The Home for Washington Nationals Game Talk

Photo by Sol Tucker for TalkNats

The Washington Nationals won another 1-run game; a strength of this team in the 2025 season. Their 24-18 record shows what they can do in close games. It is the 44 blow-out losses against only 16 blow-out wins as the reason this team has a losing record. That happens when you have a pitching staff that easily clinched the second worst ERA in all of baseball.

Photo by Andrew Lang for TalkNats

The Washington Nationals played great and poor in the same game last night. A great effort wiped out by four errors and five unearned runs given up that made it a frustrating loss that wasted a three home run performance by Luis Garcia Jr. That was a feat that has only been done seven times before in Nats’ history. Add to that, Daylen Lile hit a game-tying 3-run homer to bring the Nats back from a 8-1 deficit. Unfortunately, Jose A. Ferrer blew his first 9th inning as the closer, and the Nats lost 10-9.

Defense matters and in this game, the defense cost the Nats a win that would have been the best comeback of the season. In one game, you saw the best and worst of the Nats. Garcia showed everyone why he should be a part of the future — albeit, maybe not at second base where he has struggled on defense.

Photo by Andrew Lang for TalkNats

The Washington Nationals returned to D.C. early on Wednesday, and had a rest day on Thursday. Today, they begin their final weekend before they depart to their offseason homes. If you could bottle up Wednesday’s game — we wouldn’t want the season to end. What a win for the Nats.

Maybe the most significant part from that Atlanta series was the resurgence of James Wood with three homers in the two games he played in that series and no strikeouts. On Tuesday, he started his night with a double then in his next at-bat he sprinted to first base on a groundout and was out by one stride, and in his final at-bat, Wood hit a homer off of a lefty reliever. On Wednesday, he crushed two homers. That was the All-Star we fell in love with in the first half of the season.

Photo by Sol Tucker for TalkNats

The Washington Nationals were in last night’s game until the end. The score was tied 1-1 at the top of the 6th inning. Interim-manager Miguel Cairo shoved starter Brad Lord for one more inning to face the hot Braves’ lineup for a third time, and he quickly gave up a homer. Sure, two runs over 6.0 innings is good — but with a 10-man bullpen, why not see what your bullpen could do. The Nats lost 3-2.

Maybe the most significant part of last night’s game was that this had to be the best we have seen of James Wood in months. He started his night with a double then in his next at-bat he sprinted to first base on a groundout and was out by one stride, and in his final at-bat, Wood hit a homer off of a lefty reliever. He had one walk, and no strikeouts in the game. The 6’7″ lefty looked like our All-Star we fell in love with in the first half of the season.

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.