Nats face daily bullpen dilemma: Who's available?

SAN DIEGO - Just as he does after batting practice each evening, Davey Martinez planned to meet with each of his relievers and find how everyone's arm was feeling. Find out who's available to pitch in tonight's series opener against the Padres. And find out if anyone might be unavailable to pitch because of excessive usage the last few days.

It's a daily routine, and there's always one or two guys whose status is up in the air, but it felt like there were even more question marks today, with Sean Doolittle, Wander Suero and Tanner Rainey all having pitched each of the last two days and Kyle Barraclough having thrown 24 pitches in 1 2/3 innings on Wednesday.

"I think we'll be in good shape," Martinez said as BP was starting, before he had a chance to meet with anyone yet. "There's guys who haven't pitched that need to pitch. I still don't know if Doolittle will be available. I'll talk to him. And hopefully (starter Patrick) Corbin gives us seven innings strong, and we'll figure it out."

Every manager has to do this every day, but it certainly feels like Martinez has faced more potential daily bullpen dilemmas than most this season, given how many times so many members of this relief corps have had to pitch.

The season is 62 games old, and four Nationals relievers have appeared in at least 44 percent of those games. Lefty Matt Grace leads the way with 30 appearances, followed by Barraclough (29), Doolittle (27) and Suero (27).

And that doesn't even count the times one of those relievers has gotten up in the bullpen to warm up but hasn't entered the game to actually pitch for one reason or another.

Obviously, the Nationals have had a bullpen problem all year long, hence that group's MLB-worst 6.68 ERA. But this issue goes beyond that. So why have so many guys faced the daily "Am I available or not?" question?

"My biggest thing is: We're in a lot of close games," Doolittle said. "And our starting pitching has been so good that even when we've fallen behind, we're never really out of it. So you have to have those guys that you want for the high-leverage situations if we take the lead. There's so many times where we're one swing away from tying the game or taking the lead late. ... I think that's just kind of how the season has gone. I've been in that situation a lot where I was getting loose and I was ready, because we were one pitch away from me being in the game."

Martinez concurs with his closer's line of thinking.

"If you watch, our games are always fairly close," the manager said. "We end up scoring a lot of runs. And even when we're behind and we want to keep it close, we want to use (our best relievers) in that situation, too. We need a real good blowout to give our guys a day off."

You can't count on a blowout, of course. So there's a decent chance before tonight's game is over, Martinez is going to have to decide if he can use Doolittle, Suero and/or Rainey.

When that time comes, he'll have to trust that his relievers are being honest about how their arms feel.

"That's only really something you learn by doing it and having that experience," Doolittle said. "You have to have a lot of really good communication with your manager. There are times when you throw two days in a row, and you feel pretty good for that third day. But then there's other times when you feel a little achy and you go out to play catch and you just don't know. Maybe that adrenaline spike that comes when you go into the game will be enough to get me over the edge. It's a fine line between knowing you can compete to get your team outs late in a game while also not being a hero."