Nationals

Nationals https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals Nationals en-US Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:20:00 GMT The Rays Are in the World Series. That’s a Nats Story, Too. https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals/rays-world-series-nationals Jesse Dougherty Washington’s general manager, manager and bench coach are all former Rays employees. Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:20:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals/rays-world-series-nationals

In many ways, the Tampa Bay Rays are a model for the team the Nationals hope to become. (David J. Phillip/AP)

The Rays, who just advanced to face the Brewers in the World Series, used to employ three people who now have major roles with the Nationals: general manager Ani Kilambi, manager Blake Butera and bench coach Michael Johns.

Kilambi, who started with the Rays as an intern, spent seven years with the team, ascending to assistant director of research and development. Butera was drafted by the Rays, transitioned to managing in the low-level of the minors by his mid-20s, then eventually oversaw player development. Johns was with the Rays from 2008 to 2025, spending a bulk of that time in player development, including a decade as a minor league manager.

To take the connections a step further, Shawn O’Malley, the Nationals’ assistant hitting coach, was drafted by the Rays in 2006. Beyond that, many higher-ups, including Paul Toboni, the Nats’ president of baseball operations, have worked for people who were once in the Rays’ data-obsessed brain trust. And then there’s the general idea that, as the Nationals keep building their new operation, the goal is to live on the cutting edge, which the Rays have helped make popular by winning so damn much.

In late September, a Nationals coach told me: “Process-wise, it sometimes feels like we are trying to out-Rays the Rays.”

For any fan base, that could land in a few different ways. Even before they made this World Series, the Rays’ long run of success was undeniable, especially given that their 2026 payroll ranked 25th among 30 teams (a usual spot for them). But if part of the deal is doing more with far less spending than most competitive clubs, that could be a red flag for fans, in D.C. or otherwise, who want their team to be smart — dogged and progressive in the search for any edge — while also investing in big salaries for premium talent.

None of this is to say the Nats are aiming to be a spitting image of the Rays of recent years. The Red Sox of recent years are probably more instructive. Toboni came from Boston, as did Devin Pearson, his assistant GM in charge of player development. Justin Horowitz, Toboni’s assistant GM for all player acquisitions, was with them in Boston, too, before a short stint with the Pirates, as was Andrew Wright, now a special assistant to Toboni in Washington.

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For a few seasons, Chaim Bloom, once a top exec with the Rays, was their boss in Boston, which just shows how much the Rays’ approach has spread across the sport. But when it comes to what the specific Nats-Rays connections might mean in practice, I keep thinking back to a conversation I had long before Toboni and Butera were leading the team.

Remember the Blake Snell game? Or, more specifically, remember the Blake Snell decision? As far as ways to explain the Rays and their influence on modern baseball, it remains a pretty good one.

In Game 6 of the 2020 World Series, Snell, then a starting pitcher for the Rays, had the Dodgers in knots. Through five innings, he had allowed one hit and no runs while striking out nine. The Rays led 1-0. But after Austin Barnes poked a one-out single in the sixth, Kevin Cash, the Rays’ manager, pulled Snell at just 73 pitches. The next batter, Mookie Betts, doubled off Snell’s replacement, reliever Nick Anderson. Then the game unraveled on the Rays, ending with the Dodgers winning 3-1 to take the title. This was all anyone in baseball could talk about.

For months, whenever I called a Nats coach or executive, I started with Cash’s controversial move. It was something of a bellwether for how someone felt about the direction of the sport. Broadly, old-school traditionalists viewed it as everything wrong with the analytics era, which now included the marginalization of the starting pitcher. On the other end of the spectrum, Cash’s defenders hammered the statistical validity of the decision, mostly pointing to the risk of having Snell face the Dodgers’ best hitters a third time. As ever, existing in the gray area wasn’t fashionable.

But in the winter after that World Series, on a call in January 2021, one member of the Nats’ front office made me think beyond the Rays vs. purists debate. Pulling Snell, they argued, wasn’t the most interesting part of the situation. The most interesting part was that, in the biggest moment of the season, Cash could zag from longstanding convention at all — a sign, they reasoned, of a coaching staff and front office being on the exact same page. Cash didn’t have to worry about losing his job, they added. (He remains the Rays’ manager to this day.) And to that end, this person told me, it was the kind of choice that is baked over months — years, even — because that’s what it takes to do something subversive when a title is on the line, no matter how much the numbers might have backed it up.

I was skeptical of the analysis, mostly because, from the outside, it felt impossible to tell the difference between a collaborative game plan and strict orders from Cash’s bosses. And if Cash was simply doing what the front office said, how would job security factor into this specific situation? That felt like a stretch.

But if you take the theory at face value, it does describe an ideal of organization alignment, which is something the Nats’ new leaders talk a lot about. The Rays had seemingly built a culture in which that was an organizational decision, something they would (and could) all live with because they believed in their process.

Six years later, it seems that’s where the Nats are headed, if they’re not already there. That doesn’t mean that, in a similar spot, Butera will make a decision along the same lines as pulling Snell. For one, a handful of rule changes have made it harder for teams to steal the most Rays-y elements of the Rays’ rise (restrictions on defensive shifting, the three-batter minimum rule for relievers, roster limitations, etc.). Plus, in the time since Cash yanked Snell in that Game 6, wonky, analytics-based strategy has become much more mainstream, including in Washington.

But when the Nats leaders stress the importance of top-down alignment — and they do, quite often — I think that kind of unbending trust in the process is what they’re getting at, among other hopes and dreams. Like it or not, Tampa developed a clear identity, an ethos of trying to win on the margins in unorthodox ways. Then, most importantly, they’ve stuck with it, sometimes in the face of loud public criticism. That feels aspirational for any modern operation, especially one with so many Rays-influenced folks in important positions.]]> Blake Butera, One Year In https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/blake-butera-nationals-manager-one-year Jesse Dougherty The Nationals’ young manager learned a lot in his first year — including the toll of repeated disappointment. Thu, 15 Oct 2026 09:20:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/blake-butera-nationals-manager-one-year

Blake Butera is the youngest MLB manager since 1972. (Terrance Williams/AP)

The Nationals won the game. Before going even one sentence further, let’s establish that as a basic, indisputable fact of the matter, that on Sept. 12, across 10 innings at Nationals Park, they scored six runs and the Angels scored five.

Yet when Blake Butera got home, it didn’t feel that way. Or, more specifically, it didn’t feel how he wanted it to or thought it should. In his first year as the Nats’ manager, he’d learned a lot of things. How to tell a player he was being pulled for a pinch hitter. How to cut up his workout shirts to avoid even the faint possibility of bacon collar. He had not, however, learned that when your relievers can’t get outs, there’s only so much a manager can do from the dugout.

So even after his team beat the Angels that Saturday, he stewed. His bullpen had blown another late lead before the offense bailed it out in extras. He went through each of his pitching decisions, especially in the eighth and ninth. The job, Butera says, is to prepare his players as well as possible and then put them in position to succeed. By that description, no matter the final score, he had failed in a few big spots.

It was nothing new, either, losing time and sleep to the noise inside his head. On this night, though, there was a twist: The noise was so loud that Butera opened up to his wife.

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Somewhere along the line, Caroline Margolis started reading for about an hour after Butera returned from games, knowing he needed a bit before chatting. But now Blake was talking, venting, wondering why the losses felt so much worse than the wins felt good. And when she thanked him for finally saying all that, he realized how much he’d been holding in.

“I need to do a better job of sharing these things,” Butera, 34, told me a week later. “I’m just the type to internalize.”

By then, the Nats were in St. Louis, the start of their final road trip of the season. They had eight games left in 2026 and no shot at the playoffs, that pipe dream having faded quickly after they off-loaded three of their best players at the trade deadline. They had, though, already laid down a few markers of real progress: more wins than the previous year and almost 10 more wins than the Vegas lines had projected in March. Plus those four months of hanging-by-a-thread contention, charged by one of the best offenses in the sport.

But Butera, the youngest MLB manager since 1972, made fast work of any questions about that. He praised his coaching staff, calling it the best in the league, saying he sometimes had to ask his assistants to shut their laptops and work less. He praised his players, too, noting how well they took to a wave of new data and game day routines. He just wasn’t ready, at least not then, to praise himself. The losing record was one reason. The bullpen was another.

“It’s been really hard. I think the hardest part has been blowing 39 saves. I mean that's real. Like, it's still eating at me,” Butera told me. A few hours later, the Nats would blow their 40th and 41st saves in another extra-innings win. By the end of the season, the count was up to 42, five more than the previous MLB record.

Another lesson of his first season in charge: When your relievers can’t get high-leverage outs, rock bottom is hard to find.

“A lot of times when I talk to the front office, they're basically telling me, like: ‘That was the right move, that's exactly what you should have done, it just hasn't worked out,’” he continued. “And that's why I talk about the process. You know, sometimes your process can be right, the result can be bad. … But at the end of the day, there had to be a way that I could have prevented, you know, even just two of those blown saves. So I'm always looking myself in the mirror, and like that's what's made this year so hard. Just what could have been, you know, having the opportunity to blow 39 saves means that our position players played pretty well.”

He looked out at the field at Busch Stadium and seemed, honestly, pretty damn tired. I asked him, then, about the toll of so much self-examination over six months.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re drained,” he said. “When you blow this many saves and finish with a below .500 record, there are a lot of nights I haven't slept because I’m trying to figure out ways to get us more wins and prevent some of those very hard blown saves. And whether there is something I could have done or not, I'm always going to look at it like it’s on me, like I let them down.”

Who, exactly?

“The team, the coaches, the front office, the organization, the people who hired me. The city of D.C. Heck, everyone who works at Nationals Park, the people selling food, taking tickets.” He looked out at the field again, squinting.

“Yeah, I mean, I owe it to all of them.”

* * *

Paul Toboni could have played it safe last October. Or at the very least, he could have played it a bit safer. He was, after all, in his first month as the Nats’ president of baseball operations. He was also just 35, young for any executive job in the sport, let alone one that would require an immediate overhaul of an entire organization.

Toboni, though, had little interest in the easy, intuitive choices for the team’s next manager. What he wanted to avoid — what he had identified as a potential trap — was making a hire that someone on ESPN praised because he’d landed a top name of the cycle. He wasn’t worried about convention or perception. He was worried about missing an opportunity.

So with that in mind, Toboni sent a quick text to Mike Gambino, the head coach at Penn State: Blake Butera? Knowing Toboni was filling out his major and minor league staffs, Gambino’s response was simple, too: Hire him. No brainer. Gambino, who coached Butera at Boston College, didn’t even ask what Toboni was thinking for him. Butera had already been a minor league manager and was now the Rays’ farm director. Gambino figured any high-up job in player development was the perfect fit.

“And then he called and told me he was considering Blake for major league manager,” Gambino told me. “I’m like, ‘Oh. Oh, wow.’ But that didn’t change my answer, of course. It was still yes, yes, yes.” When Gambino was recruiting Butera out of Louisiana, he had just taken the job at Boston College, where the Eagles were in a rebuild of sorts. Gambino needed baseball junkies to reset the program’s culture. To that end, he needed guys who could stomach a good bit of losing with the goal of winning later. (Sound familiar?)
Blake Butera (5373x3582, AR: 1.50)For Butera, that meant starting as a freshman for a team that finished 22-33, including a 10-20 record in its conference. And if the Eagles were blown out, Gambino noticed Butera taking it particularly hard, blaming himself for the loss over tiny details. Like, for example, maybe BC wouldn’t have lost 9-2 if Butera had known to move 3 feet to his left before a pitch, which resulted in a ground ball that went just past him at second base. It was a kind of mental torture, Gambino thought, but he also knew where Butera was coming from. He felt like he could relate.

At first, Gambino focused on easing the burden on Butera, letting him maintain a high standard without going insane. Later, though, when Butera was a clubhouse veteran, the coach would walk him through the strategic reasons for the occasional blowout loss. If, say, Gambino didn’t think the Eagles could come back in a tight game, he might turn to a young reliever to eat innings, which might make a deficit balloon from 4-2 to 9-2. The score, then, didn’t come about because Butera narrowly missed one ground ball. Sometimes it was a choice, in a sense, and Butera could have done absolutely nothing to change it.

“He liked learning all of that and had a knack for it,” Gambino said. “But it still never made him go any easier on himself.”

* * *

After three years at Boston College, Butera was drafted by the Rays in the 35th round of the 2015 draft, pick No. 1,048. He would, in total, play in 80 minor league games across two summers, never making it higher than low-A. He also hit three home runs, one of which made a Rays team official unofficially rename a tree.

Yes, a tree.

Mitch Lukevics is a baseball lifer, having spent the last two decades in player development with Tampa Bay. On July 20, 2016, he was at H.P. Hunnicutt Field, then the home of the Princeton Rays, when Butera hit a homer that barely cleared the wall in left-center field. A few feet from the fence, there was a tree Lukevics started calling “the Butera Tree,” a loving joke about Butera’s lack of pop.

Once someone makes it far enough in sports, little tidbits from their past morph into metaphors to make a bigger point, to explain what and how and why. And the Butera Tree illustrates a player who got everything he could out of a listed frame of 5-foot-9 and 175 pounds. When, after that 2016 season, the Rays approached him about retiring to start as a minor league coach, the choice was easy. He didn’t fret about losing the identity he had spent decades building. He knew it was time.

“I hear a lot of people talk about how hard it is at first, because they think they could have done just a bit more,” Butera said. “But look at me: I’m short, I’m small. I still got drafted to play professionally in spite of that. At the end of your career, at the end of the night, if you can look in the mirror and say, ‘Yeah, I did everything I could,’ then you’ll be able to live with yourself.”

And so that’s now a metaphor for a manager who knows himself, including what he doesn’t know.

“It’s a self-awareness that not a lot of young men in this game have,” Lukevics said. “So I don’t care how green he maybe was for the managing job. A person who’s willing to admit their mistakes is going to get better, right? It’s not fun, either. No one likes doing that. But I think he always will, because he always has.”

Over three days in late September, I asked as many people as I could what stood out about Butera in his first season. One coach mentioned that Butera always walked with his head up, making eye contact with everyone he passes. Another complimented how Butera juggled all of the team’s pregame, postgame and player-specific meetings — adding that the Nats, an org now run by young millennials, must lead the league in Slack messages. And another coach said that given how well Butera commands a room, he wished he would pick even more spots to address the team and staff. That coach assumed this would come with more time in the job. (The same day he told me this, Butera benched James Wood, his best player, for not hustling to first base and then quickly addressed it in a quiet chat with Wood in front of his teammates and reporters in the clubhouse.)
Blake Butera (5702x3801, AR: 1.50)But in one way or another, everyone I spoke with talked about how Butera solicited feedback on his in-game moves, especially with the bullpen. After many losses this season, he would sit with Toboni, general manager Ani Kilambi and various coaches to break down what went wrong. They would review how they used data, the driver of many strategic decisions, and when they trusted their gut to deviate from the plan. They would also pore over the next roster move, spending six months shuttling in rookies, waiver claims and scrap-heap signings. And night after night, game after game, blown save after blown save, Butera was at the center of those discussions, pushing the room to critique him as much as they saw fit.

“It really upsets him when we lose a game or whatever it might be,” Toboni said. “But one of the big reasons why he is upset, we kind of have a little bit of a funky definition of integrity, which is basically when you feel like there's a chance that you are not doing your job, that really upsets you, because deep down inside it hurts you that you're letting your teammates down. Blake has that to like the nth degree.”

* * *

A few hours after our conversation at Busch Stadium, it was happening again. The Nationals had a three-run lead at the start of the seventh. But then the leadoff batter reached on an error, then scored when Richard Lovelady, a lefty reliever, made a throwing error that turned the inning sideways with one out. With two outs, a single shaved the Nats’ lead by another run. So Butera took a slow walk to the mound, replacing Lovelady with Jack Sinclair. The manager kicked some dirt off the rubber, cleaning it for Sinclair, before handing him the ball and patting his shoulder. And then, back in the dugout, Butera took his seat by the steps and watched. And hoped. And at one point, after Sinclair fell behind in a count, Butera put his hands on his knees and leaned forward, as if he were sick on an airplane.

Yeah, yeah, we’re drained, he had said, and here was what that looked like in practice. Rubbing his palms on his pants. Covering his mouth to mutter something to Simon Mathews, his pitching coach. Another single put two runners on. Butera spit on the ground. But Sinclair wiggled out of the mess, stranding a pair on the base paths.

The Nats would go on to blow another late lead before pulling out a victory, just like in that game against the Angels. And soon, once the season ended, they would start their autopsy of the first year of a new era, including a hard, painful look at how they managed and constructed their pen.

But for now, with disaster averted for a short while longer, I could see Butera’s deep breath from the fourth deck of the stadium. Activity swirled around him, the well-oiled choreography of flipping from defense to offense, the dugout swelling with the nine players who came in from the field. He seemed, in that moment, to take a second or two to himself, a pause before the next decision tied knots inside his brain. And it looked, all at once, like both a hard and easy place to feel alone.]]> The Nats Took a Step Forward This Year. Fans Still Deserve More. https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-season-finale-overachieve-fans Jesse Dougherty It is nearly impossible to judge this Nationals season, which came to a conclusion on Sunday, within the binary of good or bad. Mon, 28 Sep 2026 13:22:28 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-season-finale-overachieve-fans Nationals Finale

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Now this is the part where, based on interviews, my observations and some cherry-picked statistics, I’m supposed to tell you if the Washington Nationals overachieved or underachieved in 2026. We like to boil our sports down to binaries like that, the most popular one, of course, also being the most elemental: Did the team win, or did it lose? Let’s begin, then, with that test.

These Nationals, as we knew them, lost on two basic levels. They finished with more losses (85) than wins (77), ending the year with a 6-4 victory over the Mets on Sunday. And, starting Tuesday, almost half the league will compete in the playoffs, and they will not. That has been the case for seven years running, for every season since they won the World Series in 2019. It’s worn on the fan base, which is not, it turns out, something you just have to trust me on. The total attendance for the year, 1,839,116, was the lowest for any post-title season not affected by the pandemic. Social media may be the fastest way to poll a team’s popularity (or lack thereof). A way better measure, though, is when fans stop opening their wallets.

But like with most things outside of the actual games, it is hard — impossible, even — to judge this year within the binary of good or bad. The bullpen, if you hadn’t heard, was definitionally bad, blowing 42 saves, five more than the previous MLB record. By contrast, the offense was all kinds of good, scoring more runs than every team but the Cubs and Brewers, who are both in the playoffs.

Those extremes are probably the best way to distill the central tension of the season. It is fair to say that, by spending very, very, very little on an obvious weakness last winter, the Nats wasted the kind of offensive performance that may not come back around for a while, even when (or if) the Lerner family decides to run a competitive payroll again. And yet, after Vegas had the Nationals winning about 65 games, they comfortably beat that projection because the offense was so ahead of schedule — a credit to the players, yes, but importantly the new coaching staff, too.

No one’s ever hung a banner for talking about bat speed and launch angle more. But after most of the front office and staff turned over, talking about bat speed and launch angle more was clearly a necessary start. The new regime also sped up their own honeymoon period by leading the team to a surprising amount of success in the first four months of the season. They’re facing real expectations sooner than expected, which is almost always better than the alternative.

“We haven't experienced what it's been like over the course of the last five years here, six years, whatever it is,” Paul Toboni, the Nats’ first-year president of baseball operations, said in his end-of-season address Friday. “And my guess is that it might just be a feeling of: ‘Hey, we’re in September and we’re out of it. Let's just look forward to the season ending.’ And we were very, very adamant about that not being the energy in the clubhouse.”

“We would send messages like: ‘We have to carry out the day like we are tied or a game back in the wild card, even though we're not, even though we're six, seven out, whatever it is. Because at some point here in the near future we are going to be tied for the wild card or a couple games up, or whatever it might be, and I don't want the feeling to be foreign to them.”

On Friday, ahead of the last series of the season, manager Blake Butera said that if the Nats had just an average bullpen this year, they’d have probably made the playoffs. It was a self-aware quote that may also be tough for fans to read, especially given how fast the team faded after trading Curtis Mead, Luis García Jr. and Foster Griffin at the deadline, making for an August and September that looked and felt too familiar. Once again, it was all in service of the future, which is rarely said when the present is going well. But now that we’ve dipped into the overplayed coping mechanisms, what’s the harm in a little more?

On Saturday, in the AAA national championship game in Las Vegas, Jarlin Susana, one of the Nats’ top prospects, threw the hardest pitch of the AAA season, a 104-mph fastball. Never mind that the Rochester Red Wings, the Nationals’ AAA affiliate, lost after … blowing a save, then allowing three runs in the tenth. There was a 104-mph fastball! And on top of that, all 17 of Susana’s heaters were clocked at at least 101.5 mph. The pitch averaged 102.8 for two innings. We can easily apply the binary in this case: That is good!

Susana, 22, joined the organization as part of the return for Juan Soto four summers ago. He’s among the minor leaguers who could really help the Nats in the near future, to say nothing of the blue-chip hitters a bit farther away, starting with Eli Willits, the first pick in the 2025 draft, and Chris Hacopian, the 11th pick in 2026. When Toboni took over as the Nationals’ big boss, he said he wanted to build a “scouting and player development monster.” At the very least, with staffing and messaging alone, the Nats seem to be on a much better track to that than they were this time last year. That’s a point toward calling the year a success.

“The farm system, I think for the most part there have been a bunch of great strides there,” Toboni said. “But I think like most things in this game, that's pretty fragile and doesn't necessarily mean that those strides are going to continue into the future if we don't really stay on it. So there's like this probably underlying sense of … I'm not a very anxious person, but anxiety like: We got to keep pushing forward because we're not where we want to be.”

Then on Sunday, Andrés Chaparro, one of the Nats’ platoon first basemen, launched two home runs to cap a breakout second half. Out of the bullpen, Will Dion, Riley Cornelio, Jack Sinclair and Erik Tolman, none of whom were on the Opening Day roster, combined to pitch six scoreless innings. The season confirmed that James Wood, Cade Cavalli, CJ Abrams and Daylen Lile are the major league players most capable of headlining the next winning team in D.C. But to that end, even a hint of some supporting characters felt like incremental progress. Chaparro should get a shot to keep proving himself next season (whenever that begins, given the high potential for a lockout in the coming months). And in Tolman, a homegrown pitcher who came all the way back from a gruesome leg injury, the staff sees the outline of a high-leverage reliever.

But here’s the thing about discussing the Nats this way, about still putting more stock in what could happen than what is happening: It’s old. Whenever we’re viewing the Nationals from 30,000 feet, it’s worth recycling the idea that the new front office was tasked with building a sustainable winner, not rushing their process because of how bleak the past half decade has been. That means not discounting their wins, incremental or otherwise, because of how stale the act of looking to the future has gotten. For the time being, for at least a little longer, that feels logical, fair.

Yet on the other hand, something has to give for this fan base. And soon, too, to once again recognize the social contract between a team and its city. Nats fans deserve to actually watch a competitive core instead of projecting one. They deserve, as a reciprocation for spending on tickets, a television package and merchandise, for ownership to invest in a club that could reach the postseason one of these years. The labor battle could be a complicating factor for immediate plans with the roster and payroll. But it doesn’t make any of that less true.]]> The Nats Close Out the Year With a 6-4 Win Over the Mets https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-mets-season-finale The Associated Press Washington finishes the season with a 77-85 record, good for fourth place in the NL East. Sun, 27 Sep 2026 21:45:17 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-mets-season-finale Andres Chapparro

Andrés Chaparro hit two home runs in Sunday's win over the Mets. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)

Andrés Chaparro homered twice and the Washington Nationals defeated the New York Mets 6-4 on Sunday in the season finale for both teams.

Francisco Lindor hit his 300th career home run, Ronny Mauricio went deep for the third time in two days and rookie Carson Benge had three hits for his 45th multihit game and 14th with three or more for New York.

The Mets, who opened the season with a major league-record $358.4 million payroll, slid nine games from last year to 74-88 — their worst mark since going 70-92 in 2017. They finished last in the NL East for the first time since 2003.

New York was 34-47 under manager Carlos Mendoza, who was fired June 26, and 40-41 under Andy Green. The Mets lifted Green’s interim tag Tuesday and gave him a three-year contract through 2029.

The Nationals improved 11 games to 77-85 in manager Blake Butera’s first season. They finished fourth in the NL East while recording their seventh consecutive losing season since winning the 2019 World Series.

Chaparro led off the third and fifth innings with home runs against Mets starter Sean Manaea (6-8). It was Chaparro’s second career multihomer game and first since July 17.

After waiting out an hour-long rain delay at the start, New York built a 4-1 lead with the help of Mauricio and Lindor’s back-to-back home runs in the second. Lindor had not homered since Sept. 12.

Washington tied it with one run in the second and two in the third.

Will Dion (3-2) pitched two scoreless innings and Erik Tolman got four outs for his fifth save.

Manaea allowed five runs in six innings and struck out three.

Mets left fielder Juan Soto was 0 for 5 a day after exiting in the ninth inning when he got hit on his right hand by a pitch. Soto batted .275 with 27 homers and 68 RBIs in the second season of a $765 million, 15-year deal, and his .908 OPS was the second-lowest of his career.]]> Nationals Lose to Mets, 7-1 https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-mets-sept-26 The Associated Press Pitcher Connelly Early made his Nats debut, allowing just one hit in three innings. Sat, 26 Sep 2026 21:24:55 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-mets-sept-26 Mets beat Nationals

Nick Wass/AP

A.J. Ewing hit a go-ahead, three-run homer, Ronny Mauricio went deep from both sides of the plate for his first career multi-homer game and the New York Mets defeated the Washington Nationals 7-1 on Saturday.

New York left fielder Juan Soto left the game in the ninth inning after he was hit on the right hand by a 91.7 mph sinker from Richard Lovelady. Mets manager Andy Green said X-rays were negative.

Mets rookie Carson Benge had three hits for his 44th multihit game and 13th with three hits or more. Benge also made a sprawling, backhand catch in right field with two on in the third on Abimelec Ortiz’s sacrifice fly, a grab reminiscent of Ron Swoboda’s against Baltimore’s Brooks Robinson in Game 4 of the 1969 World Series.

Ortiz’s fly gave Washington a lead that stood until Ewing homered in the seventh on an 0-2 curveball from Jake Irvin (2-10), ending an 0-of-10 slide and putting the Mets ahead 3-1.

Mauricio connected on a fastball three pitches later for his first home run since May 1. Mets Nos. 8 and 9 hitters hit consecutive home runs for the third time this year. Mauricio added a two-run homer in the ninth.

Washington has allowed 22 home runs in the seventh inning or later that tied games or put opponents ahead, the most in the major leagues.

Dedniel Nuñez (2-1) struck out the side in the sixth.

New York clinched its sixth straight season series against Washington at 7-5.

Starter Connelly Early made his Nationals debut, retiring nine of 10 batters while allowing one hit in three innings. The left-hander was acquired July 26 from Boston for Curtis Mead and activated from the injured list Saturday after recovering from left elbow inflammation.

Mets starter Jonah Tong struck out a career high nine, allowing three hits in five innings. The rookie finished 2-2 with a 3.82 ERA in four starts and three relief appearances.]]> After Locking Up Cade Cavalli, the Nats Have More Pitching Fixes in Mind https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-cade-cavalli-pitching-offseason Noah Ferguson Paul Toboni says the team, which defeated the Mets 7-6 Friday night, will upgrade the pitching staff and bullpen this offseason. Sat, 26 Sep 2026 12:45:09 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-cade-cavalli-pitching-offseason

Scott Kane/AP Photo

Late Friday afternoon, a sharply dressed Cade Cavalli strode into a news conference room inside Nats Park bearing a wide grin. He hunched down at a table next to Paul Toboni, the team’s president of baseball operations, and stared out at a sea of familiar faces staring back at him. His wife and members of his agency sat in the front row to his right, while members of the Nationals’ ownership sat to his left. His teammates quickly filed into the room and scattered along the back wall.

Behind Cavalli, plastered in large white letters, read a three-word phrase: Here to stay. Last week, the organization signed Cavalli to a four-year, $47 million extension, locking in the 28-year-old pitcher until 2030 with a player option for 2031.

“It means the world to me that you guys put your trust in me and we can go compete together on the diamond for the next hopefully five years and go do something special,” Cavalli remarked to the Nationals’ ownership group sitting feet away. “Ever since I got drafted here in 2020, it’s been a dream of mine to be able to go not only compete but win games for the Nationals, and I just want to thank you for the opportunity to do that.”

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Cavalli’s signing is a breath of fresh air for Nats fans, who have waited since March of 2023 for the organization to sign a player to a contract extension. Washington ranks 24th in the MLB in spending, with a $97 million projected payroll in 2026.

The signing is also a signal that the team’s ownership may be ready to invest in a contender after the team fielded one of the most potent offenses in baseball but missed the playoffs for the seventh straight season.

“It wasn’t just like a ‘Oh sure, you can do this,’” said Toboni, reflecting on his conversations with ownership during Cavalli’s extension process. “It was like, ‘Heck yeah, this is the type of stuff that we want to be doing.’”

Minutes later, Nationals manager Blake Butera entered the room with a matching smile on his face.

“As you can tell, I’m in a really good mood today,” Butera joked.

With Cavalli signed, the Nats can turn their attention to what is poised to be an offseason of change. One of the team's chief concerns, Butera put bluntly, is the bullpen rotation, a unit that has given the team headaches at a historic rate late in games.

The Nats are up to 42 blown saves this season with two games left to play, shattering the previous MLB record of 37 blown saves by the 2024 Chicago White Sox.

“I think if we had an average bullpen, I think we’re probably talking about who we’re playing this weekend,” Butera said. “Whether it’s personnel, whether it’s roles, whatever it might be, we’re going to spend a lot of time on the bullpen this offseason.”

Toboni expressed confidence in the futures of Cavalli and Andrew Alvarez, who started in the Nationals’ win over the Mets Friday night (which also featured the first career save for Josiah Gray). He also expressed an optimism in 24-year-old Connelly Early, whom the Nats acquired via trade in July for infielder Curtis Mead.

“Beyond that, we’re going to be pretty open-minded,” Toboni said. “What is involved there, too, is not just like ‘Are we going to go outside and sign players?’ but [also] we have a number of pitchers on our staff that are at inflection points in their career. ... We want the process of really developing this offseason to be really dialed, and I think our guys are bought into that.’”

What Butera and Toboni can hang their hats on following a 75-plus win season is that the organization rosters an offensive nucleus loaded with talent. Between James Wood and CJ Abrams becoming national names to the development of Cavalli and Daylen Lile into reliable standouts, next year’s iteration of the Nationals brings intrigue and loftier goals.

For Cavalli, that means playoff baseball.

Hours after celebrating his extension, a contract earned after he battled back from Tommy John surgery to become one of the most reliable pitchers in baseball, Cavalli swapped out his suit for a long-sleeved shirt and baseball cap. He stood in the dugout and felt the early fall breeze swirl over Nats Park, the ballpark he’s expected to excite for the next half-decade of his career.

“We’re walking around here feeling the weather, it feels like playoff baseball weather,” Cavalli said. “We’re planning on playing in it next year, and I know that every guy feels it and thinks that.”]]> Nationals 3, Tigers 1: Game Recap https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-3-tigers-1-game-09-22-2026 The Associated Press Washington took a 1-0 lead in the second on a long homer to right-center field by CJ Abrams. Wed, 23 Sep 2026 02:51:27 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-3-tigers-1-game-09-22-2026 Nationals Tigers Baseball

CJ Abrams hit a tiebreaking two-run homer and added a solo shot to give the Washington Nationals a 3-1 victory. (Jose Juarez/AP)

By Dave Hogg

CJ Abrams hit a tiebreaking two-run homer and added a solo shot to give the Washington Nationals a 3-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday night.

The Nationals won for the seventh time in 10 games, while Detroit dropped to 2-5 in its last seven. The Tigers have scored exactly one run in all five losses, while scoring nine and 11 runs in the two wins.

Both teams are 74-84 with four games left in the season.

Jackson Kent (2-4) picked up the win in relief of Nationals opener Riley Cornelio. Kent pitched four innings, allowing one unearned run on six hits and two walks. Erik Tolman pitched the ninth for his fourth save.

Tigers starter Drew Anderson (5-7) took the loss, allowing three runs on five hits. He struck out five without walking a batter.

Washington took a 1-0 lead in the second on a long homer to right-center field by Abrams. That gave him 100 RBIs to go along with his 30 homer/30 stolen base season.

The Tigers tied the game in the sixth when Ben Malgeri scored on Kent's second wild pitch of the inning. Washington also missed two opportunities to turn double plays in the inning.

Abrams then hit a two-run homer in the seventh, his 33rd of the season, to end Anderson's night.

Up nextThe teams finish their three-game series on Wednesday afternoon with Tigers LHP Framber Valdez (10-11, 4.06) facing a yet-to-be-announced Nationals starter.
]]> The Nationals Are Hiring a New International Scouting Director https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-brian-rodgers-international-scouting-director Alex Schiffer Washington plans to hire Astros executive Brian Rodgers, according to a report, in the team’s latest move to modernize its front office. Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:46:15 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-brian-rodgers-international-scouting-director MLB: AUG 11 Cubs at Nationals

Randy Litzinger/Icon Sportswire/AP

The Nationals plan to hire Brian Rodgers as their next international scouting director, according to a report in The Athletic, in the organization’s latest attempt to modernize its front office.

Rodgers has been with the Houston Astros since 2022, and has worked in international scouting for nearly a decade. Victor Rodriguez, the Nationals’ international scouting director since 2024, will move to a new role within the organization, according to the report.

A year ago, the Nationals completely remodeled their front office, major league coaching staff and player development system, hiring Paul Toboni as president of baseball operations, Ani Kilambi as general manager, and Blake Butera as manager. Kilambi plans to expand the team’s analytics department this offseason and hire an assistant general manager to lead the new-look unit.

International scouting has not been one of the organization’s strengths in recent years. The team’s 2019 World Series championship featured multiple international players who came up through the Nationals’ system, including Juan Soto and Victor Robles, but most of the Nationals’ current young core was built through the draft and trades.

While the Nationals are concluding their seventh consecutive losing season, there is reason for optimism. The team currently has more wins (73) than it has earned in a season since the 2019 World Series-winning campaign, and young players like James Woods (24) and CJ Abrams (25) have proven themselves as potential franchise cornerstones.]]> Lessons From the Final Days of the Nationals’ Season https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-erik-tolman-2026-season Jesse Dougherty A customized bobblehead, pitchers showing promise, and a star player benched before owning his mistake. Tue, 22 Sep 2026 09:36:00 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-erik-tolman-2026-season

Scott Kane/AP

ST. LOUIS — Late Sunday afternoon at Busch Stadium, reporters gathered by Erik Tolman’s locker for the wrong reasons. He had, just a bit ago, given up a one-run lead in the eighth on a solo homer to Ivan Herrera. That was the start of turning a near-win into a 5-3 loss to the Cardinals, keeping the Nationals from a sweep. It was the Nationals’ 42nd blown save of the season, an MLB record and counting.

The Nats (73-84) have still won six of their past nine games. But because they didn’t win Sunday, Tolman talked for a few minutes about failure. About learning from it. About not dwelling on mistakes for too long. Once he was finished, he packed his things for the flight to Detroit, where the Nationals are playing this week before ending their season with a home series against the Mets. Tolman grabbed his headphones. He took a sip of a light brown smoothie. And then he reached to the top shelf of his locker, which was where he had put his Erik Tolman bobblehead.

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Yes, an Erik Tolman bobblehead. The only one in the world. After he debuted in late August, a Midwesterner named Chris contacted him on social media, asking Tolman if he would like his very own bobblehead. Chris lives about two hours from St. Louis. If Tolman were into it, he offered to bring it to the Nats-Cardinals games this past Friday. Chris just asked for some gear in return, which wound up being a pair of Tolman’s cleats. The bobblehead depicts Tolman, a lefty reliever, mid-delivery. On the base, it has the date of first big league appearance: 8-22-26.

“I’ve never had anything customized like that,” Tolman, 27, told me Sunday morning. “I mean, look, that’s pretty damn cool.”

He’s certainly gained fans inside the organization, too. At Busch Stadium over the weekend, I asked a handful of people for their most immediately intriguing arms in the Nats’ bullpen, trying to figure out who might grow the fastest into high-leverage roles. The most common answers were Tolman and Orlando Ribalta, a hard-throwing righty who’s on the injured list with right forearm inflammation. Both were acquired by the previous front office, Tolman as a 14th-round pick in 2021, Ribalta as a 12th-round pick in 2019. And that means both are in the process of proving themselves to the new front office, which will be making a lot of roster decisions in the near future.

Some players have had months to do that. Tolman is making use of his five weeks. He didn’t allow a run until his sixth appearance. His more recent outings have not been as clean. On Sunday, he gave up that game-tying homer. On Saturday, asked to hold a ninth-inning lead against the Cardinals, he was hurt by bad luck when a soft grounder — hit by Nathan Church, his high school teammate — bounced off second base and turned into a leadoff double.

In 12 ⅓ innings, Tolman has recorded three saves and 12 strikeouts, and has allowed five earned runs.The bobblehead, then, will always be one reminder that he was here, that he pitched at Busch Stadium, Nationals Park and a handful of other big league fields. But just getting there was never the goal. In 2023, a freak injury almost led to the amputation of his right foot, which happened right after he had recovered from two elbow surgeries. He thinks a lot about the long road back, which included doubts about whether he would ever walk normally again, let alone pitch in the major leagues. There’s also a constant reminder on his right leg: a black brace he wears for all physical activity.

“I didn’t come this far to be average,” Tolman said. “It’s really as simple as that.”

Josiah Gray can relate. Gray made his season debut in St. Louis on Friday night, two years and two weeks after he last pitched in the majors. In that time, he also battled elbow injuries, the slow drip of multiple rehabs, those similar doubts about whether he could ever be the same. Five Septembers ago, he was central to the Nats’ plans, having just arrived as a key piece for the return for Max Scherzer and Trea Turner. Now, though, his future with the organization is much more complicated. As an arbitration-eligible player, Gray could be non-tendered — or, in plainer terms, cut loose — early in the offseason to make room for younger talent on the 40-man roster.

In the meantime, all he can do is maximize whatever chances he gets in this final week of the season. In that long-awaited appearance Friday, Gray pitched the ninth inning, a change from his usual starter role. He gave up a leadoff single, then retired the next three batters to finish a 9-1 win. He smacked his chest twice, looked at the sky and smacked his chest again. His fastball touched 94 mph. The next day, when someone complimented him on that in the dugout, Gray said, “It’s amazing what happens when your elbow doesn’t hurt.”

DJ Herz, the Nationals’ starter in Detroit on Monday, also missed close to two years with arm issues before making his season debut against the Tigers. In a 9-2 loss, Herz pitched four innings and allowed four runs on five hits, two walks and a back-breaking homer for Javier Báez. Gray then pitched a scoreless seventh and eighth. Beyond auditioning for their new coaches and front office, Herz and Gray are reintroducing themselves to a fan base that once viewed them as small bursts of hope.

“Obviously 2026 isn’t 2021,” Gray said on Friday afternoon. “But at the end of the day, this next week and a half, hit the ground running and see where they see me slotted in with the future of this thing.”

Keibert Ruiz can relate to the difference five years makes. Like Gray, he came to Washington in the Scherzer-Turner trade, back when the Nats first tore down their roster to start building it back up. He was the biggest get in the deal, almost immediately tapped as the catcher of the present and future. That led to an eight-year, $50 million extension before the 2023 season. But then Ruiz struggled to find his footing. For the next three years, he posted a .656 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in 331 games, well below league average. And somehow even more concerning was his defense, as he ranked toward the bottom in advanced pitch framing stats in 2025.

This season, though, has been a total revelation. Ruiz has been an above-average framer, per Statcast, and has a .770 OPS in 101 games. A big factor has been Bobby Wilson, the Nats’ first-year major league catching coordinator. Also, at the start of the second half of the season, the team began calling some pitches from the dugout, an approach born of an almost unwavering commitment to using analytics for strategic decisions. But one of the exceptions to that is Ruiz, who has continued to call pitches because of the trust he’s earned from the staff.

Pitchers Cade Cavalli and Jake Irvin call their own games from the mound, as does lefty Andrew Alvarez (though not always). The strategy of calling pitches from the dugout is most prevalent with relievers and when rookie Harry Ford is behind the plate. Ruiz, 28, is proud of keeping the responsibility. He’s not, however, ready to call his season a complete success.

“What’s happened with the bullpen, that’s on me, too,” Ruiz told me, referring to all the blown saves. “There is more that I feel like I can do still.”

James Wood can relate to that last bit, which is really to say it applies to every player on the team. From the front office to the field, this is a young organization still finding itself, working through growing pains together. And on Saturday night, Wood, the Nats’ best player, was right in the middle of that. In the top of the ninth, he hit a dribbler, sprinted out of the box and then slowed down when he thought the first baseman had fielded it cleanly. But the first baseman had actually bobbled the ball, which Wood didn’t realize until it was too late.

He sped up again but was out by a good margin. Blake Butera, the club’s first-year, 34-year-old manager, pulled him from the game, an eventual 8-5 win in 11 innings. Afterward, Butera said the decision was partly to improve the Nats’ outfield defense, swapping Wood out for Jacob Young. The other part, though, was because Wood hadn’t hustled all the way down the line. This has happened a couple of times in recent weeks, so Butera chose to send a message through his star player. He told reporters: “He’s never doing it on purpose. Just sometimes it doesn’t look great, and that’s our job, to let him know that.”

Minutes later, the two of them quickly chatted in the clubhouse, Wood nodding at Butera from his swivel chair. In game 155 of 162, in the final days of another losing season, there were still lessons to learn, impressions to make, a foundation that needs attention, all the way to the end.

“I feel like we’re trying to build something here, and I plan on being here for a long time,” Wood said. “So I feel like I’ve got to be able to set an example.”]]> Tigers 9, Nationals 2: Game Recap https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-tigers-game-recap-09-21-2026 The Associated Press The teams continue their three-game series Tuesday. Tue, 22 Sep 2026 01:37:04 GMT https://www.washingtonsun.com/sports/nationals-tigers-game-recap-09-21-2026 Nationals Tigers Baseball

Yohandy Morales hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning. (Paul Sancya/AP)

By Dave Hogg

DETROIT — River Ryan was outstanding in his Detroit debut and the Tigers hit three home runs to rout the Washington Nationals 9-2 on Monday night, one day after being eliminated from the American League playoff race.

Ryan, acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Tarik Skubal trade, pitched three scoreless innings. He allowed two hits and a walk with two strikeouts. Ryan is expected to start again in the season finale Sunday — the day after Justin Verlander is scheduled to make his final major league start.

Keider Montero (10-9) pitched four scoreless innings in relief of Ryan.

Washington starter DJ Herz (0-1) made his first big league appearance in nearly two years. Herz, who had Tommy John surgery in April 2025, pitched four innings, allowing four runs on five hits and two walks while striking out four.

The Tigers took a 2-0 lead in the first. Gleyber Torres walked, went to second on a wild pitch and scored on a ground-rule double from Hao-Yu Lee. After Herz got the first out, Eduardo Valencia singled to left field, with Lee scoring when James Wood misplayed the ball for an error.

Javier Báez made it 4-0 in the fourth, hitting his third homer of the season over the Tigers bullpen in left to bring home Dillon Dingler.

Detroit added five more runs in the fifth, three on Ben Malgeri's fourth homer and two on Spencer Torkelson's 25th.

That made it 9-0, but Yohandy Morales hit a two-run homer to get the Nationals on the scoreboard in the eighth.

The Tigers announced before the game that, due to a bank merger, Comerica Park will be known as Fifth Third Park starting in 2027. That's the same name as the stadium for the Toledo Mud Hens, Detroit's Triple-A team.

The teams continue their three-game series Tuesday, with Detroit RHP Drew Anderson (5-6, 3.62 ERA) facing LHP Jackson Kent (1-4, 6.40).]]>