Rendon still dealing with sore toe, Goodwin out with sore wrist

Anthony Rendon isn't in the Nationals lineup this afternoon. That's not a surprise, given the third baseman had to come out of Friday night's game after fouling a ball off his left big toe.

The real question now is how much time Rendon will need before he is ready to return to an already-struggling lineup that keeps losing key players to injury.

"He's sore, real sore," manager Davey Martinez said this morning. "So he's probably going to be day-to-day."

Rendon hurt himself fouling a pitch off his front foot during the fifth inning of Friday's 2-1 loss to the Rockies. He remained in the field for another inning but then departed once he realized his toe was too sore to continue.

"It just didn't go away," he said afterward. "I was kind of favoring it. I was walking on the outside of my heel, which probably wasn't the smartest idea ... I'll tear a knee or something. They thought the best idea was to go get it checked out."

X-rays came back negative, so that was a relief for Rendon and the Nationals. But he admitted he'd have to see how he felt when he woke up in the morning and determine whether he could play this afternoon. He couldn't.

The Nationals have seen players miss significant time after fouling a ball off the wrong part of their foot before; Jayson Werth was out more than two months last season. For now, the club doesn't view Rendon's injury as worthy of a trip to the disabled list.

"We haven't discussed that yet," Martinez said. "Today he's sore. He took a pretty good blow to the big toe. We'll see how he feels here in a little while. I know he's getting treatment. We'll see how it goes throughout the day."

Rendon's injury comes with Adam Eaton (bone bruise in left ankle) and Daniel Murphy (rehabbing from microfracture right knee surgery) already on the DL. And if that wasn't enough, the Nationals had to scratch outfielder Brian Goodwin about an hour before today's game due to a sore left wrist.

Goodwin hurt himself diving after a ball during Wednesday's game and hasn't played since.

So after all that, the Nationals today are attempting to snap out of their offensive funk - they've scored only 21 runs in their last nine games - with a lineup that features Wilmer Difo batting second, Matt Wieters batting fifth and Moisés Sierra and Matt Reynolds in the seventh and eighth positions.

It's not what Martinez envisioned fewer than three weeks into the season.

"It's hard, but we've got pretty good athletes," the manager said. "And actually, making out lineups last night, I like Difo in the 2-hole. He had some success up there last year. Maybe he'll jumpstart our offense today and get us going."