The Washington Nationals have a doubleheader today after yesterday’s rainout. One thing for sure, the team cannot get everyone in the offense rowing together. At different points of the season it was CJ Abrams and Jesse Winker carrying the offense. Eddie Rosario, at the end of April, was batting .088 — and then he caught fire the past week to be named the NL Player of the Week. Rosario batted .467 with a .600 OBP and a 1.733 OPS in the past week, and took his -0.9 WAR and brought it back to 0.0.
Before the mid-1980s, American-made automobiles had a reputation for having too many manufacturing errors that led to unreliable cars. The competition from Japan and Germany were producing vehicles with near zero-defects. That led General Motors and Ford to step-up technology, quality controls, and the use of robotics to cut down on the manufacturing errors.
Ford Motor Company hired Robert Cox, an outspoken New York advertising executive, who was behind the slogan, “Quality is Job 1” in the 1980s. It worked, and the Ford Taurus became the best selling vehicle. American-made cars had cut their error rates down to where their competitors were. What does any of this have to do with baseball? Cox learned as a left-handed pitcher in the Queens Alliance, a borough semi-pro league, that winning required great defense, and you had to limit the mistakes and errors. Reaching zero-defect from fewer mistakes would lead to higher sales, lowered expenses — and more profit which is the baseball equivalent of more wins.
The Washington Nationals needed a great start from Jake Irvin and got more than that in a 7.0 inning two-run outing. Unfortunately, the Nats bats went mostly quiet, and Irvin exited in a 2-2 tie game. While both teams made some mistakes, the one with the fewest won this game.
The Washington Nationals might have shocked everyone but themselves last night as manager Dave Martinez pushed almost all the right buttons to win a game that greatly favored the Red Sox on paper. As we wrote in the pregame, Martinez needed “an ace start from Patrick Corbin“ as the Nats were facing the Red Sox best pitcher in righty Tanner Houck. Corbin’s results were good enough, and he earned his first win going 5.0 innings of 1-run ball. Martinez went to the bullpen with a 3-1 lead, and the Nats won 5-1 to push the team back to a game over .500. Today, the Nats get a second chance to go to two games over .500 which they last saw on June 30 of 2021.
The Washington Nationals arrived in Boston and got to Fenway Park early to get the behind-the-scenes tour of the insides of the Green Monster and other hidden parts of Fenway. Tonight, the Nats have to get a win to stay at or above the .500 mark.
Owner Mark Lerner and GM Mike Rizzo in a suite (Photo by Sol Tucker for TalkNats)
Supposedly there was talk on the radio from a fool who said that the Washington Nationals are five years into a rebuild. Let’s speak to this for the 100th time. The Nats won the World Series fewer than five years ago so how could the rebuild be five years in length? Impossible and pure stupidity. Four years ago was the wasted COVID season — a complete write-off. So we should go through some facts of when the rebuild really started on July 30, 2021 as the official date.
Per recent MLB Power Rankings, the Dodgers, Phillies, and Orioles were named as the Top-3 teams by Ryan Spilborghs, C.J. Nitkowski, and Brad Lidge on MLB Network Radio this week. The 2024 Washington Nationals have won against each of those teams. This is a Nationals team that Baseball Prospectus had projected to lose 103-105 games in different simulations just two months ago. On Monday, the Nats had sole possession of the final Wild Card spot in the NL if the season had ended. Yes, we all know that there is about 75 percent of the season remaining. That’s the same for all teams.
The Washington Nationals had a successful Cinco de Mayo and Siete de Mayo, and they have a successful Ocho de Mayo? This quick two-game series with the Orioles wraps up tonight at Nats Park, and then the Nationals have a day-off tomorrow before a weekend series in Boston.
The Washington Nationals got to a point that they have not seen in the standings since July 1 of 2021. That point is being over .500, and it is thanks to Trevor Williams and his bullpen shutting out the Orioles by a score of 3-0 tonight in front of a crowd of nearly 30,000 stunned fans.
The Washington Nationals had a successful Cinco de Mayo, and now on Siete de Mayo is the first sign of a Nationals and Orioles truce. We had hoped that the first sign of a truce would be the splitting of the MASN TV network. But instead of that being announced, an olive branch was extended in a different form. This was a cherry blossom branch that was extended in a sign of peace between new Orioles’ owner, David Rubenstein, and Nats’ principal owner, Mark Lerner. The teams are doing a Washington x Baltimore City Connect collab for tonight’s game.
