Martinez happy with bullpen depth as regulars close in on return

BALTIMORE - With the news that reliever Ryan Madson is close to returning after a pectoral strain has had him shelved since May 17, Nationals manager Davey Martinez will have to decide who goes and who stays in an eight-man bullpen that has done a nice job recently of finishing games.

The bullpen has allowed only two earned runs in the last five games, the Nats have gone 4-1 in that span.

Coupled with the Madson news is that left-hander Matt Grace is also close to returning from his groin injury (April 21). He had a successful scoreless outing with Harrisburg on Monday afternoon where he pitched one inning, allowing two hits but no runs with no walks and one strikeout.

In their absence, newcomers Justin Miller and Tim Collins have stepped up to keep the opponent off the board. Martinez has not been afraid to use them and employ them in back-to-back games. Collins came in to pitch May 23, 25 and 26, pitching 1 2/3 combined innings. Miller pitched back-to-back games May 26 and 27, getting all four batters out, striking out two.

"We've asked some guys to do different things and they've stepped up," Martinez said. "I know having Justin Miller was real nice. He came in and pitched couple good games for us and watching (Shawn) Kelley pitch yesterday as well, he did really well and was able to give us some pretty good outs yesterday and threw the ball really well. I was excited about that."

Kelley pitched on May 23 against the Padres for 2/3 of a frame and then pitched the final four outs in Monday's 6-0 defeat of the Orioles.

What is interesting is that prior to the Nats acquiring the "Law Firm" of Brandon Kintzler, Madson and Sean Doolittle, the Nats bullpen was considered to have some weaknesses.

But president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo has done a nice job in the past of getting relievers like Matt Albers in 2017 (7-2, 1.62 ERA, 63 games) and left-hander Marc Rzepczynski in 2016 (1.54 ERA in 14 games) to help keep the bullpen together. Adding depth with players like Miller and Collins will help the Nats right now and down the line this season.

"Oh, absolutely," Martinez said. "It's nice to see these guys especially we talked about Tim (Collins) working his way back to the big leagues after everything he'd been through. Another guy, Justin Miller, being out of the game and coming back and doing what he's doing. These guys have done well so far here and I'm looking forward to watching them. I got a lot confidence in putting them into games and getting big outs for us."

Even with all the recent injuries, Martinez and the Nats have maintained an eight-man bullpen rotation because guys like Collins and Miller have been able to step up when things didn't work out for Carlos Torres or Austin L. Adams.

Martinez likes to pitch relievers back-to-back, especially if they haven't had taxing innings in their first outing. He also doesn't mind using several relievers to get through the final three or four innings.

This is more true without Madson to complete the "Law Firm", but also because Martinez was keenly aware early in the season that he felt he might have used the right-hander too much. The April 18 game in New York when Madson said he only had "five or ten bullets" left after being used a lot that week or getting up and sitting down too many times.

So Martinez used four relievers on May 23, five relievers on May 25, three on Saturday, five on Sunday and one yesterday.

"We haven't thought about it yet," said Martinez of the current eight relievers on the roster. "It's actually pretty nice getting guys in and out. I've used guys more than one reliever in an inning which is kind of nice. We'll see how it plays out."