The Nationals announced that right-hander Ryan Madson has been placed on the 10-day DL with a pectoral muscle strain. The placement is retroactive to May 17. Nats manager Davey Martinez told reporters (including Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post) that Madson was feeling “a little bit better” after missing Saturday and Sunday’s games and the placement was “just to be safe,” so it’s possible the reliever could miss only a minimal amount of time.
Madson has a 4.19 ERA over 19 1/3 innings this season, though ERA predictors (2.16 FIP, 3.67 xFIP, 3.42 SIERA) paint a more favorable view of his performance. Madson has yet to allow a home run this season, and has owns a 9.3 K/9, 3.33 K/BB rate, and a 43.9% grounder rate. Late-game situations have been a strength for the Nats this season, between Madson and Brandon Kintzler’s solid set-up work and Sean Doolittle’s spectacular early numbers. As Janes notes, Tim Collins looks to be the likeliest candidate to be called up to fill Madson’s spot in the bullpen; while Madson isn’t truly replaceable, Collins at least provides the Nats with an extra left-hander.
Madson’s absence represents yet another DL setback for the Nats, who are already without Daniel Murphy, Adam Eaton, Howie Kendrick, Ryan Zimmerman, Joaquin Benoit, Matt Wieters, Koda Glover, Jhonatan Solano, Brian Goodwin, and Matt Grace. (Anthony Rendon also missed significant time earlier this season.) Despite this hard bite from the injury bug, the Nationals are still 24-21 and staying afloat in the crowded NL East and wild card races.
If not for starting pitching and Matt Adams, this team wouldn’t be over .500
Tough weekend all around. Hopefully Soto helps this team.
What’s in the water in DC !
Nationals went all in on Bryce Harper’s potentially last year with the team.
Unfortunately, they don’t have much in the way of trade chips to acquire significant upgrades (they’ve been dead set on keeping soto, Robles, kieboom).
Robles is hurt now…..pretty badly…..will be lucky to really play again this season, so his usefulness / trade value has plummeted anyway. Too bad….the kid did pretty good in September.
All these guys on the DL, could there have been improved spring training strategies to at least mitigate this massive problem?