Ryan Zimmerman’s disdain for Spring Training was firmly established long before he took most of his at bats in Minor League rather than Grapefruit League games this Spring. He’s not in the lineup for this afternoon’s exhibition with the Minnesota Twins either.
“He likes to get about 50 at-bats in spring training,” Washington Post writer Adam Kilgore noted back in the Spring of 2012, “... [which] he figures is the minimum the team would let him take.”
Did your forget about Davey Johnson joking often back in 2013 that, “the Nationals’ third baseman needs exactly 50 at-bats — no more, no less — to get ready for the season,” as he was paraphrased by the Nats’ themselves in a post on their Curly-W blog back in 2013.