PHILADELPHIA — Foster Griffin sat calmly in the Nationals clubhouse three hours before first pitch. He looked like he was preparing for the game just like any other player in the room: locked in and focused, but not like someone who was about to appear in his first Major League game since Sept. 22, 2022.
“A little bit there is, I’m playing the score,” said Griffin. “We’re up 7-2 at that point. I didn’t want to walk him to get to a righty on deck. I kind of also didn’t want to walk him to get the crowd back into it even more than they already were. So at that point, I was kind of like, ‘All right, well I’m going to go at him with what I know I can get the zone and what I can attack him with. And if he hits it at somebody, great. If I get a weak fly ball or ground ball, great.’ He hit it hard, but he hit it hard right at somebody, so we got out of it.”
“He’s like a tactician out there,” Butera said pregame. “And not to say it’s always going to work and he’s always going to get everybody out that he faces, but just the way he thinks through how he wants to attack hitters, he’s like a silent assassin. He’s a pretty quiet guy, but you see he’s always paying attention to what’s going on so he’s never really surprised at any moment.”
“Weirdly enough, I felt much more prepared,” Griffin said. “I don’t know if that comes with three more years of starting experience in Japan. I felt like I really learned how to be a starter, and that goes all the way back to preparing a lineup, preparing a scouting report. So I felt very confident going in with the changes that I made in Japan as well as the scouting report we put together.”