Jackson Tetreault Earns Shot at Regular Spot in Nationals' Rotation

Tetreault earns shot at regular spot in Nationals’ rotation originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington

Jackson Tetreault will stick around in the Nationals’ rotation for a while after making the most of his shot at a couple of spot starts in the major leagues. The 26-year-old completed his second straight quality start Sunday against the Texas Rangers, convincing manager Davey Martinez to give him a chance to earn a long-term spot.

“He’s gonna stay, he’s gonna get an opportunity to pitch every five days,” Martinez said in his postgame press conference, as aired on MASN. “He’s done well but we’ll go back and look at some things, talk to him tomorrow about some different things that we saw and then make a couple adjustments and go from there.”

Washington called Tetreault up June 14 to fill in for the injured Stephen Strasburg, who made just one start in his return from thoracic outlet syndrome surgery before a stress reaction of the ribs sent him back to the IL. He lasted only four innings in his MLB debut against the Atlanta Braves, wearing a seven-run outing for a Nationals ballclub with a taxed pitching staff.

Tetreault faced the Philadelphia Phillies his next time out and allowed three runs (all unearned) over seven impressive innings. He displayed impressive control of his fastball and cutter; Tetreault only struck out two but induced 13 groundball outs and pounded the strike zone.

The former seventh-round pick then went to Texas and extended his streak of consecutive innings without allowing an earned run up to 14 before he put on a few baserunners in the seventh and the bullpen allowed an inherited runner to score. He wasn’t even on the 40-man roster before his promotion, but Washington’s rotation has gone on a nice run as a whole over its last two turns and Martinez isn’t messing with it for now.

“The key is, he goes out there, he keeps his composure, he throw strikes,” Martinez said. “He fell a little bit behind today on hitters but he’s able to throw that strike when he needed to, which was good. So, like I said, this kid comes up here and he’s very much under control, he’s got a good idea of what he wants to do and he works hard every day.”

Tetreault’s next opportunity to build on his strong start to his MLB career will come Saturday against the Miami Marlins.

Copyright RSN
Contact Us