Williams on Werth, Souza, the bullpen and more

Jayson Werth is noticeably absent from the lineup for tonight's series opener against the Braves. Over the last few days, Werth has been dealing with shoulder and ankle injuries, and Nationals manager Matt Williams wanted to give the veteran a night off. This comes one night after Werth played all 13 innings in the Nats' 5-3 win over the Mets. "He's pretty banged up. He's been dealing with the shoulder, the ankle," Williams told reporters prior to Friday's game in Atlanta. "Long game yesterday, he's played a lot of games. He's feeling it today. He wants to play. I don't know how good he'd be anyway today." Werth will not have any additional tests done, but will continue to receive treatment from the Nats' training staff. "It's not something that I think would require any extra looks at it. He's just sore," Williams said. "He's just banged up. That happens during the course of the season sometimes. You play a lot. We haven't had many off-days, so he's feeling it right now. So we need to give him a day." Williams offered a visual to reporters to show how banged up Werth is. "You look at him and try to read what your eyes are telling you as opposed to his mouth telling you," Williams said. "The fact that Jayson was sitting there in the hot tub with an ice pack on his shoulder told me a lot. He's probably mad at me for saying that. It tells you a lot. He's banged up. He's hurting today, so we need to give him a day off." Steven Souza Jr. will start in Werth's place in right field. Williams said Souza got the start because he had been primarily playing that position for Triple-A Syracuse. With Werth out of the lineup, Asdrubal Cabrera will slide into the two hole and Anthony Rendon will bat third. Williams said the reason for the lineup change was mostly because Cabrera has played against Braves starter Ervin Santana. Williams was also asked on the state of his bullpen after pitching 6 2/3 scoreless innings of relief in Thursday's 13-inning marathon. "I think everything is good. The fact that Det (Ross Detwiler) didn't have to pitch yesterday, if for some reason we have to go long tonight, it will be him," Williams said. "He's our long guy tonight. The back of the bullpen guys are OK. There's no issue there. If we need Matty Thornton, he can give us a batter, probably. (Jerry Blevins') good. We have to stay away from (Craig Stammen) tonight, of course. That's something we have to do. I think all-in-all, coming out of yesterday, it's pretty good." The Nats currently hold a 4 1/2 game lead over the Braves. Many fans have placed great significance on the series, especially because the Braves have lost eight games in a row. But Williams said the Nats are taking the series one game at a time. "If we play well, we can keep it where it's at," Williams said. "That's our objective, but we need to win games to do that. If you play a team that - even if the roles were reversed and we were chasing them - we would want to come in here and sweep because that way you can make up ground. We want to have the opposite happen. We want to play well and beat them so there's no ground to be made up and move on to the next series. But we have to play well to do that. They have had great success against the Nationals, so it's up to us to play good and beat them and see where we can go from there. Tonight's tonight. We have to try to win that one regardless ... good, bad, or indifferent we go to tomorrow and go from there." Finally, Williams touched on the weather forecast. Rain is expected in the Atlanta area for the entire series, but the Braves are hopeful they can get tonight's game in. Braves officials are expecting the heavy rain to end around 7.