will be ready for normal innings in April. That goes for both starters and relievers. Max Scherzer, for example, was eased in after spraining his left ankle in February. Stephen Strasburg was, too, because he threw only five innings in 2020 before undergoing carpal tunnel surgery. Same for Joe Ross, who logged zero pitches after opting out with coronavirus concerns. And Jon Lester, the team’s expected fourth starter, had a parathyroid gland removed March 5 and hasn’t appeared in an exhibition.
This is all to say that Rainey’s not alone. The difference is that projecting the bullpen was tricky without his muscle strain. Factoring that in and predicting nine relievers is almost a futile guessing game. With Rainey, the Opening Day locks are him, Hand, Hudson, Harris and Suero. Finnegan, struggling this spring, is close but in the next tier. Then the next options are Sam Clay, Dakota Bacus, Ryne Harper, Kyle McGowin, Javy Guerra and Luis Avilán — the latter two of whom would need 40-man roster spots — in some jumbled order.
“We’ve got a lot of veteran presence there, and a lot of good, young, optionable arms that we believe are going to help us throughout the season,” Rizzo said of the bullpen after releasing Jeffress. “I believe it’s probably the best depth that we’ve had at this time of year in quite a few years here.”
With Ross, Erick Fedde and Austin Voth again competing for the fifth starter spot, it’s likely that at least one of them joins the bullpen as a long man. Adding another hybrid starter (perhaps Ben Braymer) is how having nine relievers becomes more feasible. But the point is that, without Rainey, the Nationals miss a relied-upon fireballer for the seventh, eighth or ninth.
Getting close to his 2020 success would be huge for these Nationals. Enabling him to do that starts with caution in spring.
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