Patrick Reddington: Innings, pitches piling up for rookie righty Ross

At some point in the near future, and no one's saying exactly when, Nationals right-hander Joe Ross will reach his innings limit/pitch count for the season and he'll be shut down for the year. The concern in his case is that the right-hander has never thrown this many innings in a season before.

Ross threw six innings on Thursday night, leaving him at 66 2/3 so far in the majors and 142 2/3 overall on the year between Double-A, Triple-A and the Nationals.

Ross went up to 122 1/3 innings in 2013 and 101 2/3 innings in 2014 before the San Diego Padres traded the 2011 first-round pick to the Nationals in the three-team deal that also brought top infield prospect Trea Turner to the Nationals.

General Manager Mike Rizzo explained earlier this month, in an interview on 106.7 The Fan, that Ross is not limited like Stephen Strasburg was in Strasburg's first year back from Tommy John in 2012, but the Nationals are being mindful of his total innings pitched.

"Joe is a 22-year-old rookie," Rizzo said. "We're going to be careful with him, but this is kind of a different scenario than our other players that we've talked about going on pitch limits and pitch counts and that type of thing. Joe is not an injured player, he's not rehabbing from an injury. So we're going to see where his innings are at, see how he's throwing, see how he's feeling and we'll let the eye test really take us to if and when his season ends."

After Ross bounced back from two less-than-stellar outings in losses to the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants with a seven-inning start against the Milwaukee Brewers in which he gave up just six runs and one hit, he talked to reporters about going deeper into a season than he has before.

"I feel good," he said. "I don't feel like I'm getting tired at all. I'm sure at some point they might kind hold me back a little bit, but as of right now, I feel good."

He followed that outing up with six strong last night in the Nationals' 4-2 win over the Padres who selected him out of Bishop O'Dowd High School with the 25th pick in the first round of the 2011 draft.

The only hit Ross allowed was a bunt single by Cory Spangenberg in the fourth, on which Wilson Ramos made a two-base throwing error, setting the Padres up with a runner on third that they cashed in with a sac fly to center.

The Nationals rallied to take the lead in the fifth, and after a 1-2-3 top of the sixth by Ross, added another for a 4-1 lead that allowed them to go to the bullpen after Ross threw just 77 pitches.

"The fact that we added one and we got two in (the fifth) inning and we could get him out of there after the sixth, it was good for him," Williams said. "It'll just help him stretch through his next starts."

"Just more of the same," Williams said of the work Ross did against the Padres.

"It's command. A few more changeups to lefties tonight. I think that was working for him better than it has in the past.

"Good sliders. Good sliders with two strikes, down and away looking like it's a strike and tailing back off the plate. He pitched really well and he'll be ready for his next one."

But how many starts will he get? Is Ross close to the end of his 2015 campaign?

"We'll see," Williams said. "Tonight's an indication that he's still feeling OK. What did he have, 75 or 76 pitches tonight? So if we can limit that and get ourselves into a position to win ballgames, then we want to try to do that.

"Again, each game will dictate what we can and can't do."

Tanner Roark is currently down at Single-A Potomac, stretching out so he can fill in if and when he's needed in the rotation. But for now, the Nationals have a sort-of out-of-nowhere success story in Ross, giving them more than anyone outside of Rizzo and his scouts could have predicted when the season began.

Patrick Reddington blogs about the Nationals for Federal Baseball and appears here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. Follow him on Twitter: @federalbaseball. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.