Photo by Jake Stephens/TalkNats
Every team will suffer at least a dozen gut-punch losses over a full-season. And the Washington Nationals suffered one in the gut-punch category yesterday. They had the win in-hand until they didn’t. That’s baseball. Just ask the Toronto Blue Jays after they lost the 2025 World Series by inches.
If Cole Henry‘s 0-2 pitch in the 9th inning wasn’t in the middle of the zone, maybe the Nats leave Philly with a 4-2 record instead of 3-3. The loss is not on Henry or any one player. That’s a team loss. Isn’t .500 a good result at this point in time? Yes, but you also want more.
The Nats started the season facing two 2025 playoff teams that dwarf the Nats in payroll. Per USA Today, the Phillies payroll is 325 percent higher. Next up is the Los Angeles Dodgers with their $322 million payroll, nearly quadrupled the size of the Nats total spend.
Manager Blake Butera can only play — and coach-up the players he is given. He brilliantly maneuvered through his bullpen arms, and at the end of the day, Butera can’t use a joystick to put more horizontal run on that cutter (registered as a sweeper) that Henry misfired on. Nope, the players have to improve.
Bullpens will tear your heart out. Last year, the Nats struck early with that pain as their first blown save was on Opening Day. There’s never been an MLB team that has gone a full 162 game season without a blown save. That’s a reality — even with the best laid plans. The coaches will be back at work to make this a learning moment.
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— Manager Blake Butera said
I’ve learned a lot. Our guys have fight. They want to win. They expect to win. They’re competitive.
Maybe they hear the word ‘young’ thrown around a lot or ‘rebuild,’ or whatever it might be — but these guys are hungry, and they want to prove that they belong here, and that they can do some special things. I just couldn’t be more proud of what they’ve done through the first six games.”
They’re pretty upset right now which you like to see — these guys are competitive, they want to win. …
There were some guys pretty upset walking out of the dugout, and it shows us they care. Our coaching staff is upset, too. … We thought we had all three [games won in] this series.
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Butera handled the postgame media session well for a new manager. Those were mature responses to not get emotional, even though some of his players were. Daylen Lile sat in the dugout after the game for a few moments, bent over with head in hands. These are competitors. They were the talk of the town in the first game in Philly with a decisive 13-2 win. ESPN took notice, and moved the Nats up three spots in their power ranking. Don’t get carried away, nobody sees the Nats as a 2026 playoff team.
And you’re doing all of this to transform into a better team so you can become a playoff contender. President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, is winnowing his roster to see the wheat separate from the chaff. Some refer to that as throwing #### against the wall and see what sticks. But some players have already stuck. Without squinting, you can see a lot of potential stars on this team from James Wood to CJ Abrams to Lile to Cade Cavalli, and hopefully even Dylan Crews can right his ship in Triple-A.
This team has to be coached up and developed at each level, and yes, some are getting developed on the Major League stage at the highest level. In Crews’ case, they felt he needed to go back to the minor leagues to slow things down and get going there. The same for catcher Harry Ford.
❝Development and winning can go hand-in-hand … we want to develop and get better … and the goal here is winning.❞
— Manager Blake Butera said over different interviews
Winning is the goal, and Toboni talked about how these games count with winning as the differentiator. ❝What players and coaches do or don’t do shows up every night in the box score in black and white. That’s the kind of visible scoreboard I embrace,❞ Toboni said before the season.
This isn’t your seniors’ golf or bowling league where the winner is determined by adjusting a player’s handicap. In the NFL, your previous record and standings does affect the subsequent year’s schedule. That does not happen in baseball. In fact, it feels like the opposite that the Nats started their season by facing top playoff teams from last year with back-to-back series against the Cubs and Phillies. And tomorrow, they have to face the 2-time reigning World Series champion Dodgers. The MLB schedulers showed no mercy. But if the Nats can win at least one game against the Dodgers, they can get to Monday at 4-5 or better, and then will face some non-contenders.
The new Nats manager knows the task at-hand. He is trying to silence his doubters and turn them into believers. Good luck with that. Many people want to see the Nats fail just so they can say, “I told you so.” You know the type. The know-it-alls know it all. They will celebrate your downfall in hindsight. Their hot-takes can boggle the mind that some are yelling for a Wood demotion, in case he does fail, they can say, “I told you so.” One account put it in a ruse for April Fools. This isn’t just the Nats’ fan base that does this — this is sports. Another one will tell you precisely what is wrong with Wood’s swing because that guy must have been a great hitting coach on his kid’s T-Ball team as his qualification.
Of course Wood is off balance and opening up because that happens when your timing is off and you are guessing at the pitch. But a six day sample size is just a slump for now. Allow the Nationals hitting coaches and analytics people to do their job. They actually know what they’re doing.
You have to tune out the noise. Of course some will blame the Lerner ownership group. They remain the easiest target. Would the Nats have won yesterday’s game if the Nats signed Pete Fairbanks for the closer’s job, Ryan O’Hearn for first base, and a productive right-handed bat who could play like J.T. Realmuto or Rhys Hoskins? Sure, we had all three names on the wish-list (just Google search the names with TalkNats), and they will pop up. Who knows, maybe Toboni tried.
We have to deal in reality. It didn’t happen. Annually, they would have cost $13 million, $14.5 million, and $15 million respectively — if they would have signed for the same amounts which was doubtful. Add that up — and the numbers is $42.5 million.
When the sample sizes get larger, we can make assessments and start the process of seeing the positives and the negatives at each level. There will always be both with a lot in the middle. In the past week, Toboni already sent Andres Chaparro down to Triple-A and acquired Curtis Mead, and released Matt Mervis from the organization. The cascading effect of each move also caused a DFA and a subsequent trade of LHP Jake Eder, and the signing of RHP Chandler Champlain to a minor league deal.
Who know what the roster will look like next week or the week after. Toboni isn’t afraid of change, and Butera has to take these players and have them find their next gear. Those were his words, not mine. Get enough players cruising in their highest gears, and you win games. Hot streaks like Joey Wiemer‘s can definitely get you some wins. But this is a team game, and you need more from everyone.
