The Home for Washington Nationals Game Talk

The Washington Nationals finally got back into the win column yesterday, and with the 5-2 win the Nats can go for the series win today with Josiah Gray starting. In the last 12.5 innings, the Nats have outscored the Tigers 11-2. Unfortunately the first 5.5 innings counted on Friday’s game when the Tigers put eight runs on the board.

The Washington Nationals are mired in a 4-game losing streak where they lost these games by an average of 1 1/2 runs per game. Each game seems to have one mistake you can circle as the reason for the loss. They say you lose as a team, and it is never about one play. Everything still seems to go back to the start of this losing streak when the Nats held a 2-run lead in the 9th inning and blew the save via a Marlins’ walk-off home run.

The Washington Nationals are back home after getting swept in Miami. They will turn to their fifth starter, Jake Irvin, to be the stopper. What an opportunity for the Nats youngster to show he can be that guy. If he pitches great, it will make any decision to bring Chad Kuhl back off of the IL that much more complicated. But you would say that is a good problem to have. Irvin has to force the issue by pitching great.

After a promising series against the New York Mets, the Washington Nationals got swept by the Miami Marlins, and had one of there most frustrating series of the season. It was a tough three-game set for the Nationals, and that’s putting it lightly. Miami won two one-run games and yesterday’s loss was at one-run going into the bottom of the eighth inning before the Nats lost the finale by two-runs.

Instead of going for a series win or even a series sweep, the Nats now have two one-run losses in this series in Miami, and now are playing for a salvage win today to avoid getting swept. All of that momentum from Monday’s win against the Mets could not be carried over.

Since CJ Abrams was publicly shamed by some in the media on Monday for forgetting how many outs there were in an inning in that game, he now looks lost at the plate. The Nats won big in that game against the Mets, and Abrams was a star of that series. His smiles that we were used to seeing in the dugout have been replaced by an emptiness. After he was a blistering hot 6-for-12 with two home runs heading into the Miami series — he has gone ice cold 0-for-7 with SIX strikeouts. “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical,” per Yogi Berra. If you let bad stuff creep into your head, it is tough to get it out a hitting coach once said. Look, it wasn’t like Abrams ever forgot how many outs there were before. First time offenders shouldn’t get piled up on especially since his mistake might not have even resulted in an extra out, and the Nats won the game.

No losses are easy to swallow but certainly the ninth inning blown-save loss is usually the toughest. The Washington Nationals gave away a win last night, and they know it. They were facing a Marlins team decimated by injuries, and yet the Nats could not take advantage. Tonight, MacKenzie Gore takes the mound for the Nats.