Williams on Werth's potential return with updates on Span and Rendon

PHILADELPHIA - Left fielder Jayson Werth was 0-for-2 with a strikeout and a walk in his first minor league rehab assignment. He played seven innings for Single-A Potomac last night and is planning to ramp it up to nine tonight, weather permitting. Nationals manager Matt Williams said Potomac will play a doubleheader tomorrow if rain cancels tonight's contest and Werth would play the first game and potentially take a couple of at-bats in the second.

Werth is eligible to come off the disabled list tomorrow since it was retroactive to March 27. He has been targeting a return by the Nationals' third series that begins this Monday at Fenway Park.
 
"What we want to do is make sure he's ready, his timing's good, that he feels good about it, and get him there as quickly as possible, making sure he's healthy and 100 percent ready to play," said Williams. "If you did 30 days all the time with a rehab guy, you just don't get the full impact of a Jayson or an Anthony (Rendon) or a Denard (Span) coming back.

"So when he does come back, there may be some days where he's just going to have a day off. And we're going to have to work him into the season like we would ordinarily work you into spring training as a player. That being said, he's not going to get the number of at-bats he would get in spring, and we all know that. He knows that. But as long as he feels good about his swing and he feels healthy enough to play, then we want him here playing."

Back down in the sun of Florida, Span played in a simulated game today.

"Span had three innings and played well, had two hits in three at-bats, ran the bases fine, no issues," said Williams. "Tomorrow he'll have a live day and then we've got five innings set up for him the following day. Then we'll make a decision on what we want to do to get him somewhere to play. We'll get the nasty weather out, hopefully, this weekend and we'll have multiple options for him to go."

Rendon added some fielding work to his left MCL rehab process today. There's no real timetable for Rendon as Williams continues to say he's week-to-week.

"Anthony did groundballs right at him," said Williams. "He did some side to side work that still bothers him just a touch. He did all of his running program, all of his build-up, with no issue. So we'll look to increase that groundball load, start a throwing program and eventually get into a hitting program, which shouldn't be that far off."

Williams was impressed from what he saw of tonight's starter Gio Gonzalez during the Grapefruit League season.

"I just think he was on point the whole spring," he said. "From game one he was able to control his breaking ball. He was able to throw his change-up. I think he's strong. He feels good about his shoulder. He doesn't have any thought about it which is good. So all of those things are positives.

"The key for him is to try to induce early contact early in the game and keep his pitch count down because if he gets up there to 50 pitches after two innings, 2.2 innings, it's difficult for him because he just runs out of pitches. But what he did in spring was command the strike zone. Strike one is key for him, he did it all spring and I don't anticipate anything other than that."