Washington Nationals news & notes: MacKenzie Gore sticks with it; Nats beat Giants, 11-5...

GOREGEOUS?:

Winless in his last eight outings (0-4; with the Nationals 3-5 in those games), MacKenzie Gore (7.25 ERA, 4.36 FIP, .311/.397./464 line against in 36 IP in that stretch) bounced back some after a few less-than-stellar turns in the rotation with a 5 ¹⁄₃-inning, eight-hit, 3-run start in Arizona on the last road trip.

“I really liked it,” manager Davey Martinez told reporters after Gore’s effort against the D-backs.

“He was a lot more efficient. He got us into the sixth inning with like [84] pitches I think it was, but he was much better today, you know, I loved the efficiency.

“He was pounding the strike zone. I thought he threw the ball really well.”

“He threw the ball down for the most part,” Martinez added, “… elevated when he needed to, his slider was a little better, so we thought he did a good job today.”

“We didn’t get a lot of swing-and-miss and strikeouts,” Gore said after striking out just one batter and recording just seven swinging strikes, though he did throw 63 of 98 pitches for strikes overall, and did pick up 14 called strikes, 10 with his fastball, and four on his curve.

“There wasn’t a ton of two-strike counts,” Gore said. “That’s kind of the game plan they had the whole series. I think it was a little mix of my stuff not being as good, and also they were aggressive.”

His manager said it was certainly a start to build on.

“We’ll get him back out there in 5-6 days, and then hopefully he’ll finish the season up strong,” Martinez said.

“He’s got potential to be a No. 1 guy, he really does. And an All-Star,” Martinez told reporters before Gore went up against the San Francisco Giants last night in the nation’s capital.

“We just got to continue to work with him. I do see some — there’s something in there that I know is going to come out of him, and when it does, he’ll be lights out. I love him, because he competes. He loves to compete, he doesn’t like failing, as we all know, but he’s a good one. So we’re going to continue to work with him and get him better.”

Gore gave up a one-out solo home run to the second batter he faced on Tuesday, on a 3-1 fastball up in the zone to Heliot Ramos, 1-0, and one out walk, and a hit-by-pitch later, the second home run of the inning, a three-run shot by Michael Conforto, made it 4-0 Giants.

Two more two-out hits pushed Gore up to 33 pitches in the opening frame, but he kept it together, worked around an error in the second, took the mound in the third up 5-4, then worked around a walk and a double, and with the score 7-4 in the fourth, he gave up two singles and a run to start the inning, then got three outs and stranded a leadoff double in the fifth before he was done for the day (5.0 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 6 Ks, 2 HRs, 98 P, 66 S, 5/3 GO/FO, 15 swinging strikes, 13 on his fastball, 12 called, 7 on his heater).

Gore left the game with the Nationals up 8-5 in what ended up an 11-5 win, with multi-hit games from six batters on the home team.

“As I told him when he came out of the game, ‘Forget about that first inning. What you did after that was pretty good. It really was,” Martinez said of the message for the starter after Gore was done for the night.

“I mean, he could have just fell apart, but he hung in there and he started getting the ball where he wanted to, and he gave us the innings we needed.

“I mean, five at 96 I think it was. But he battled those last four innings and we really needed that. We scored runs, but without that, I can tell you right now I don’t even know what we’re going to do.”

“That’s what I’m supposed to do,” Gore said of sticking with it after the rough start, “but the first inning was a bad start, and then able to kind of stop there.”

“I thought we kind of got back to what we did for a long time earlier in the year the last four innings, and it’s been a while,” Gore explained.

Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images

“There just wasn’t that, but I felt it, and I thought, ‘Yeah, of course I want to pitch better.’ But I did figure out a way to get through five, I got after people, and hopefully build off of this.”

How did Gore manage to limit the damage after the first?

“We talked to him after he came out [after the first] and said, ‘Hey, there’s still a lot of game left, you got to give us some innings. You got to just forget about that one and throw up zeroes for us.’ And I told him, I said, ‘If you can do that, we’ll score some runs.’ And he was really good. He really settled down. Started throwing strikes. Started trusting his fastball, he really threw some good fastballs, and got some good outs for us.”

RUIZ IN FRONT OF THE PLATE:

Keibert Ruiz had a modest, four-game hit streak going after the 26-year-old catcher went 1 for 3 with a double and a walk in the series opener with the Giants on Monday.

On the year, Ruiz has a .222/.254/.338 line with 11 doubles and eight home runs in 85 games and 319 plate appearances.

With questions about his defensive game as well (particularly Ruiz’s pitch-framing skills), Nats’ skipper Davey Martinez was asked this week for his thought’s on their No. 1 (signed long-term) catcher’s development.

“I try to think about all the positives, as you all know,” Martinez explained. “I don’t dwell on the negatives. We value him very much. We look at his progression as a catcher, as a young catcher. Some days, he’s going to fluctuate, but right now it’s about just trying to get him to kind of ... because he knows he can do better, but if you look at the small blocks of pitchers, he has done better. The conversations with him it’s about him handling pitchers better. His swing — it’s all about his swing decisions. He loves to hit and he can hit, we all know he’s got great bat-to-ball skills, we’re trying to get him to understand that, ‘Hey, when the pitches when they’re up in the zone, you really hit them hard,’ so we’re just trying to keep going. We’ve got eight weeks of the season left. We want him to finish strong and build off of that.”

“I want him to play a little bit more and see where we’re at with him.”

Since he missed time with an extended illness this season, Martinez said he was determined to get him at-bats down the stretch so Ruiz can end the year on more of a positive note. But he also wants to be careful with the catcher.

“A lot on conversations, a lot on how he’s feeling,” Martinez said when asked how he makes decisions on who plays behind the plate. “I watch a lot of his swings. His lower half tells me a lot about when he needs a day. Right now he’s in a good place. And he understands — I talked to him about playing today and he was all gung-ho about it. And he comes to me sometimes. Even when we have a 12:00 game after a night game, he wants to play, and I say, ‘Hey, I’ve got to give you a break.’”

He did note, focusing on the positives, an improvement in how Ruiz handles his staff.

What’s different?

“It’s the conversations, it really is. He has conversations between every inning,” the manager said, “… with the pitchers about how he wants to attack, what he wants to do against each hitter that inning, and the meetings, pitchers’ meetings before the games. He’s a little more vocal than he ever has been, which I love.”

Ruiz went 3 for 5 with a home run and two runs scored in the 11-5 win on Tuesday night, and as the Nationals highlighted in their post game notes, he’s now 8 for 20 (.400) with a couple doubles, a home run, a walk, and five runs scored in his last five games.

“We’re trying to talk to him about not dropping his hands so much, keeping his hands above the baseball,” Martinez said after the win. “He did it well today, and he hit the ball well, and it was just awesome.

“Look, he can hit. The thing with him is he’s got to get the ball up. He can hit. He hits everything.

“He’s getting it. He’s getting it. It’s in him, I know that. He can hit. He’s always been a good hitter. Today was a good day for him, he’s got to just be consistent now.”

ALSO THIS:

AND THIS:

Martinez on Abrams’ HR on that high a pitch?: “I just sat there and laughed. I really did. I mean the kid is so talented, and he stays in there and he hangs in there, and when he gets a pitch like that, and he puts a swing like he did on it, it’s a ‘Wow!’ it really is. But he’s that good. And his hands are so quick, and that’s why we keep trying to tell him, ‘You don’t have to try to pull the ball, you just need to stay in the middle of the field, and you’re going to be just fine.”