More relaxed Rutledge makes most of his spot start

MILWAUKEE – Nobody wants to be at Triple-A. Everyone at Triple-A wants to be in the majors, whether for the first time or for the first time in a while.

The challenge for those grinding away at the highest level of the minor leagues is not to think too much about trying to get promoted, not to treat every game like a potential ticket out of town.

For Jackson Rutledge this year, that has proven far more difficult than he ever imagined.

“I’m going to be honest,” the right-hander said Friday night. “I haven’t done a great job of it.”

Rutledge said this after making a spot start for the Nationals, his first big league start of the season, even though the season is now nearly 60 percent complete. He thought he’d have been up here a lot sooner, fully believing he’d be the organization’s first choice to come up from Rochester when something happened in the rotation, just as manager Davey Martinez suggested would be the case at the end of spring training.

The Nats did need pitching help early in the season, only two weeks into April after Josiah Gray landed on the injured list with a flexor strain that may now keep him out all of 2024 and potentially a portion of 2025 as well. But at that moment, Rutledge was dealing with the after-effects of a line drive he took off his ankle, so the club promoted Mitchell Parker instead. And when the left-hander seized his opportunity and never looked back, Rutledge was left to try to earn his way up via Triple-A performance.

It hasn’t gone well. In 16 starts with Rochester, he owns a gaudy 6.66 ERA and 1.647 WHIP. His biggest problem area: a lack of command, leading to 40 walks in only 71 2/3 innings.

Along the way, the 2019 first-round pick realized he was putting too much pressure on himself to save his season and force his way back to the majors.

“I think a lot of the struggles I’ve had in Triple-A have been issues with just trying to power through everybody and throw the best pitch all the time,” he said. “I had a long conversation with (Rochester pitching coach Rafael Chaves), and he’s like: ‘You don’t need to necessarily go 100 percent every pitch, especially in the bullpen, especially leading up to (a start). Take a step back, be relaxed a little bit.”

Rutledge tried to keep that mindset Friday night when he finally took the mound against the Brewers for his first big league start of the season. With the Nats needing a spot start after DJ Herz was sent down to get an extra-long All-Star break, Rutledge got the call in spite of his minor league numbers. And then he went out and put together a solid performance.

He retired nine of the first 10 batters he faced, four via strikeout, by getting ahead of hitters with a fastball that registered 96-97 mph and then putting them away with a slider that induced six swings and misses. He started to fade the second time through the Milwaukee order, giving up back-to-back RBI doubles in the fourth and ultimately getting pulled with two on and two out in the fifth. That prevented him from a shot at qualifying for the win, but he and the Nationals were more than pleased with the end result: two runs allowed over 4 2/3 innings, only three hits and two walks issued to go along with six strikeouts.

“When your misses are close, you tend to get more swings,” Martinez said. “When you’re all over the place, hitters tend to just relax a little bit and take their walks. But he was around the plate all night.”

There’s no telling what happens next for Rutledge. The Nationals don’t need a fifth starter again until July 27, thanks to the All-Star break and a scheduled off-day. Herz could well be called back up at that point to reassume the position he held for the last month.

But whenever the time comes again when the team needs to dip into its pitching depth, Rutledge should be a viable option, having left a positive taste in everyone’s mouths with his performance Friday night.

“I think today’s a really important day for me to realize that I’m going to be given an opportunity, and it’s my job to prepare for that,” he said. “I don’t need to fix my entire Triple-A ERA in one inning, or on one pitch. It’s a gradual one step at a time. It takes one game to start a streak, so that’s kind of the attitude going out.”