Photo by Garrett Lang for TalkNats
The Washington Nationals are playing for pride, yet respectability left the station months ago. No chance of reaching 70-wins, the Nats would have to win out just to get to 69. With 64-wins in the books, Vegas will only pay off those who were pessimistic and took the “under” on the season win total. Even the great first 87-games from James Wood and MacKenzie Gore were soiled with second half slumps.
For Gore, he went into the All-Star game with a 3.02 ERA and his season ended yesterday with an ankle impingement and a 4.17 ERA. We will see if Andrew Alvarez, Cade Cavalli, and Brad Lord can beat his ERA. For Wood, he had a .958 and was a Top-5 player in baseball that week before the All-Star break. Today, he is trying to stay above an .800 OPS and attempting not to set the ignominious strikeout record he is nine away from taking away from Mark Reynolds. Not the type of record you want to own. On top of that, Daylen Lile leapfrogged Wood for the team lead in OPS on Sunday. Yesterday Wood got a rest day to keep his strikeouts at 215.
Since the All-Star break, Nasim Nunez has four home runs to Wood’s three in that same span. But remember, Nunez only has 30 at-bats at the MLB level since the All-Star break. That is Aaron Judge type of HR/AB numbers. If you add Nuñez’s minor league numbers, he had a homer in Triple-A on August 21.
With Gore going to the 15-day IL, which ends his season, the Nats also placed reliever Mason Thompson on the 15-Day Injured List (retroactive to Sept. 20) with right biceps tendinitis and that ends his 2025 season and most likely his career with the Nationals. To replace Gore and Thompson on the roster, the Nats will call up two relievers: RHP Julian Fernandez and RHP Orlando Ribalta. Gore was supposed to pitch on Sunday, but with Thursday’s day-off, the team could pitch tonight’s starter, Brad Lord, on Sunday on regular rest to finish the season with Alvarez tomorrow, Cavalli on Friday, and Jake Irvin on Saturday.
So yes, the count of pitchers is now four starters, and 10 bullpen arms. The bullpen covered 141 pitches last night, and they didn’t even have to pitch the 9th inning last night. Gore labored through 71 pitches for his 2.0 innings of work as he didn’t retire a batter in that 3rd inning. That is a 26.5 pitch per inning average. By the way, was Gore tipping pitches again?
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— Interim-manager Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game
They took good pitches [against Gore]. And they fouled off a lot of pitches, so the pitch count went a little too high. And hey, they were able to lay off his good pitches. But they battled against him.
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The bullpen usage looks like this:
Here are your Nats’ WAR leaders with, CJ Abrams at +3.2, MacKenzie Gore at +2.9. James Wood at +2.8, Add those up, and you get a total of +8.9 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 +14, 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
When you win games — and you’re in every game, you’re going to use your bullpen a lot, and they’ve been like warriors. Every time that you ask them to pitch, they come and they give you a good outing. They’ve been pitching with their heart. They know what is at stake. They know that they got a chance to show that they can pitch in the big leagues, and a lot of them, they can do it.
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The Nats finished 37-53 (.411) under Mike Rizzo/Davey Martinez, and you are correct, if the Nationals go at worst 3-2 to finish the season, they would go 30-42 (.416) under Mike DeBartolo/Miguel Cairo. That would still be a disappointing 67-95. And that is still 5-wins under the pre-season Vegas odds. It sure would be nice to win tonight in Atlanta.
The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.19 and that places the starters at 2nd from last in MLB. The reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.61 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 4.17
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 181 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
