WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Washington Nationals’ brass isn’t necessarily unique in its characterization of spring training baseball. The Nationals are optimistic. They’re ramping up. They’re looking to set the foundation. But Washington hasn’t always conveyed that message conventionally. Perhaps the buzziest move came in 2018, when Manager Dave Martinez brought in camels to confront a proverbial postseason hump the team hadn’t yet cleared.
Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo took a shot at it this year. His decision: signs behind each of the 11 plates at the team’s spring training facility in West Palm Beach, Fla., zip-tied at four corners to a chain-link fence with the Washington logo underneath. The signs face any pitcher who takes the rubber.
Their message: “I don’t care how fast you throw ball four.”
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The “I” in question is Rizzo, who came up with the idea himself. The message to the Nationals’ pitching staff: Get ahead of hitters and stay ahead.
“In this league, you have to throw strikes,” Rizzo said. “I didn’t want to be a smarta-- and put that up, but I think with one of the youngest teams in the league like we have and a young pitching staff, I wanted them to know that is important to the guy making the decisions on who’s making the team.”
Last season, Washington walked 9.4 percent of opposing batters, the seventh-highest mark in the majors. Its staff had the second-most hitter-friendly counts in baseball, according to the website TruMedia.
“Last year I walked a lot of people, so I think the sign holds weight,” said starter Josiah Gray, who had an 11.5 percent walk rate last season. “Obviously walks are a byproduct of the game. You can’t eliminate them. But staying on attack is kind of the mind-set I’m going to take from it. Just to be aggressive. Be aggressive in the zone. Get hitters out with your stuff.”
Command and velocity don’t have to be mutually exclusive. High velocity and movement, as with command, is highly correlated with a pitch’s success. But walk rates weren’t the only indicator of issues for Nationals pitchers. Take their stuff-plus rating — a metric used by FanGraphs that, in short, tries to quantify the nastiness of pitches — which, at 95, is the second lowest in the majors.
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In the bullpen, there’s an indication Washington is balancing the old-school foundation with a new-school approach. In West Palm Beach, Trackman technology, which tracks the characteristics of a ball’s release and flight (think back to stuff-plus), is next to the signage. Sean Doolittle, who made the player-to-coach transition this offseason and is slated to act as a liaison between the pitching staff and the analytics department, has also been a vocal and active figure during bullpen sessions, usually situating himself behind a pitcher and next to an iPad-holding staff member.
At Nationals camp, players have deciphered that the sign does not literally indicate that they should eschew velocity in a three-ball count. But for a rebuilding team with a large collection of young talent already in Florida for spring training, the mantra has resonated.
Take 25-year-old reliever Amos Willingham, who pitched his first 24⅓ big league innings last season. As he worked to improve during the offseason, he prioritized the location of his off-speed pitches and, at the season’s onset, hopes to cut back on tough counts that spelled 2023.
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“Obviously it’s pretty big talking point around here,” Willingham said of the signs. “I like it. My mentality pitching has always been that I’d rather make the hitter beat me than beat myself. When I’m out there and walk the guy, I hate it. I hate feeling like you can see the at-bat. So I’m all about it.”
His interpretation, as with most Washington players, was to get ahead in counts. The same could be said for DJ Herz, a 23-year-old starter who, in the whirlwind of his first big league camp, appreciated a simple, centralized message.
“For me, it’s always just throw strikes, and I’m always just trying to pound the zone — I’m not one of those high-velocity guys,” Herz said. “I’m just trying to pitch how I pitch, and mainly I’m just trying to stay in zone with all four pitches. Namely, just getting strike one. Strike one’s the biggest thing. That’s what I’m trying to keep focused on.”
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“I look at it more like, we’re just trying to reiterate getting ahead and attacking hitters,” catcher Riley Adams said. “We got a lot of pitchers with good stuff, and sometimes we try to get too cute, and we just need to remember that we need to go out and attack these guys.”
As for Rizzo and whether any more signs were on the way?
“No, that was it,” Rizzo said. “That was my only brainstorm. That was the only brainstorm I had.”
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