Cornelio Takes Loss in Debut

0:00Tuesday night is open mic night at Walter Sports Bar. Got talent? Bring it to the stage. Come show off your skills or just sit back and enjoy the show while indulging in delicious food and ice cold drinks. Open Mike begins at 7 p.m. located just across the street from the ballpark. And the pitch. And it's blunted up the first baseline. It's a beauty. Cornilo has got a hurry. It's toward the first. It's down the line. This one under right field. Nunez makes it diving play to pick it up with the tying run scores. His pitch swung on, hit in the air to deep right by house. This is way back. Peter's to the warning track to the wall leaping. He can't get it. It has gone goodbye. And just like that, two pitches into the top of the eighth inning. This game is all even again. Riley Cornelio's second inning of his major league debut. He comes back. He kicks. He delivers and a swing in a fly ball. Slice toward the left field line. Long run for Lyle. He makes the catch in foul ground. Ryder will tag. Vargas will come down the line to score. And the white sucks regain the lead.

1:05Dominguez coming said we were the tying run at third. The three two pitch swung in a mess in a splitter. He struck him out and the game is over. The white sucks scored two in the seventh. Then after the Nats tie it, they score again at the bottom of the eighth inning. And then Sir Anthony Dominguez holds on to the nationals. Leave the tying run at third. And welcome to Nats Chat. I'm Al Galdi, host of the Al Galdi podcast. I'm joined by Washington Nationals insider Mark Zuckerman of Nats Journal dot com. He's at rate field with an Nats head yet. Another back and forth game, but yet another loss a five four loss at the Chicago White Sox on Friday night in game one of a three game series. A game in which the Nats blew a three one six inning lead, but also over came a four three eighth inning deficit. But the Nats now have lost three consecutive games and in MLB's 2026 regular season now are 11 and 16. Coming up later in the show, entry updates on three Nats pitchers daughter Josiah Gray and

2:08relievers Cole Henry and Ken Waldechuk. But speaking of relievers, the Nats on Friday night went with an opener for Miles Michaelis for a third consecutive time in terms of Michaelis's turns in the rotation. We in the game had very mixed results with Nats pitching. We in the game had multiple bad outs for the Nats on the base pass. We also in the game had James Wood at the plate in the top of the ninth with Luis Garcia Jr on third base and two outs, but Wood struck out swinging to end the game. I think that most Nats fans would take that right wood at the plate in the ninth with a chance to tie the game as that's manager Blake Puterra said during his post game session with reporters. That's why the Nats have wood in that number one spot to get as many plate appearances as possible to be up in a spot like that. That's why he's in that lead off spot. We run him up there in the game in a big spot. It's one of the best hitters in baseball and tying run there on third base. Wood, he felt really good about it. But Mark Wood in this instance

3:09did not come through. I don't know about you. I was stunned that they pitched in. I really thought first base open. I understand you're putting the potential go ahead run on base. I would have done that and taken my chances with Dale and Lyle behind him. Now credit to Sir Anthony Dominguez for striking him out. But I got a figure that you do run through that same scenario 10 times. James Wood's going to come out on top a good percentage of them even if it's just drawing a walk. It was fortunate that the game came down to that and you would have liked for him to come through for them there. As you said, Blake Puterra said this is why you bat him lead off. If he's hit in second, he's in the on deck circle and never gets the chance to bat there. So maybe one of these days that situation comes up again and it pays off. There was plenty about them offensively tonight that just wasn't as much as you'd like them. Certainly not what we've seen from them through the first month of the season. But to me, this game is about Riley Cornelio and what happened in the seventh and eighth inning. I'm sure we're going to get to that. Yes, you would have more

4:09offense to make up for that stuff. But I feel like this game really came down to the rookie pitcher they had out there in a huge spotlight in the game. Yeah, things did not go well for the rookie pitcher. So with the Nats pitching in this game, again, an opener. This is becoming a routine thing with Miles Michaelis. I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't talk about Michaelis being in the rotation anymore. Maybe we should say that PJ Poulin now is in the Nats rotation because it was pulling a reliever who again started a game that was supposed to be started by Michaelis. So Poulin served as the Nats opener. He tossed one and two-thirds scoreless innings. Did exit the game with a runner on first and two outs in the bottom of the second, but can't you drew Melis throughout Sam and Tanachi in his attempt at a steal of second base. And that marked the first out for Miles Michaelis in the game as the Nats bulk pitcher. Michaelis officially allowed two runs in three and two-thirds innings. Bottom of the fourth, Michaelis allowed a run, gave up a one-out solo homer by Murataka Murakami to right center field on a one-two pitch to tie the game at one.

5:12The homer went a projected 415 feet per stat cast, but we should note this Murakami right now is a phenom and he is putting up gargantuan numbers for the Chicago White Sox. You know, he's not necessarily getting talked about the way that like, you know, Ashokhaotani is getting talked about understood, but Murakami is one of these stories in MLB so far this season. I mean, right now Murakami and James Wood are kind of the two signature power hitters in the game at the moment and that makes this a fun series with the two of them. You know, I can't fault Miles Michaelis for giving up on run to this guy. That's how good he's been and if that's the only thing essentially that Michael is gave up, you know, so be it. The White Sox have needed something like this, something to wrap their arms around and embrace as their own. I think it surprised a lot of people when he signed here. He so far has more than lived up to it and you could even say, I know wasn't a huge crowd tonight, but the crowd that was here, 17,000, they were into it and especially into it because of what Murakami is doing. Yeah, Murakami for this regular season, OPS of a thousand twenty. He has

6:1711 home runs. He has been tremendous so far. So he homeworked of Miles Michaelis. Michaelis did as he did in this game and then in terms of Nats pictures beyond the opener pooling and the book man, Michaelis, we had two guys, Richard Love Lady and Riley Cornelio. So Richard Love Lady officially tossed two thirds of a scoreless inning. He did allow an inherited runner to score. Came into the game in the bottom of the sixth with the runner on second, went out and the Nats up three one. He to the third battery phase gave up a two out RBI single by Colson Montgomery to right field to cut the Nats lead to three two. And now we arrive at Riley Cornelio. So Riley Cornelio in this game made his MLB regular season debut. He is not ranked as like one of the Nats top prospects, but he very much is a rising prospect for the Nats. He was the Nats 2025 minor league pitcher of the year. He last season did something that is very rare and actually very impressive. He pitched at three different levels of the minors. High A Wilmington

7:22double a Harrisburg and triple a Rochester. And he's so far this season for Rochester has been doing well. And that's on Friday afternoon announced having recalled Cornelio from triple a Rochester. But he in this game struggled three runs to earned in two innings. He issued four walks. He threw 42 pitches, just 21 strikes versus 21 balls. He in the bottom of the seventh allowed two runs one earned began that bottom of the seventh by issuing back to back five pitch walks to Chicago's number seven and eight batters then committed a run scoring throwing air on a bun by Chicago's number nine batter then gave up an RBI sack fly. Cornelio per stat cast had an average four seam fastball velocity of 96.5 miles per hour. The stuff actually looked pretty good, but he had a hard time fighting the plate and he clearly struggled. Look, the stuff that we saw from him in this game tells you that there is something there 97 98 with the fastball a good slider as well. And I think in the long run, there's a lot

8:25maybe be encouraged about here, but you got to be able to throw it over the plate to begin with and when you start your majorly career out by walking the first two batters that you face. And then throwing a ball away on a bun play, it just puts you behind the eight ball. He ends up walking four batters over his two innings. The only two hits he gave up were the bunts single and then an infield single. So they were not making really good contact often. A couple fly balls that turned into sacrifice flies because of the situations where the runners were. But what I took away from this was if he throws the ball over the strike zone, he's got a real good chance of being successful because the stuff is that good. And I know they came out of this feeling encouraged by that. However, I did not like the fact that they put him in to that kind of spot to make his major league debut. It's a one run game in the seventh inning. And let's be clear, he is a starter. Only one of his 79 appearances in the minor leagues came out of the bullpen. Everything else has been as a starter. The plan was for him to be the one who followed Michaelis in this game. And the

9:30idea was that he would give them length as we saw them do with Andrew Alvarez with Mitchell Parker prior to that. The problem was Michaelis was actually probably better than expected and pitched a little deeper into the sixth. They also did not want to put Cornelio into an inning where there was already somebody on base. So especially with Murakama up in the sixth, they go to the left hander, love later. So now you're into the seventh inning before you bring him in. You're protecting a one run lead. I get it. It's all about development and maybe the actual result of the game isn't the most important thing. But for his development, I didn't love throwing him in that kind of pressure situation where one mistake can mess it all up for you. We saw how it played out. And then the fact they brought him back for the eighth inning as well. Again, this was the plan. They knew he was going to pitch no matter what they knew he was going to go multiple innings, no matter what I get that. But I think you have to have some leeway there and understand the situation. Especially after the first inning didn't go well. Brady House tied the game back up with a home run.

10:34It's a whole new ballgame here in the eighth. Maybe go to one of your regular relievers. It's not like they were all unavailable from over usage. Their guys were available if needed. They chose to do this kind of from the outset. They stuck with it and a kind of backfired. Yeah, I mean Blake, you Tara said to you guys after the game, the plan was to pitch Cornelio in this game like that was going to happen. We knew we're using them. We knew he was pitching basically after miles, unless Murakami came up and we'd go love Lady on Murakami. Here's what I think is really interesting. And you wrote about this on that journal dot com. So the nets have these two pretty promising starting pictures at Rochester, Andrew Alvarez and Riley Cornelio. Why aren't they if they're going to be being called up to the majors, just starting games at the major league level? I know the nets have thought about this. And there is a reasoning behind this. But I mean, this is like the obvious question to ask like, why are we dancing this dance with Miles Michaelis? What is the point? You know, at some point soon, we might be asking the same thing about Zach LaTel, but with him,

11:36there's a little more leash. But Alvarez and Cornelio, why are they being used in relief of Miles Michaelis? Why are they being used as relievers when they are starters at Rochester and starters at Rochester who are doing well and showing promise. What's the thought process here? So I asked a version of that question to be Tara Pridi. So before we knew how it was going to go with Cornelio. And he brought up, you know, that braves over the last few days had called up pitching prospects to start the games. And he felt like there's a big difference between what they were doing and what the nets are doing, which is the braves have had starting pitching problems, injuries. They wanted to give Chris sale an extra day. And so they felt like it made the most sense to call up a young starter and have him just pitch right there in his typical role. The nationals didn't feel like they were in that spot. They don't feel like any of their starters needed to be bumped. They didn't want to mess around with their scheduling like that. And obviously nobody has been hurt. So it's not the question of that. It really boils down to, are you willing to cut ties with a Miles Michaelis or Zach LaTel? And they're clearly not ready to do

12:42that at this point. He also talked about maybe using these as an opportunity for a little bit of a soft launch, so to speak, for Cornelio or an Alvarez by bringing them up in a spot where they're not going to start. They're probably not even going to be here long-term. In fact, Cornelio is going back down to AAA after this one appearance. And I think again, this is all kind of by design. So I understand all that. There's some logic behind it. But look at the situation that Cornelio was throwing today. Was that a soft launch for him? No. That was high pressure, high leverage, seventh inning, one run game. To me, either put him in there where Michael is pitched or just save him for another day, having pitched after Jake Irvin the next day after that. If if you're going to do it or don't call him up, if you really believe in him as a starter, then hold off until there is a need for a true starting pitcher. They chose not to do that. You know, we'll see in the long run. Maybe the experience ultimately will have been for the best for him. I'll just tell you this, interviewing Riley Cornelio after this game, he was fighting

13:47back tears. I mean, he was really down on himself, felt like he let everyone down. He had family here in attendance that flew in for this game. This was a really difficult situation for him. Now, everybody else that I talked to spoke so highly of him, not just as a pitcher, but of his mentality and said he's going to be fine. He's a strong kid. He's got a bright future. That's all great. You hope that proves to be true. I just hope that this won appearance because it was ugly. I hope that doesn't leave any real scars for him. And that's always the fear when you call somebody up and put them into a situation like they did with Cornelio tonight. So here's a question too. If we were talking about Travis Sakura and Harleen Susana and not Andrew Alvarez and Riley Cornelio, would the Nats be handling the pitchers the same way? Would the Nats handle Sakura and Susana the way that they have handled Alvarez and Cornelio in terms of how those guys have been used at the

14:48major league level here with these brief call ups? I'm going to guess that yes, they would handle it differently. You know, we don't know of course. And one of these days we'll find out probably going to be a while. Of course, not going to be ready until next year. Susana may be sometime before the end of this season. Obviously higher prospects more touted guys who are supposed to be a big part of the future. And as you said, Cornelio not rated as a top prospect. He kind of forced the issue with how well he's pitched over the last year plus. And Alvarez in a little bit of a similar situation doesn't wow you to the same extent that Cornelio does with his stuff. It's more about just the fact he's had success of the minor leagues in spite of maybe the lack of a repertoire that would get scouts excited about him. So it's a good question. My guess is they probably would treat those guys differently. And maybe that shows how they really feel about a rally Cornelio. Maybe he's not a huge part of the plan moving forward. But if you want to find out, if you think there's any chance of it, I just would have loved to see them use him in a more traditional spot. They didn't have to call him up. They weren't like in a spot where like,

15:51we're out of pictures. We need somebody up. Somebody got hurt. They could have continued with what they had. They chose to do this specifically for this game in this situation. Like I said, a backfire on them. It did. Now in defense of Paltibony and Blake butera, I will say this. The white socks are a bad team. Cornelio was brought into this game to face the bottom of Chicago's order. So, you know, yes, it was a close game. But there are other aspects of the circumstance that do speak to it being a soft launch. So, I do think we should note that. But I think you make a really key point, which is Cornelio didn't have to be called up for this game. Like there wasn't some screaming need for that. So, it is interesting. You think about why was he called up? And, you know, was this just part of his development? Like maybe Taboni sees real value and then calling him up for a spot like this. It's a shame. It didn't go well. But, you know, I think we all would agree if Cornelio is going to be a good pitcher, he'll be able to manage this and bury this in the back of his mind. And, you know, be better the next time. Like obviously,

16:53that's a key part of all this. It's unfortunate though that he did not pitch well. And, you know, we now have quite the streak of after each Nats game recently, a pitcher is option back to Rochester. Right? This has been happening over and over and over again. I can't recall anything like this with the previous regime. Yeah. And I think we kind of knew coming into the season. This might be something we see a lot of the shuttle back and forth to Rochester. I think I'm a little bit surprised that a lot of these moves seem to be more designed to move and not necessarily just a straight up reaction to a guy's performance or certainly to injury. They've had a couple of those. But, for the most part, this has been decisions that they're making because they want to have certain pitchers up to face certain teams. And, as we've seen with like Alvarez and Cornelio, specific games that they thought they wanted them to be up here to pitch, even if it wasn't the intentional along for them to stay. You know, eventually this stuff is hard to keep up. As we've

17:54talked about so much, the messaging with the players has to be so careful and so precise to explain what you're doing. They all need to buy in on the plan for it. We will see in the long run how that goes. Can they keep up at this rate? I'm going to guess they probably can't, but they're sure trying. I mean, that's about 22 different pitchers they have used in 27 games this season. That's a lot. That is remarkable. And that stands out in such contrast to the way things were. I remember talking to you last season about the Nats horrible bullpen and how there were so few roster moves. And I remember saying to you, this is not how most teams operate in modern MLB. Like, normally you do have the shuttle between AAA and the major league level and the Nats for so much of last season, we're just like Colin Poshet. He's not good. Well, we'll keep sending them out there. Maybe he'll get better. And it just is so different as compared to what we're getting right now. I mean, at the end of the season, when we compare the number of roster moves regarding

18:58pitchers for this season for the Nats versus last season for the Nats, like what kind of ratio, are we going to be talking about? Because it's not going to be two to one. It's going to be like four to one or five to one. It's going to be extreme. Yeah, 100%. Now, here's a key difference. Last year, they stuck with a lot of those guys. Why? Because they didn't have options. So they had to release them, and they stuck with them as long as they could till it became clear wasn't going to work out. And they end up just giving them their releases. You heard from the very beginning, Paul Taboni talked about the importance of having optionable players, especially in your bullpen. And pretty much everyone they have, I believe, except for C&L Paras has options. And that was by design because they knew you're not going to stick with the same eight guys all the time. You want to be able to move them up and down. And so they were really assembling not an eight man bullpen, but like a 12 or 13 man bullpen where you can have interchangeable parts. And you're allowed to send them up and down a bunch over the course of the season. Again, let's see how it all plays out in the long run.

20:00You'd like to think that they settle on a certain group at some point and that those guys have some success. But until they do find the right combination, if they have guys with options, they're going to send them down and bring up a fresh arm whenever possible. Colin Poshet, Lucas Sims, Eduardo Salazar, shout out to all those guys from 2025. Now the set by Fenty. Here's the pitch. Check swing. Did he go? No, it'll be ball four. Fenty put his hands on his head in disbelief walking toward the plate, thinking that Lyle had gone too far on the check swing. It is ball four. And across the plate comes Luis Garcia Jr. and the nationals are back in front, two to one. Then that's offense in this five four loss at the White Sox on Friday night. So so four runs, six hits, which were a home run at double and four singles, five walks, one for six with runners

21:01in scoring position. The White Sox went with it opener in this game. Lefty relief pitcher, Brian Hudson. He tossed the scoreless top of the first and then gave way to starting pitcher, bulk pitcher, and former Nat Eric Fettie. Fettie has had a mastery over the net. So since he left the nets in this game, three runs, one earned in five and two thirds and he issued four walks. So then that's got to him to at least some extent. Big home run from Brady Houses, Mark mentioned earlier House as an at starting DH and upper three batter, one for four with a solo homer and an RBI fielders choice, grounder, one run eighth, a lead off opposite field homer to right field to tie the game at four. I was thinking about House. He and Dale and Lyle have like switched places. House got off to the Torrid store. Lyle really wasn't doing much. And now in recent weeks, Lyle has gotten going and House has actually cooled off. We haven't really talked about that. His numbers have come tumbling down. So really good to see him hit that home run Friday night. Yeah, I think he fell apart the day after I wrote the article about how much his plate discipline had improved and all of a sudden he was striking out all over the place and it's

22:05taken him a couple of weeks to try to get sorted out again. That was big for him in that spot and to go to the opposite field like he did. And the RBI fielders choice was a result of his hustle down the line. That's a one out. I think it was bases loaded ground ball and he's got to beat it out to avoid the double play, which would end the inning. He does beat it out that allows the run to score for a while. That was the decisive run. They were up by one because of that. So I was glad to see that. But you're right. It's been kind of either Lyle or House, not both of them going at the same time. You'd love to see what this team could do with both guys hot at the same time. Maybe that Homer is what gets ready going. Yeah. House now OPS of 659 also for the Nats in this game. Two more bad outs on the base paths. So we mentioned James Wood earlier in this game as the Nats starting right fielder and double one batter. Oh, for two with three walks and two strike outs. So a mighty three true outcome kind of game for James Wood. But he also got picked off

23:05at first base. Top of the first he drew a five pitch walk. But he then got picked off at first base for the first out. And it wasn't even close. Wood in his attempt to slide back to first base essentially fell down on the infield dirt well in front of first base. You know, the word grace. This was the opposite of grace. This was clumsy. I don't know if he just slipped or what, but it did not look good at all. What is a good athlete? So I don't really understand what happened there. But it looked ugly. And then we had this top of the fifth Luis Garcia Jr. on first base, not seen Nunez on third base. Nobody out. Nunez got tagged in a rundown between third and home of Drew Miller scoring to Bunt, but not actually Bunting on what appeared to be a squeeze play. I mean, it seems pretty clear that was a squeeze play of some kind. Now the Nats did end up scoring two runs in the inning. But it was interesting. Blake Beterra during his post game session with you guys was not shy about saying what happened. I mean, he played Nunez for that play.

24:07But Tara said, quote, yeah, we were a little too aggressive at their base there. And by we, he meant not seen Nunez. But what do you think about those outs on the base paths on wood real quick as Elaine Bennis found out on Seinfeld? You either have grace or you don't. You can't just have a little bit of grace. And James would have zero grace on that play as you describe it. That was ugly. Now I will give credit that pitcher Hudson had a really good move. Tough lefty. You know, they probably had never seen him before. I'm sure you can watch a video and try to study him up. But I clearly caught wood off garden. He had no chance to get back. The other one is the one that really bothers me. And yes, Beterra is right in saying that, you know, Nats even Nunez got a little jumpy there. And, you know, I think he was just assuming that Miller's was going to get the Bunt down. But I talked to Miller's after the game as well asked him about the play. And essentially what he was saying is it wasn't a good pitch to try to Bunt on. It was a sweeper. It's a breaking ball. If it's a fast ball or even a cutter, a lot easier to get the bat, you know,

25:08and it's on the ball. And it's the first pitch. If it's two strikes, you have no choice. You just got to do it no matter what. So he was trying to be a little bit selective there. Got a pitch that he didn't think was one. He was going to be able to get down. So he pulls the bat back. And yes, it is on the runner to make sure that the, you know, there's contact made before you take off. But it's also that's the kind of play like once you show Bunt, you kind of have to go with it unless the pitch is so far out of the zone that there's no chance. I think it was still called a strike if I remember right. Yes, it's tough to Bunt a breaking ball. But if you're Nunez, you kind of have to anticipate that he is going to get it down. Otherwise, you risk being thrown out of the plate, even if he does make contact. So I think the blame kind of goes both ways a little bit. Maybe it's a weird situation. I think more in general, I don't love, I think there was predictable. I think we know they go first and third. They're either going to try the double steel play where they're going to try a squeeze. And the white sock seemed to know it. They were ready to back pick at third. The moment that he didn't get the Bunt down might be getting to the point

26:09where other teams kind of know the book on them right now. And they get in that situation. They're going to put some kind of play on. That's great. If you can execute it, we know the nationals are not always great at executing these fundamental plays. Maybe just let the guy swing away and see if you get in the run that way. And I wonder if now moving forward, they maybe take some of these plays off with a little more regular. It's so funny. The nats are in on analytics like never before. And yet the team has become like Bunt happy. We are seeing this team Bunt or at least try to Bunt so often. The other thing to about that spot is, okay, Millis is batting. I get it. He's not a very good hitter. But he's your number nine batter after him. Wood, Lyle, House Abrams. Keep your runners on base and let wood, Lyle, House, and Abrams do as they are capable of doing. Don't be running into outs. Don't put yourself in a position in which you can run yourself into outs. And yet that's exactly what happened right there. Luis Garcia, junior did have a two hit game. He is an at starting first baseman and number eight batter two for three

27:11with a double a single and an RBI sack fly. And a pitch swung on ground ball toward short. Bunt Gumbry has it a second for one. Relay to first, not in time. Across the plate comes Drew Millis with another run. As the white socks unable to turn two, House hustling up the line to first beats the relay and picks up his ninth RBI the year the nationals now lead three to one. All right, we have some updates on injured Nats pitchers. First of all, the expected now is official with reliever Ken Waldechuk. He is in fact done for the season. He on Tuesday underwent both Tommy John surgery and an internal brace procedure on his left UCL. So he is done for the season. Of course, no surprise that he underwent the UCL surgery April 13th. And that's put him on the 15 day inter list due to what was called left forearm tightness. And then just three days later, April 16th, the Nats announced having transferred him to the 60 day injured list in a clear sign that he was expected to be out for a while.

28:15And now he is out for a while. And it's a tough break for him. You're feel for him. He underwent Tommy John surgery on that left elbow in May, 2024. You wrote about this on natural.com, but also wrote about the news on starting pitcher Josiah Gray and reliever Cole Henry. It's a bit more complicated with those two right now. Where do we stand with those two guys? More complicated, but I think more encouraging as well. I know everybody kind of got worried when we got the update about Josiah Gray. Last time that he was going in for more testing and wondering, okay, well, what's going on here? Did he have some kind of setback? What I was told is that there was no setback really. He hadn't begun throwing yet. Anyways, but there was more testing they wanted to give him. We found out more details about that. I'm going to read through this because it's a little bit complicated. What it is, the testing was called an electromyography EMG test. I believe that is a nerve test. So remember, he's on the aisle with a flexor strain. So they're potentially looking at the nerve in his forearm to see if everything's all right there. What the results of it were,

29:20they said he can initiate plyometrics, which is a particular type of rehab process. And routine to go through, but that would be in preparation for the start of a throwing program. So I interpreted that as positive news. He's not had a setback. He's not being shut down for some kind of extra long period of time now. There is some work still to do before he can start throwing. I don't think he's coming back anytime soon, but this was not a, oh God, he has an awful injury. It certainly doesn't need Tommy John surgery again, anything like that right now. So I think you interpret that one as being encouraging. With Cole Henry, remember, he's on the 15-day aisle with a rotator cuff strain. He expressed from the beginning that he wasn't that worried about it, was able to resume throwing like within a week of that. So that was good. He has now gone down to West Palm Beach. He's played catch up to 120 feet. So that's good. Eventually he'll be ready to face some life hitters and pitch and some kind of game situation. What they haven't decided yet is

30:24what he need to actually go on a minor league rehab assignment, you know, pitch in Rochester, Harrisburg, Fredericksburg, wherever or could he get that at extended spring training in West Palm, they'll make that decision here once he gets to a point that he's ready to pitch in game. So I have to pitch in some kind of game situation before they activate him. But that sounds pretty encouraging and that this is not going to be a long-term stint on the aisle for Cole Henry. You know, it's funny. That test that you described for Josiah Gray is known as an EMG. And I know that because that is a specialty of my dad who is a neurologist and Friday happened to be his birthday. So it all kind of ties in. Happy birthday, dad. He turned 75. The EMG is a specialty neurologist to the stars, Dr. Albert Goldie. And there you go. Worked out perfectly here. Very happy birthday to Albert Goldie. But I'm disappointed in you, Al, that you didn't arrange to have him be our special guest on this episode on his birthday so that we could ask him about the EMG test because he's going to certainly give a better answer than I did trying to describe it. You don't want to know what he would charge us to be on this podcast. Okay. I'm not sure

31:26showvers could afford that and showvers can afford a lot, but I'm not sure he could afford him. And speaking of birthdays, we offer shout outs on the Natschat podcast. A happy birthday to Cody deal from Sarah. Sarah says that Cody's birthday was on Friday. There you go. So he won't hear this until Saturday morning, but this still counts via ABS as a strike thrown by Sarah. I like that, Sarah. Thank you. And happy birthday to Cody. A lot of birthdays all over the place here. The big Friday in the DMV happy birthday to Cody. All right. Well, we have game two of this series Saturday afternoon at 410. Jake Irvin will be the Natschatting pitcher. Overall, he has not been good. But he has shown signs of doing well. And if you go through the particulars of some of his recent outings, some very good stretches, but then there are the very bad stretches. And so his numbers are not impressive. Let's make that clear. But I feel like with Irvin, there is some hope when he's pitching it just a matter of like having the good outweigh the bad. You know, I think that's

32:26the key for Jake Irvin. Like there will be some bad, but there will be some good. Can the good vastly outweigh the bad in this outing? If so, maybe you get a nice outing from Jake Irvin on Saturday. Yeah. Last time out, nine up, nine down to get started. Only 34 pitches. We talked about the high pitch count. He was having the first inning troubles. He got through all that. Then he gets to a fourth and gives up a two run homer. But comes back strong in the fifth and then maybe hit a little bit of a wall in the sixth. They did let him reach the sixth inning and it didn't go as well. From there, look, the white socks. I don't want to discount them. And certainly Murakami is as good as anybody right now. But for the most part, this is a lineup that you should probably feel like you've got a decent chance against. I would love to see him not only get off to a good start in that game, but sustain it. Give them five, six quality innings. Keep the ball in the yard. And give his team a chance to win. And perhaps if that situation arises and they hold a lead on Saturday and the late innings, Blake P. Terrible will go with a more conventional bullpen strategy.

33:28They did Friday night. You can hit us up on exit. That's underscore chat. You could find us on Blue Sky and that's chat podcast. You can email us natschatpodcast at gmail.com. And we have a website you could check out to natschatpodcast.com at which you can purchase a natschat podcast t-shirt on nationals radio highlights on natschat or courtesy of 106-7 the fan. For Mark Circleman, I'm Elgaldi. We thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on the natschat podcast. No, there's something else. And indefinable quality. Great. Grace, yes. I think I am Grace. Some Grace, yes. Just some? Well, you don't want too much Grace so you won't be able to stand. Oh, Mr. Kit.