On live BP, the closer's role and Ward's preferred name

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – The first live batting practice session of the spring is always going to favor pitchers over hitters. Pitchers have been building up to this for a while. Position players, on the other hand, haven’t even officially reported to camp yet.

So most eyes this morning at Nationals camp were focused on the likes of Patrick Corbin, MacKenzie Gore and others who faced hitters free to swing away if they liked. Corbin went up against projected regulars Joey Meneses, Luis García and Dominic Smith. On an adjacent field, Gore faced Stone Garrett, Michael Chavis and Derek Hill, all trying to crack the Opening Day roster as bench players.

All told, 11 pitchers took the mound for about 10-15 minutes a piece: Corbin, Gore, Trevor Williams, Jose Ferrer, Hunter Harvey, Kyle Finnegan, Wily Peralta, Paolo Espino, Erasmo Ramirez, Alex Colome and Thaddeus Ward.

“My focus was really on watching pitchers, their mechanics and where they’re at,” said manager Davey Martinez, who bounced from field to field, trying to get a glimpse of as many guys as he could. “For today, basically I was trying to get everybody to throw the ball over the white of the plate. Just hit the white and focus on hitting strikes.”

Which isn’t to say there wasn’t some reason to notice what some hitters were doing. Chief among them was García, who after facing Corbin in the first round of live BP had to go up against the hard-throwing Harvey in the next round.

García more than held his own. He drove one pitch on a line to left field, over the fence for what would be an impressive, opposite-field homer if this was a game. Harvey tried to joke it was wind-aided. García was having none of that.

Then for good measure, García lined a ball off the wall in right-center, a ball that probably was held up a bit by the cool wind blowing in from the north.

“That’s great,” Martinez said. “We talked a lot to him about staying on the baseball and using the whole field. As we know, he can drive the ball the other way. He’s conscious of it. He worked on it all this winter. He tried to stay in the middle of the field all winter long. And today, his first few swings off live that I’ve seen, he really put his focus on hitting the ball up the middle, and it was good.”

* A combination of injuries and his own positive performance pushed Finnegan into the closer’s role last summer. Finnegan finished with 11 saves, including the only seven saves the Nationals recorded from Aug. 15 through season’s end.

That doesn’t necessarily assure the right-hander of the job heading into Opening Day, though.

“We’ll see how this spring plays out,” Martinez said. “Finnegan was our guy last year, and I love him in the back end of our bullpen. But it could be that we need him in the eighth inning, as we did sometimes. We’ve got some guys that have done really well. We’ve got some guys that we saw last year that can possibly pitch in the eighth and ninth innings. So it’s going to be open.”

Martinez indeed often summoned Finnegan to pitch out of an eighth-inning jam with a tough hitter at the plate, and he may prefer that role for the 31-year-old year this season. Other potential late-inning options include Harvey and Carl Edwards Jr., who typically pitched the seventh and eighth innings, respectively.

There are also two veterans in camp on minor league deals with extensive big league closing experience in Sean Doolittle and Alex Colome.

Martinez actually spoke of Doolittle today as something close to a lock to make the Opening Day roster, provided he’s healthy following last summer’s internal brace procedure on his left elbow.

Colome, meanwhile, is trying to bounce back from a rough season in hitter-friendly Colorado, but the 34-year-old had 17 saves for the Twins in 2021 and has 159 of them over his entire career.

“He could be a big addition,” Martinez said, “a big help.”

* Though he’d perfectly happy to be called Thad by teammates and media members in conversation, Ward has let the Nationals know he prefers to go by his full first name of Thaddeus for official purposes.

When you see the Rule 5 draftee’s name on the scoreboard, or on TV graphics, he’ll be listed as “Thaddeus Ward.”

It’s a situation comparable to that of a former Nats slugger who was happy to be called Mike but officially went by Michael Morse.