February 27: The Morning Briefing

Here are your Thursday Morning headlines, analysis, and more for February 27, 2025.

Author

Richard Wachtel
February 27, 2025 • Reading Time: 5 minutes

Today, we are displaying an Orange font to acknowledge the horrific murders of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas. They were murdered while held hostage in Gaza and were buried in Israel yesterday.

Good Morning, it’s Thursday Morning.

Here are your Washington Nationals Morning headlines, news, analysis, and more for Thursday, February 27, 2025.

It will be a high of 62 degrees outside the Nats Report Newsroom with occasional rail until noon.

Today’s high in West Palm Beach will be 80 degrees. The game time forecast will be 75 degrees and mostly cloudy with a 24% chance of rain.

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 THE LEAD
Game Recap: Washington Nationals vs. Miami Marlins

The Washington Nationals dropped their first Spring Training game of 2025, falling 3-0 to the Houston Astros in West Palm Beach.

Herz's outing was punctuated by a two-run homer from Yainer Diaz following a critical two-out walk. Herz acknowledged the mistake, stating, "Obviously, we don’t want to do the two-out walks...A lot of weird stuff happens when that happens.”

Up next:

The Nationals will host the visiting Atlanta Braves tonight, with the scheduled first pitch at 6:05 p.m. EDT. The Nationals are scheduled to send RHP Jake Irvin to the mound to start the game and will face RHP Bryce Elder from the Atlanta Braves. The game will be broadcast on Gray TV and MLBN (out-of-market-only), and you can listen to the game at 680 AM/93.7 FM The Fan Sports Radio Atlanta.

Don’t forget to visit our live Spring Training blog as we provide live updates from West Palm Beach, analysis, and much more throughout the day.

ANALYSIS
Kyle Finnegan returns to the Washington Nationals

The Washington Nationals DFA'd Kyle Finnegan, then re-signed him months later. What happened? We explore the possible reasons behind the move, Finnegan's role in the bullpen, and what the Nationals gained (or lost) in this strange saga.

There are a couple of plausible hypotheses for letting Finnegan go at season’s end. The first is salary. Look, I don’t know what to believe at this point about what Mike Rizzo’s budget looked like and how much influence ownership had over Rizzo’s actions. I am NOT opening that can of worms without more information. However, if Rizzo only had a budget of about 50 million to work with, freeing up the 8.6 million Finnegan was projected to earn would give Rizzo a little more flexibility to sign bigger name players like -- checks notes -- Paul de Jong? Trevor Williams?

What do YOU think? Comment below and share with us your thoughts on this.

SPEED READS
What we think the Washington Nationals front office is reading.

📌 The Predictable and Hidden Consequences of MLB's New ABS Challenge Rule (Blecher Report)

📌 How Red Sox built MLB's best prospect trio (ESPN)

📌 MLB's unbreakable records: Will anyone touch Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak? Barry Bonds' home run total? (CBS Sports)

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