The Home for Washington Nationals Game Talk

Baseball is a strange game. The Phillies threw a bullpen game yesterday, and shut down the Nats offense to a total of two runs. The series is even at 1-1, and the Washington Nationals can take this series with a win today.

It was not a walk-off win last night, but it was an 8th inning shocker win from the Washington Nationals. The Nats and Phillies enter this game with identical W/L records, and after the conclusion of this game — one team will have sole possession of 4th place and the other team will occupy last place in the NL East. Today marks the first time since April 10, that the Nats have not be in 5th place.

Coming into this week, the Washington Nationals had 11 blown saves and 11 bullpen losses. In the past two games, the team’s blown saves have shot up to 13 — but the bullpen losses remained at 11. In back-to-back games, the bullpen bent but didn’t break, and in the process, secured two signature wins among some craziness if you watched the games. The Nats are now tied with the Phillies for 4th place in the NL East.

It is just a broken record this week on the three losses — that it is not only the errors that show up in the box score, but also the misplays and miss-reads that don’t show up with the “E” like the routine flyball off the bat of Freddie Freeman to Joey Meneses in right field that just was not caught and helped lead to a four run inning for the Dodgers advantage. We say it all the time that the Washington Nationals just are not good enough at this point in the their rebuild to make unforced errors and survive it. Actually, we wrote that exact sentence yesterday. It bears repeating.

We say it all the time that the Washington Nationals just are not good enough at this point in the their rebuild to make unforced errors and survive it. On Sunday, it was a grounder through the wickets on Dom Smith, and last night was a grounder booted by CJ Abrams that led to six unearned runs. The Nats were actually leading 1-0 at the time. With two tough losses in a row, the road does not get easier tonight as the suddenly struggling Jake Irvin has to face the Dodgers’ best pitcher in Tony Gonsolin.

The Washington Nationals looked like they were ready to celebrate their first series win since August of 2021 in yesterday’s game, but it was not meant to be. From a MacKenzie Gore 7.0 inning gem and a 2-1 lead into the eighth inning, it all slipped away on the team’s 11th blown save, and 11th bullpen loss. An error by the normally sure-handed Dom Smith, in Bill Buckner style, turned into the winning run in the final inning for the Royals. The Nats will now face the Dodgers for three games with this contest marking the one-third pole in the season.