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Baseball is back, Nationals fans! However, things couldn’t be much more different for the 2019 World Series Champions from how they were just six months ago (more later in today’s notes). In the first test for all new faces, Washington is facing MLB’s eighth-highest ranked team, the Cubs. Craig Counsell’s Chicago club was eliminated in a winner-take-all game five of the NLDS last October, and are looking to start off hot as they earn their way back to the Postseason. Meanwhile, the last time the Nationals beat a defending playoff team on Opening Day was in 2021, with a Juan Soto walkoff hit against the Braves. Two franchises in very different stages will square off this weekend, both in need of a series win.

The Nationals dropped their final exhibition game to the Orioles on Monday by a score of 2-0. It was a bullpen game for Washington, who started reliever PJ Poulin and gave each arm that followed him an inning to pitch. Cole Henry, Andre Granillo, Ken Waldichuk, Brad Lord, Gus Varland, Cionel Perez and Clayton Beeter all tossed a scoreless frame, respectively. The only problems for the Nats came in the seventh, when Holden Powell allowed a two-run homer to Leody Taveras. Other than that, the pitching staff was dominant, allowing just five hits against a Baltimore lineup that included star players like Gunnar Henderson and Pete Alonso.

Offensively, the spring struggles for the Nationals continued in their first game back at home. Washington only had three hits, with just one coming from somebody who was in the starting lineup. Washington officially finished second-to-last in runs/game for Spring Training, something that Blake Butera and his new staff believe will not be a problem as the team gets rolling.

On Deck…

The Nats will have a day off on Friday before continuing their opening series in Chicago on Saturday against the Cubs. At 2:20 PM, Butera’s squad will look to continue building on what they did this spring as Miles Mikolas, a free-agent signing for Washington, will take the mound in his first official start for Washington. Mikolas, coming over from the Cardinals, has seen this lineup before, which will hopefully help him early.

In the hole…

Washington will face Chicago once more on Sunday afternoon before traveling to Philadelphia for a three-game set against the Phillies. Jake Irvin will take the ball in the series finale for his first start of the year, which he hopes will be a bounce-back campaign.

The Washington Nationals signaled a full reset was incoming when they fired longtime skipper Davey Martinez and General Manager Mike Rizzo last July. After interim GM Mike DeBartolo held down the fort through the season’s end, the team hired Red Sox Senior VP and Assistant GM Paul Toboni to be their new President of Baseball Operations. His first order of business was to revamp the front office, and part of that was hiring Anirudh Kilambi away from the Phillies to serve as General Manager. Along with the off-field moves, Toboni brought in Blake Butera, the youngest manager MLB has seen in more than a half-century, to lead the new era of Nationals baseball on the diamond. Every coaching staff hire, minus Sean Doolittle, came from outside the organization. Now, after leading Washington through their first Spring Training, the new regime will face their first test in Chicago.

A large part of Toboni’s first offseason was investing in data and technology rather than players. When the team reported to West Palm Beach, they were greeted by Trajekt Arc pitching machines, Trackman technology, elbow stress sensors, and more for the first time. Advanced metrics matter more than ever in this organization, and it signals a complete 180 from the processes that fans have gotten used to over the past decade-plus.

This season, MLB is introducing the Automated Balls & Strikes (ABS) challenge system. Teams will get two challenges to lose per game on home-plate umpire calls, and they keep the right to continue if they overturn a pitch’s decision. The battery, along with the hitter all are permitted to head-tap and ask for a review, but there can be no dugout input. Fans will now notice that TV broadcasts, as a result of this system, no longer feature the strike zone to prevent any possible cheating by teams.

The Washington Nationals challenged 63 pitches in Spring Training, the 13th most in MLB. Of those attempts, 34 were while fielding. Their 64.7% win rate of those head-taps ranked 6th best in the league, although as hitters they lost 18 of 29. The team’s catchers know the strike zone incredibly well, and it will be important for the Nationals to save challenges for their battery. After receiving a -11.17 total favoritism score last season (eighth-lowest in the league, according to Umpire Scorecards), this system could work wonders for a team like Washington.

A cornerstone of Blake Butera’s first Spring Training in charge was a monumental strategy change for his pitching staff, as the Nationals no longer forced fastballs, and actually threw them at the second-lowest rate in exhibition games among all 30 teams. This comes after having the third-highest heater usage rate from the 2018-25 regular seasons, and the seventh-lowest whiff rate over that period.

Washington’s opponent batting average ranked third-to-last during the Dave Martinez era, but took the top spot in Butera’s first spring by a .025 margin. Their whiff rate also jumped to 13th in baseball. While exhibition results don’t always carry over, the pitching staff’s development in West Palm Beach was very encouraging of what could be still to come.

As we reported on March 9, the Washington Nationals opted to start RHP Cade Cavalli for the season opener. The 27-year-old faced a lengthy recovery after his 2023 elbow injury, which sidelined him for all of 2024 and most of last year as well. He made 10 starts for Washington last year, going 3-1 with a 4.25 ERA. The 2020 first-round pick did boast a 95th percentile chase rate and 93rd percentile ground ball percentage, giving the organization a young, fresh arm to mold with tons of upside over a full offseason. Their work with him seemed to work, as after a scoreless spring, the former Oklahoma pitcher will look to become the ace fans hoped for after the MacKenzie Gore trade.

Why it matters:

Today will be Cavalli’s 12th career outing, making him just the third pitcher since 1999 to start Opening Day with 11 or fewer under their belt. Sean Burke and Joe Ryan both had decent-to-strong games, leaving Cavalli to try and live up to the hype today.

The Chicago Cubs had an incredibly successful 2025 season, despite their relatively early exit in October. While yes, they lost Kyle Tucker to the Dodgers, they did just extend their second-most valuable hitter (based on WAR), Pete Crow-Armstrong, to a massive eight-year extension. Winning 92 games (96 including the postseason) is no joke for a young team making their first Postseason appearance since 2020, and they are looking to build on that this season by any means necessary.

Against the Nationals, Chicago is 69-64 since 2005, and they also beat Washington in five games during the 2017 NLDS. The teams evenly split their season series last year at three games each, but Washington has not won the annual battle since 2023.

The Cubs are sending 2025 All-Star Matthew Boyd to the mound today as he begins his 12th major league season. Chicago’s ace finished 4th in the National League last season under the win column, and boasted a 3.21 ERA. The lefty did struggle mightily in Spring Training, however, allowing nine earned runs over 9.1 innings through three starts. This will be his fourth career start against Washington, and he enters 1-2 with a 3.15 ERA. If the Nationals can make him work early, they have a chance to build quick confidence against the 35 year-old.

Day: 42-32 | Night: 49-38 | Home Record: 50-31 | Road Record: 42-39

A.L. Teams: 30-18 | N.L. Teams: 61-52 | N.L. East: 15-15