Dave Martinez has found himself very much on the hot seat, with his Washington Nationals having dropped 12 of their last 13 games to fall 14 games below .500.
Bad news for Martinez: he got the dreaded vote of confidence from Nats GM Mike Rizzo this week, with Rizzo telling “The Sports Junkies” on 106.7-The Fan that his manager “still has the pulse of the clubhouse.”
Maybe, maybe not.
Martinez got himself in trouble last weekend as the Nats were being swept by the Miami Marlins, giving a tone-deaf answer to a question about how much coaching has had to do with the team’s struggles.
“It’s never on coaching. Never on coaching. Coaches work their asses off every single day. We’re not going to fingerpoint here and say it’s coaches. It’s never on the coaches. They work hard,” Martinez said, going on to say that “sometimes you got to put the onus on the players.”
“They got to go out there, and they got to play the game. And play the game the right way. We can’t hit for them. We can’t catch the balls for them. We can’t pitch for them. We can’t throw strikes for them. They got to do that.”
The “pulse of the clubhouse,” according to a report in the Washington Post after that outburst, was several players saying they were “shocked, dismayed and pissed” with Martinez, who led Washington to the 2019 World Series title, but has been presiding over the rebuild that began with the first steps toward the teardown of the championship roster in 2021 since.
There’s something to be said for continuity in the midst of a lengthy rebuild that is still probably a year or two away from paying off.
The preseason PECOTA prediction for the Nats was 74 wins, which would have been a modest build from the 71 wins in 2023 and 2024, and the 55 in 2022, the first full year of the teardown and rebuild.
A 12-6 stretch in late May into June had the Nationals within three games of the .500 mark before reality set in.
In the last 13, the team is averaging 3.3 runs per game, with two shutouts and two other games scoring one run.
Also in the recent skid: the Nats are 1-5 in one-run games, and closer Kyle Finnegan has two blown saves.
Washington lost six of seven at home in the skid to Miami (30-44, last in the NL East) and Colorado (17-59, last in the NL West, and worst record in MLB).
The updated PECOTA projection for Washington is 67 wins.
It feels like the way this season is trending is a big step in the wrong direction.
If Rizzo doesn’t get that, maybe he needs to go, too.
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Chris Graham
