For the second straight day, a top outfield prospect is making his major league debut for the Nationals after one of the team’s young Opening Day regulars landed on the injured list.
Only 24 hours following Robert Hassell III’s first big league game, Daylen Lile is set to take the field for the first time, the 22-year-old promoted from Triple-A Rochester this afternoon when Jacob Young was placed on the 10-day IL with a sprained left shoulder.
Lile, a second-round pick in the 2021 Draft, has been touted by scouts and club officials alike for several years but was previously hampered by injuries and only reached Triple-A three weeks ago. After tearing up the International League to the tune of a .361/.432/.514 slash line in 18 games, though, he got the call to come to D.C.
How did Lile make it up the organizational ladder so fast?
“Just staying true to myself, staying consistent, staying on my routine,” he said, “knowing that I could possibly make my debut at some point this season. Everywhere I went, my feet were there, and I tried not to rush anything. But, I mean, it came a lot quicker than I thought.”
At 5-foot-11, 195 pounds, Lile doesn’t strike an imposing physical presence the way James Wood does. But he excels at all aspects of the game and incorporates his speed to produce good slugging numbers without needing to hit a ton of homers. (He had 10 triples each of the last two seasons and already had five of them in 39 total games this season.)
Beyond the obvious production, Lile has won over a number of people in the organization with his all-out style of play.
“I just love the way he goes about his business,” manager Davey Martinez said. “He gets after it every day, and I love that about him.”
Lile will start in right field tonight against the Giants, batting ninth. Hassell, who went 2-for-5 with two runs and a stolen base in Thursday night’s debut, will again bat seventh and start in center field. Alex Call is on the bench tonight, but Martinez said he’ll continue to get at-bats, especially against left-handed pitching.
It’s a stark departure from the outfield alignment the Nationals had used most of the season’s first two months, before Dylan Crews (left oblique strain) and Young went on the IL.
Young hoped to avoid an extended stint off the active roster after crashing into the center field wall Saturday in Baltimore trying to make a diving catch. But he sprained the AC joint in his left shoulder on the play, and though it does not affect his defensive work, he still cannot complete his swing without experiencing some pain on the follow-through.
“I was pretty optimistic when it happened,” he said. “And then the day after that, thought it would only be a couple of days and then I’d get back to the normal swing. It just didn’t happen as quickly as we had hoped.”
The Nationals backdated Young’s IL stint the maximum three days allotted, but he’ll still be required to sit until at least May 30. They’re not offering a timetable for his return, but he did say he has full range of motion in his shoulder and can continue to get defensive work in while on the IL. He just has to wait until he’s cleared to swing again.
“I would play through almost anything that would allow me to play,” he said. “It’s just at this point, I wasn’t able to swing. When you can’t do that, you don’t want to take away from your teammates and the team. That’s the line you draw, where it’s going to affect the team in a negative way.”
* Orlando Ribalta’s attempted return from a right biceps strain has hit a snag. The reliever said he was still feeling tightness in his upper arm after throwing his second simulated game in a week Tuesday.
The Nationals have decided to “back off” Ribalta’s throwing schedule and will wait a few days before attempting to ramp him up again.
* Derek Law threw 20 fastballs off a bullpen mound Thursday, the first time in nearly two months the veteran reliever has been able to do that. Law, on the 15-day IL since the end of spring training with right forearm inflammation, will now attempt to ramp things up without experiencing the kind of setbacks he had when he first tried this throwing program at the start of the season.