As I write this on Saturday morning, the Nationals haven’t scored one single run in four days, not since Tuesday. We’ve watched 21 straight innings of baseball without seeing a single guy cross the plate. And this isn’t even the first time this has happened.
On top of this, the Nationals have only taken one walk in the past two games with Jacob Young working a pitcher. There were too many poor at-bats to count with 97 mph fastballs that were right down the pike, and the Nats’ batters were not ready to do damage. In the final inning last night, Luis Garcia Jr. and Josh Bell each went down on 1-pitch outs. What are we doing here? Those two players aren’t to blame — but it was a 1-0 loss. You just needed one run to stay in the game. Garcia had the big hit in the game and was stranded after his booming 406 foot double off the high wall in right-field.
“We didn’t hit. We got three hits, I think. Sometimes it goes like that. They got three hits, too. They just got one more run than us.”
— interim manager Miguel Cairo said
When it looked like James Wood was coming out of his slump, he was 0-4 with three strikeouts in the game, and Nathaniel Lowe and CJ Abrams had two strikeouts each. They were all chasing pitches. The only one who has a beef would be MacKenzie Gore who got no run support, and the umpire missed what looked like eight strikes that were part of the reason he gave up a run and had season-high six walks. Definitely give home plate ump, Ron Kulpa, partial-credit for most of those walks. What game was he watching?
Interim manager Miguel Cairo has been preaching about energy. Where was his energy to get in the umpire’s face? His pitcher was clearly upset, and they let Kulpa make a series of horrific calls. This just felt like the type of game we have seen too often in this 2025 season. Different manager, same result.
