Schwarber back in left field, Gomes sits again with hamstring issue

It's easy for baseball players and fans alike to be superstitious. So when manager Davey Martinez said the other day that the Nationals were finally "healthy," it wasn't hard to imagine all of the shaking of heads and palming of foreheads around the region, expecting another injury to happen after some good health news.

Well, that's what the Nationals got Friday afternoon before their series opener against the Phillies.

And I'm not even referring to Stephen Strasburg's latest trip to the 10-day injured list with a neck strain. That one was a given with the way he looked Tuesday night.

No, this time I mean the good and bad news the Nationals received today concerning the health of two of their regular position players.

The good news: Kyle Schwarber is back in the starting lineup after leaving Wednesday's game early and sitting out Thursday's game with a right knee issue.

The bad news: Yan Gomes is sitting for the second straight game with tightness in his right hamstring, meaning Alex Avila is back behind the plate and batting seventh.

Seems like it's always one step forward then two steps back with this team.

The good news on Schwarber's knee is probably a little more significant at the moment. The knee is a much more dangerous spot to get hurt, especially with a guy who suffered a devastating knee injury earlier in his career (even though it's not the same knee we're talking about here).

After landing hard while attempting to make a diving catch Wednesday night in Atlanta, Schwarber had to exit the game in the seventh inning, saying his right knee "locked up" on him after the tumble. He wasn't in the starting lineup the next day, but told Martinez he was good to pinch-hit, even though he never appeared in that game.

Now the Nats are in Philadelphia, and Schwarber is back in left field and batting fifth after testing out that right knee on the field at Citizens Bank Park.

"We took him out earlier and ran. He ran pretty well," Martinez said during his pregame Zoom session with reporters. "We did some cuts, some angles with him and ran fine. So he wants to play, he's available to play, we're going to play him. We just had a bunch of rain, so I'm going to talk to him about the weather as well. But he feels confident that he can go out there and play today."

The early rain looks to have cleared out over the City of Brotherly Love, with tonight's forecast calling for partly cloudy skies and minimal chance of more rain. But Martinez would be crazy to not have that in the back of his mind when dealing with a knee and the amount of injuries we see across the sport that are results of wet playing conditions.

But this Nationals offense needs Schwarber back in the lineup after he has seemed to have finally found his groove at the plate: He's batting .301 with six homers and 15 RBIs over his last 20 games.

On the other hand, Gomes sitting for a second straight game now raises a whole different concern.

It wasn't the most newsworthy thing for the 33-year-old catcher to sit out a getaway day game on Thursday after suiting up the previous four games. But a second straight game, this one with Max Scherzer on the mound against a division foe, raised a couple of questions. And those questions revealed the hamstring issue.

"Yan's got a little tightness in his hamstring," Martinez said. "So we want to make sure it doesn't get any worse. Alex is going to catch today again and we'll see how Yan feels tomorrow."

Hopefully, Gomes feels well enough to bounce back and play the last two games of this series before Monday's scheduled off-day. The Nationals need both his bat and his arm.

Gomes is hitting .278 with five extra-base hits and six RBIs over his last 14 games, and has thrown out a major league best 11 of 26 would-be basestealers this season.

Avila is hitting just .163 with five extra base hits and six RBIs in his 14 games this season, while only throwing out two of seven would-be basestealers.

Nonetheless, it's not worth the risk running Gomes back out there right now. Not when we're at that point of the year when the everyday grind starts to wear on the body and there's still two-thirds of the season to play.

"Right now, it's just going to be day-to-day," Martinez said. "Like I said, he felt it a couple of days ago and I just don't want to take any chance. Keep it where it's at and it gets a little better here, hopefully soon, instead of having him go out there and all of a sudden something else happens and it becomes a month-long issue."