Photo by Sol Tucker for TalkNats
The Washington Nationals shocked the New York Mets over the weekend, and played the spoiler role to the point that if the season ended yesterday, the Mets would have lost the playoff tie-breaker against the Reds, and the Mets would not have made the playoffs.
Luckily for the Mets, three teams make the Wild Card in each league, and they just have to hope the Reds falter in this final week. Unfortunately for the Nationals and the Braves, they are both just playing for pride as both teams have already been eliminated from playoff contention. As summer officially ended today, the Boys of Autumn have six more games to play before their offseason begins later on Sunday.
Tonight’s game has a battle of the lefty starters. The Nats have MacKenzie Gore on the mound, and the Braves have Chris Sale. One player out of the lineup is James Wood. With 215 strikeouts, he is just eight from tying the MLB record of 223 Ks. Sitting Wood against Sale was the right move. The surprising part is Sale has faced Wood three times, and the Nats’ outfielder went 1-for-3 with no strikeouts in their lefty/lefty matchups.
In other news, Josiah Gray will not be joining the Nationals in this final week to pitch. His season has ended with his brief rehab work in the minor leagues. The 27-year-old never built up his stamina. He only got 5⅔ innings of work between stops in High-A, Double-A and Triple-A, and his 2⅔ innings in Rochester were marked by walking three batters, and his 2.400 WHIP in Double-A was concerning. The good news, he gave up zero earned runs. The bad news, he struggled in each appearance. Many times, that is to be expected for pitchers returning from TJ surgery. The question for the offseason, will the Nats tender Gray a contract as an arbitration-eligible player? You would think they will, but it is difficult to see a clear role for him in the future.
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— Interim-manager Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game
A lot of heart, a lot of really good pitching and unbelievable defense. We always say pitching and defense wins games, and on [Sunday] it was pitching and defense.
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The bullpen usage looks like this:
Here are your Nats’ WAR leaders with, CJ Abrams at +3.3, MacKenzie Gore at +3.1. James Wood at +2.8, Add those up, and you get a total of +9.2 WAR. The issue is the large gap between those players and the next tier, and of course the negative tier after them of which many of those players are off the roster.
On defense, the OAA stats showed some improvement with a good defensive game yesterday. Jacob Young leads the team at +13, and CJ Abrams is on the opposite end at -10. That is actually quite the improvement over last year’s -18 for Abrams who is on pace to finish at -10.
These are your stats leaders on BBRef. There are certainly some surprises on there — good and not so good. The issue is the consistency on this team.
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— Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game
The guys have been playing hard the whole second half.
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Now, there are just 6-games and the season ends on Sunday. With only 64-wins in the books, it is now a mathematical impossibility to reach the 71-wins the team had in 2023 and 2024. Of course, the hope was the team would get to a winning record in this 2025 season which fell far short. Getting win-63, now assured the team that they can’t lose 100-games. A silver lining in a poor season. Now let’s see how close they can get to 70-wins.
The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.16 and that places the starters at 2nd from last in MLB. The reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.56 and now the worst in baseball in ERA.
Here is how the starters rank by ERA:
No. 5 Starter: Andrew Alvarez 2.84
No. 4 Starter: Cade Cavalli 4.23
No. 3 Starter: Brad Lord 4.18 (starting/relieving)
No. 2 Starter: Jake Irvin 5.69
No. 1 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 4.00
Washington Nationals vs. Atlanta Braves
Stadium: Truist Park, Atlanta, Georgia
1st Pitch: 7:15 PM EDT
TV: MASN
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app; In Spanish on DC 87.7 FM and La Pantera 100.7 FM/1220 AM. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 89 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
