The Nationals are 4-5 on their current road trip, which began in New York before swinging off to the west coast. Struggling to stay afloat in the NL East, the Nats broke through huge with the bats Wednesday, in a 15-2 win over the Giants, hopefully a sign of more offense to come.
"We don't even talk about the injuries," Nats GM Mike Rizzo told The Sports Junkies, sponsored by Burke & Herbert Bank. "The injuries happen. Every team's got injuries. These guys are big-leaguers. They've got to perform."
Still, Washington's injuries -- with 10 players on the disabled list -- have undeniably limited the club 25 games into the 2018 season.
"Obviously you've got three All-Star caliber players that are not in the lineup -- (Adam) Eaton, (Anthony) Rendon and (Daniel) Murphy -- so obviously that's going to hurt," Rizzo acknowledged. "You've got a really good extra player in Brian Goodwin, who'd be playing every day now with Eaton out, who's hurt. And then you go down and Robles, Victor, would be playing left field every day if he were healthy, and he's hurt. It really tests your depth in the organization, your talent level and that type of thing. But, hey. You've got to win games."
"What you have to do often when your really good players and your regulars are not in the lineup and they're hurt is you've got to really play clean baseball," Rizzo said. "The base-running mistakes and the defensive mistakes, and throwing to the wrong base and those type of things, giving extra outs, running into extra outs, they really are magnified when your lineup is depleted and you're not scoring runs.
"It's easy to make a base-running mistake when your lineup is hitting on all cylinders and you're scoring seven, eight runs a game, but when you're scratching for three or four runs a game, you've got to play clean baseball and we haven't done it."
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