Grant & Danny blasted the Nationals for how they've handled Anthony Rendon's injury situation Tuesday, as Washington's star third baseman continues to miss games but stays on the active roster.
Rendon suffered a left elbow contusion when he was hit by a pitch on April 20, and has missed six of the last seven games. The Nats could have put him on the 10-day injured list immediately and called someone up to take his place, but the team decided to keep him on the roster.
As a result, Washington has essentially been playing with a short bench for the last 10 days, going 3-6 over that span.
"Playing with a short deck when you're not very good anyway right now is a bad business decision," said Grant Paulsen. "They do it all the time: guys get banged up or hurt, they wait several days and then they found out 'Oh wait, he does have a broken bone. Oh wait, something's wrong we didn't know about. Oopsie, we're gonna put him on the injured list now.'"
"You just played a series without the dude with a man down! It was 24 against 25. You think that helped you?"
"You have this tool. Use the tool," added Danny Rouhier. "I don't know why they're so bad at this. Because they are; objectively, they're bad at this. The Nationals do a lot of things really well. This is not only below league average, this is embarrassing. This is honestly an embarrassment around baseball."
"They are worse at this than any team in the sport, and they have been for three or four years, and I don't know why," Paulsen agreed. "It doesn't seem like they've tried to fix it, because it's just continually coming back to the well."
"Getting (Rendon) right is obviously the most important thing, so let's figure out how to do that," Rouhier went on to say. "There doesn't seem to be any urgency. There seems to be the opposite: complacency. That this will all sort of work itself out."
"What should be happening is an extra bullpen arm comes up to protect guys that have thrown two straight days, or guys that have never thrown two straight days in their life, like Joe Ross. An extra bench bat should be up."
"An active player on the roster should be there for a guy who you're not playing because you don't want to re-start the clock on the injured list, which they did anyway!"
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