Castro to have right wrist surgery on Friday

Nationals second baseman Starlin Catro will have surgery on Friday to repair his broken right wrist. If everything goes well in rehab, Castro expects to be back around the beginning of October.

"Castro will have surgery on Friday," manager Davey Martinez said on today's pregame Zoom call. "They are putting a pin in his wrist. I talked to him this morning. He sounded upbeat. He said by doing it this way, he can recover a lot quicker. He said, 'Just get to the playoffs and I'll be back there to help you guys.' That was encouraging."

Castro has been on the injured list since Aug. 14. He sustained the injury fielding a ground ball in Baltimore on Friday night.

Sean Doolittle continues to rehab the right knee fatigue that place him on the injured list retroactive to Aug. 11. Martinez had a positive update on the left-hander's rehab.

"Doolittle threw off flat ground, 20 pitches," Martinez said. "Said he felt good. Said the knee felt fine. If he feels good tomorrow, hopefully we will get him on the mound throw a short 10-12 pitches and see how he feels off the mound and go from there."

The lineup for tonight's game two features both catchers. Kurt Suzuki is hitting fifth as the designated hitter and Yan Gomes is catching and batting seventh. Wilmer Difo is the emergency catcher.

The Nationals do not have veteran Howie Kendrick in the lineup again, his fifth day out of action with a hamstring issue. He has had 50 at-bats in 14 games and is batting .300.

"Yeah, he's progressing," Martinez said. "It's been a slow process. He wants to be out there. He ran yesterday. He felt it a little bit better, so we are just going to have to keep an eye on it. Hoping that today it feels a little bit better. I'll talk to him before the game and see what he can do. He said he is feeling better. Hopefully, we can get him back as soon as possible."

Kendrick dealt with a tight hamstring in early August last season before returning for the stretch run. Martinez doesn't believe this year's injury was from a single play.

"I think it just built up on him," Martinez said. "He came in a couple of mornings ago said his leg tightened up on him, his hamstring. All right, we will give a day and see how you feel and it just hadn't gone away. It is getting better with treatment stuff, but it's still there. I just want to make sure he's good. We need him. We don't need him to go on the injured list for three weeks. Hopefully he gets better soon."

Stephen Strasburg has been out since Aug. 15 with carpal tunnel neuritis in his right hand. Martinez said the right-hander still is still in the process of going to see a hand specialist.

"They want to make sure that we get everything together before we come up with some kind of definitive (answer)," Martinez said. "As of right now, he's going to be out and we are going to get him right. Hopefully, we can fix this and we can get him back as soon as we can possibly get him back."