Adon goes back to Triple-A; Ferrer nears end of rehab assignment

MILWAUKEE – When the Nationals demoted DJ Herz to Triple-A earlier this week, it opened the door for the club to carry a long reliever for the first time this season. But with the fifth starter’s spot in the rotation coming back up this evening, the team had no choice but to drop that long man in favor of a fill-in starter.

With Jackson Rutledge recalled from Rochester to start tonight’s series opener against the Brewers, the Nats optioned Joan Adon back to Triple-A, only four days after calling him up.

Adon, a starter through his entire professional career until recent weeks when he was converted to a long relief role in the minors, wound up appearing in only one game for the Nationals this week, pitching the ninth inning of what became a 5-0 loss to the Cardinals. The team never found itself in a situation where it used him for multiple innings the rest of the week.

Rutledge is not expected to remain in the majors after making his spot start tonight, so the Nats could send him back down and call up a reliever to take his spot. But they can’t recall Adon for 10 days unless he’s replacing an injured pitcher.

Club officials do still believe Adon could prove valuable later this season as a much-needed long man in the bullpen, once he gets fully acclimated to the role.

“I definitely think so,” manager Davey Martinez said. “As we get deeper in the season, we might have to create a spot for him. It’s something new to him. We want him to go down there and learn the routine, how to get himself ready, because he’s only started.”

With no traditional long reliever for the bulk of the season, the Nationals have seen only three guys surpass two innings in one appearance: Jacob Barnes and Jordan Weems have each pitched 2 2/3 innings, while Derek Law completed three innings. None, though, threw more than 38 pitches in their elongated outings. The most pitches thrown by any Nats reliever this season was 40 by Tanner Rainey, who reached that number during one especially laborious inning.

In spite of all that, the Nationals managed to make it through the better part of three months without feeling the effects of a bullpen comprised of eight relievers who typically throw only one or two innings.

“We used our guys fairly successfully up until recently,” Martinez said. “They were going really good, going one-plus innings, getting four or five outs. So everything’s gone well. But as we get deeper in the season … having a long guy in certain situations would definitely help.”

* The Nationals could have a new reliever join the mix after the All-Star in Jose A. Ferrer, who appears close to concluding his rehab assignment.

Ferrer, out since spring training with a strained lat muscle, has appeared in four minor league rehab games over the last two weeks and hasn’t allowed a run in any of his three most recent games for Double-A Harrisburg. The 24-year-old left-hander is scheduled to throw on back-to-back days this weekend for the first time, and if that goes well he could be activated off the 60-day injured list when the team returns from the All-Star break next Friday.