Martinez thinks Robles is ready to play every day

LAS VEGAS - When Victor Robles hit .353 over his first seven Grapefruit League games in spring training, Nationals manager Davey Martinez didn't get carried away with thinking how his top prospect might impact the lineup in 2018. Martinez knows spring training stats can be fool's gold, and that wunderkind prospects can suddenly look line overmatched roster filler once they've faced - and struggled against - good major league pitching.

After hitting his first spring training home run on March 2, Robles went into a prolonged slump, going 3-for-31 for the remainder of camp. He chased pitches out of the strike zone, seemed enamored at times with trying to go for the longball when a single would do and looked lost at the plate. By March 21, he had been cut, optioned to Triple-A Syracuse.

An early-season elbow injury short-circuited Robles' first crack at Triple-A pitching. He hyperextended his left elbow trying to make a diving catch in an April 9 game, and though he needed most of the season to rehabilitate the scary-looking injury, there was no tear in the elbow ligament, which would have resulted in a layoff of up to a year.

"When I saw him in spring training last year, I thought maybe he needed a little bit more time," Martinez said Tuesday at the Winter Meetings during his meeting with reporters at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

September stats can be as misleading as those put up in spring training, but what Martinez saw from Robles after he was called up at the end of the season was intriguing. In 21 games, he slashed .288/.348/.525, flashed his power by hitting three homers and swiped three bases in five tries. Robles used his speed to his advantage playing all three outfield positions and, most importantly, didn't look overmatched, appearing every bit as confident as a veteran player with a track record.

Now, with Bryce Harper mulling over nine-digit offers and expected to be with another team in 2019, Martinez thinks Robles, 20, is ready to be an everyday major leaguer.

"I really feel like he's ready to play. He really is," Martinez said. "He just needs repetition, to get out there and play. I don't want him to do anything different. ... Just go out there, play baseball and have fun."

An outfield of Juan Soto in left, Robles in center and Adam Eaton in right would be the more athletic kind of alignment that general manager Mike Rizzo has been talking about the Nationals needing.

And if Martinez had any qualms about Robles' readiness, he only needs to look at the 20-year-old who will man left field this season as an example of a team not fully knowing what it had until it was forced to find out.

With outfielders dropping like insects attracted to a bug zapper, the Nationals had no choice but to promote Soto to the majors on May 20. A day earlier, Howie Kendrick had torn his right Achilles tendon in a freakish season-ending injury that landed him on the disabled list with outfield mates Eaton and Brian Goodwin.

Never mind that Soto, just 19 and with only eight games of Double-A experience on his resume, had started the season at Single-A Potomac and was barely a season removed from the Rookie-level Gulf Coast League. Need trumped inexperience and Soto quickly found himself in the lineup.

His arrival proved to be the offensive infusion a scuffling Nationals team needed, and Soto kept taking advantage of every chance the Nats gave him. By the end of the season, he'd taken some of the sting out of the club's barely-.500 finish, setting record after record for teenage hitters, and slashing .292/.406/.517 with 22 homers and 70 RBIs en route to a second-place finish to the Braves' Ronald Acuña Jr. in National League Rookie of the Year balloting.

So Martinez has no qualms about entrusting center field to Robles, not after the Nats struck gold with Soto.

"How did we know Soto was ready to be our everyday left fielder?" Martinez said. "You just got to let him go out there and play and he'll dictate pretty much how much he's going to play, really."

For years, fans who dig deep prospecting have been tempted with the possibility of Soto, a pure hitter with a home run stroke, and Robles, a speed merchant who can swing the bat with developing power and play strong defense, in the same outfield. Robles was supposed to arrive first, and might have, had he not gotten hurt in April.

Now Martinez appears ready to make entrust center field to Robles though he's not allowing himself to get too carried away with the possibilities.

After Soto's surprise breakthrough, could Robles reprise the same kind of performance?

Martinez remembers thinking he'd ease Soto into life in the big leagues, a notion that was quickly dispelled.

"We got Soto last year and I sat with Riz in the office thinking we'll play him against righties, we'll give him days off and play him two or three times a week," Martinez said. "I put him in first game and never took him out. I had to beg him to get one day off and he drove me nuts that one day, so I put him back in there and never took him out again."

The Nationals will have a different look with an outfield containing two players not old enough to legally consume a postgame beer. What they lose in star power if Harper signs elsewhere, they gain in an opportunity to turn another young player loose to produce and impress.

"We're super athletic, we've got young, exciting players and I can't wait to see Robles in spring training and let him play," Martinez said.