Soto stays positive, Strasburg is throwing, weekend rotation set

Juan Soto can't pinpoint any precise moment when he thinks he hurt his left shoulder. It just started bothering him in recent days, especially when throwing, so he let the Nationals training staff know and they had him undergo an MRI on Tuesday morning.

Little could the 22-year-old slugger have imagined he'd wind up on the 10-day injured list several hours later with a diagnosed shoulder strain.

Since that moment, Soto has tried not to stress over this development and instead think about the big picture: Returning healthy to play the rest of the season.

"It's just been tough," he said in a Zoom session with reporters today. "I try to do my best to be on the field. I come to the field every day to work my body and everything, and try to do everything right to (not) get to this point. It just feels tough to be on the (IL), but they just want to keep me safe.

"It's a long season. We want to play later in the season, not right now. It's better to take a couple days now than lose half of the season."

That's the Nationals' approach in dealing with this matter. In the past, they've often given an injured player a few days to try to get himself ready to return, then eventually made the call to place him on the IL. In this case, they wasted no time and just made the transaction immediately with Soto, hoping to take advantage of the three scheduled off-days on the schedule during this 10-day stretch.

When the team departs after today's game for New York and Dunedin, Fla., (where the Blue Jays are playing home games to begin the season), Soto will head to Fredericksburg and rehab at the club's alternate training site. That could allow for him to get some at-bats in simulated games and perhaps speed up the process that allows him to be activated as soon as April 30, when the Nationals return home to face the Marlins.

"The good thing is, we'll get videos of what he is doing and how he's doing, and we'll have conversations about what he's doing every day," manager Davey Martinez said. "Hopefully this is a short-term thing. I can't put a timetable on it. But when we deem that he's ready, he's going to get back."

Soto had just snapped out of a rare, 0-for-11 slump with a double off the right-field wall Monday night, so it's not exactly an opportune time for him to take a seat for the next 10 days. But ever optimistic, the young slugger pointed out how well he did last summer after he was cleared to join the team following his positive COVID-19 test.

"I mean, I think it's going to make me feel better," he said. "If you remember last year, I went out in quarantine and came back stronger. So I'm going to try to do the same thing."

Soto did wind up leading the league in nearly every offensive rate category in 2020. So perhaps that portends good things in 2021.

"Yeah, so why change?" he said with a laugh. "We've got 10 days in quarantine again. Be ready and come back stronger. I don't mind."

* The Nationals' other big-name resident of the IL has already begun his rehab process. Stephen Strasburg, who was placed on the 10-day IL with right shoulder inflammation Sunday, played catch from 75 feet Tuesday and was seen throwing on flat ground again before today's game.

Martinez said Strasburg will begin to ramp up to throwing a light session off a bullpen mound, then eventually to facing live hitters. Like Soto, he'll be required to report to the alternate training site when the team's on the road.

* The Nationals plan to go with a four-man rotation for the moment, taking advantage of the upcoming off-days. The club's announced starters for this weekend's series are, in order: Erick Fedde, Joe Ross and Patrick Corbin.

That means Paolo Espino won't make another start, at least yet. The journeyman right-hander, who was summoned from Fredericksburg to make an emergency start when Strasburg went down, will be available out of the bullpen today. The club will then make a decision about his status heading into the weekend.

Jon Lester, meanwhile, will make another start in a simulated game in Fredericksburg on Sunday, building up to five innings and perhaps 90 pitches. If that goes well, the veteran lefty could be deemed ready to join the rotation and make his Nationals debut the following week.