After Friday’s win, the team went to bed in sole possession of 3rd place in the tough NL East. An accomplishment for a team branded as “Bottom Feeders” this week by Ken Rosenthal.
We have no idea where the Washington Nationals will ultimately be at the trade deadline in two months from today. But right now, the team has gone 10-4 in the past two weeks, and in sole possession of third place in the NL East as they just leapfrogged over the Atlanta Braves. The top story in baseball right now should be James Wood. The 22-year-old is doing things that even Aaron Judge wasn’t doing until he was 25 years old. At 24, Judge batted .179 with a .608 OPS. Wood is now Top-10 in OPS in all of baseball with a .964 mark — and it is Judge and Wood as the Top-2 outfielders in OPS.
The return from the Juan Soto trade has 4-of-the-5 former Padres top prospects all on the same field for the Nationals. That would be Wood, MacKenzie Gore, CJ Abrams, and Robert Hassell III already with a combined +6.2 WAR per FanGraphs. We aren’t even at June 1 yet. Hassell just completed his first week in the MLB, and Wood is playing like an MVP candidate with Gore as a Cy Young candidate, leading all of baseball in strikeouts. Abrams was en fuego until last week, and is in a mini slump. Hassell is making plays on defense, turning in clutch hits, and has added some energy to this lineup.
While Wood’s new advertising promotion with Papa John’s Pizza is creating 50 percent pizza discounts after each home run, manager Dave Martinez is creating wins with Wood’s clutch hits. In the past three games, the Nats have scored nine runs each and have beaten up some really good starting pitchers in Seattle and Arizona.
On May 9, Josh Bell was the worst rated player in the National League. He was batting .130 with a .497 OPS. The team was giving daily affirmations that Bell could carry the team when he gets hot. Well since May 9, Bell has heated up to a point that his garbage time hits are now impacting wins like last night when he smashed a 3-run homer, his third homer in consecutive games. In this 16-game span, Bell is hitting .294 with a .949 OPS. While he isn’t over Mendoza yet for the season, he is now a contributor in this span.
As Bell heated up, first baseman Nathaniel Lowe went into a slump that saw his early May OPS of .778 drop over 100 points until his bat heated up three days ago. Yesterday, when Wood was walked to load the bases with 2-outs, Lowe hit a 2-run single to change the game. His defense has been one of the positives, and that has been much-needed.
Speaking of defense, Hassell threw out a runner at home in Friday’s game, and recent call-up, Daylen Lile, committed home run robbery by going above the right field wall to rob a 2-run homer. Without the great defense from Lowe, Hassell, and Lile, starting pitcher Jake Irvin‘s outing would have been much worse than his 6-runs given up over 5.0 innings.
Once again, Irvin’s predictable pattern of pitching into the 8th inning of a game for the 4th time in his career turned into disastrous results in the game(s) immediately afterwards. Analytics are there for a reason. Consistently ignoring those results, and expecting a different outcome — is the definition of insanity. Maybe you don’t push Irvin into the 8th innings of games? Look at the two starts after July 4, 2024, the two starts after Sept. 16, 2024, the two starts after April 25, 2025, and yesterday’s start after May 24, 2025 and you have a combined 34 2/3 IP and 37 ER given up and that is a 9.61 ERA. If you removed those games from Irvin’s record, he would be a 3.46 ERA pitcher for the past two seasons over 226 1/3 IP. Those are top of the rotation numbers.
“[Irvin] was a hell of a lawyer. I could tell you that. He tried to go back out in the ninth. And I’m a better judge.”
— Martinez said on May 24, 2025 after Irvin’s 8.0 inning gem
Maybe Martinez should have been a better judge in the 7th inning? We don’t have an extensive analytics department at TalkNats. Actually we don’t have an analytics group at all. We observe and report. It honestly boggles the mind why the Nats can’t help themselves. They did the same to Mitchell Parker who hasn’t been the same since his 8-inning gem on April 22. Parker had a 7-run lead at the time. The bullpen was fresh. Why push a pitcher who has never been a workhorse? It makes little sense. From that point, Parker has gone from a 1.39 ERA to an 8.46 ERA in the six games from the end of April until now.
This is how the Nats have consistently shot themselves in the foot. Starting pitching should be your protected assets like the goose that lays the golden eggs. And don’t think for a minute that the Nats have an overworked bullpen. They have the 8th fewest innings of all bullpens in baseball. Conversely, the Nats’ starters have combined for the 10th most innings thrown.
And you wonder how Patrick Corbin has a 3.75 ERA with the Rangers this year? They have analytically taken the same pitcher and pull him in games quicker before he self-destructs. He has a better defense behind him, a better bullpen, and one of the best framing catchers in baseball in Jonah Heim. Whether Corbin’s luck lasts or not, his 5.00 FIP just tells you that he his ERA has improved by those other factors. But those three factors are the key to making your team better when you say pitching is the key.
“Starting pitching is the driver to me . . . We’ve built our [rosters] based on having a guy in the middle of the diamond who gives us a chance to win every day.”
— general manager Mike Rizzo said after the 2018 season
To add to this point, if starting pitching is your driver, why do you have the worst defensive catcher in baseball as their battery mate, and ignore the analytics? By the way, Keibert Ruiz is last in all of baseball in pitch framing and last in catcher’s defense.
While you cannot fix the worst defensive middle infield in baseball (-10 OAA) at this point, you can this offseason. There is an opportunity for Rizzo and his staff to see their weak links. This could be good news. Like you do in an MRI chamber when you inject the gadolinium to light-up the troubled areas, the Nats weaknesses are lit up right now. The strengths of the team are what you want to enhance.
If The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal wanted to criticize Rizzo in current events, it should have been over how slow he is to change. The player development and scouting issues that Rosenthal focused on was due to the humans who were doing the work — and they are all gone now or have been re-assigned. It took Rizzo a while to get there, and he got there over time. The current issue is that Rizzo says the right things but then only goes part way to fix it. Maybe that is due to limited payroll funds, but shouldn’t a primary catcher have been in the mix for an upgrade in the past offseason?
“Our philosophy here has been clear since I’ve taken over. We believe — and I believe, wholeheartedly, that … teams are built on pitching, defense, speed and athleticism.”
— Rizzo has said some form of this since 2011
Words. Defense has been so up and down over the years. The Nats rank last in team defense. The corner infield was addressed in the offseason by adding Paul DeJong (injured) and Lowe. But Luis Garcia Jr. has deteriorated on defense to what he was in 2023, and Ruiz has always been a problem. Abrams has improved his negative defense marginally, but really should be a second baseman. To improve, you can’t count on scoring 9-runs per game to mask the other issues.
One major area of improve is from the bullpen, for the first 39 games of the season, they had an ERA north of 7.00+, and now — they are the 14th best bullpen since May 9th when the team DFA’d struggling reliever Lucas Sims.
In a perfect world, you would have the in-house replacements as top prospects in your system, ready to go. While the Nats might have those prospects, they aren’t ready to step in. Winning in spite of the shortcomings is the mark of a good team. No team is perfect or close to it. That gives you some real hope towards the future. Inject that gadolinium and fix it.
