Photo by Jake Stephens/TalkNats
The Washington Nationals put together their best bullpen game of the season last night on their way to beating another of the 2025 playoff teams. In fact the Nationals have now played in five series to start the season, and have already played four of those series again 2025 playoff teams. The Nats have played all of the NL division winners from last year, and one of the wild card teams so far. Again, the schedulers really stuck it to the Nationals.
Of the 2025 NL playoff teams, the Nats still have to face the San Diego Padres and the Cincinnati Reds to complete the first wave through all of last year’s playoff teams. Basically, the Nats are playing .500 baseball overall if you remove the Dodgers series. Maybe that puts things in better perspective.
The Washington Nationals have Foster Griffin on the mound tonight for his third start of the season. The lefty will face a lineup that will look a little different from last night’s game started by the righty Jake Irvin.
Could anyone have chosen that Top-14 in order for the WAR rankings a few weeks ago? One player who is stepping up on the offense is James Wood who is on a heater and is now a +0.5 WAR from a -.04 just a week ago. That’s a +0.9 turnaround in just a week.
Here is a chart of usage on manager Blake Butera‘s bullpen:
The FanGraphs WAR chart is accumulating data. This will start to give us a clearer picture in six weeks when the sample sizes get larger. The OAA defense stat requires a minimum of 10 defensive plays. We will start adding more statistics as the sample sizes get larger.
Washington Nationals vs. Milwaukee Brewers
Stadium: American Family Field, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1st Pitch: 7:10 PM EDT
TV: Nationals.TV
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 184 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
