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SAN DIEGO – As he watches his teammates play every night from the dugout, Dylan Crews tries to trick his mind into thinking he’s still a part of the active roster. Deep down, he knows he’s not, and there’s nothing he can do on the field to help the Nationals win. But it’s the only way the rookie outfielder knows how to keep his mind in the right place as he navigates his way through rehab from a strained oblique.
“I’ve been good,” he said today as the Nats prepared to open a three-game series against the Padres. “I’m trying to stay locked in as much as I can. It’s all new to me. I try to stay locked in as if I was playing the game every day. But right now, it’s a different chapter in this whole story. I’m just trying to stay locked in and win my day every day.”
It’s been nearly five weeks now since Crews suffered the injury on a check-swing. The good news: He was finally cleared to travel with the rest of the team on this nine-game West Coast trip, and he recently began taking some very light swings to test his core.
It’s not much. Crews isn’t allowed to take full swings or hit an actual baseball. He’s running at about 85-to-90 percent, he surmised, but only on a treadmill. He’s not doing any kind of work on the field yet.
But he’s making progress, and the prospect of ramping things up looms in the not-too-distant future.
“I feel like we’re almost there,” he said. “We’re working into some swings. Just making sure everything’s strong. We don’t want to have to take a step back once we get out there.”
The Nationals, while encouraged by Crews’ progress, aren’t going to speed up his timeline just because he says he feels good. They have a plan in place, and that plan involves a strict regimen, step by step.
“I know he’s itching to hit some balls, but we’ve got to really be careful right now, be cautious,” manager Davey Martinez said. “He’s on a really good path right now. Everything looks good. We don’t want to rush him. We want to make sure that when he comes out of this, he’s 100 percent.”
Crews hopes it won’t take long once he’s cleared for full activities to get himself back into game shape. But he’s never been through this process before, so it’s hard to know for sure. The best he can do right now is adhere to the team’s timeline and keep himself mentally sharp so when the time does come, he can ramp it back up.
“That’s the whole point of why I’m trying to stay locked in,” he said. “I don’t want to feel like I’m mentally checked out. I want to stay mentally sharp. And that way if it was to take me a little bit of time, it’s not much. But make sure the body’s right, and most importantly make sure the mental game is right so I can go out there and perform.”
* Derek Law will take his rehab assignment to Triple-A Rochester after two appearances for Double-A Harrisburg. The veteran reliever, out since the end of spring training with forearm inflammation, hasn’t seen great game results in those two outings so far, allowing three total runs on four hits (one of them a homer) and a walk over 2 2/3 innings. But his arm felt strong enough to throw 33 pitches Sunday, and that’s an encouraging sign for the Nationals.
“For him, it’s kind of starting back in spring training,” Martinez said. “You’re going to have your ups and downs. I know he’s trying to build up quick. I mean, he threw 33 pitches the other day. His fastball wasn't quite what he wanted it to be, but he's got to build himself up. The good thing is that he felt OK."
* Paul DeJong crossed a major threshold in his rehab assignment with Harrisburg on Sunday: He was hit by a pitch.
DeJong, who suffered multiple fractures in his nose and around his eye when he was struck by a fastball more than two months ago, was hit in the leg this time. But he told Martinez he emerged from the incident fine and doesn’t appear to have any qualms about getting into the batter’s box after the scary injury.
DeJong has hit well, going 7-for-17 with a double, a homer, four RBIs and three walks.
