Nats set six-man rotation; Harvey and Rainey to face live hitters in D.C.

PHILADELPHIA – The Nationals made the decision yesterday to move to a six-man rotation. What was still to be determined was the order in which those six starters would pitch.

They came to that decision today, announcing Joan Adon will start Friday’s series opener at home against the Athletics with Jake Irvin and Trevor Williams following for the rest of the weekend.

That means Josiah Gray will be the first to benefit from the extra rest afforded by the six-man rotation with a week in between starts as he’s lined up to start Tuesday’s series opener against the Red Sox. MacKenzie Gore and Patrick Corbin, tonight’s starter in the Phillies series finale, would then follow suit, each of them also getting a week in between starts.

“We're trying to spread the younger guys out a little bit and give them a couple of extra days off,” manager Davey Martinez said during his pregame media session. “So that's how we decided to do it and that's how it's gonna work out.”

Adon will make his second major league start tomorrow after pitching well in Saturday’s start in Cincinnati when he took a perfect game into the sixth inning and finished with a quality start. It remains to be seen how far the Nationals will push the 24-year-old, who has already surpassed his career high for total innings in a season.

“He's been pushed,” Martinez said. “I think he's at (117 ⅓) innings already. So he's good. I want to see him up here the rest of the year. Hopefully he pitches like he pitched the other day. It was awesome.”

The idea of the six-man rotation is to keep the young pitchers fresh and healthy so they can finish the regular season instead of being shut down at some point in September. Along with that is so they can continue their development for a full season and continue along their learning curve, now even more so for Adon.

“One, they're learning and they're learning on the fly,” Martinez said. “Two is their progression and they're all headed in the right direction. And that's what I really love about where we're at right now with them. Jake Irvin, MacKenzie, Josiah being an All-Star and continuing to compete, and Adon. Adon is really young. It took him a few times to come up and get up here. But every time he's come up here, especially this year, you can see a little bit of the maturity coming out. You can see that he really worked on and honed in on his secondary pitches, and really trying to just throw strikes. Get ahead and throw strike one. So that's awesome to see.

“Like I said, we're heading in the right direction. Our starting pitching, if they continue to do what they're doing, our young guys, they're going to be really good. And I'm excited about that.”

* Hunter Harvey and Tanner Rainey are going to throw to live hitters tomorrow when the team gets back to Nats Park. Havey has thrown a couple of bullpen sessions recently and Rainey is going to meet the team back in D.C. from Florida.

“He threw a couple of bullpens,” Martinez said of Harvey. “He's going to throw to hitters tomorrow. So if everything goes well and the weather permits, we'll have him on the mound. Rainey's coming, too, to throw to some hitters because, like I said, I want to put eyes on him. So we'll have those two guys throw tomorrow.”

Rainey is building arm strength and getting his pitch count up, while Harvey is going to get an inning’s worth of work like he would in a game situation, assuming he doesn’t complete it too quickly.

“For Rainey, it's going to be around 35-40 pitches,” Martinez said. “For Harvey, try to get him three outs and if he does it fairly quick, we'll probably give him about 20-25 pitches.”