Is Brad Lord the pitcher that we all want Jake Irvin to be? In his first start in over two months yesterday, Lord threw four innings of one-run ball on 50 pitches and, importantly, surrendered zero walks (he also only had one strikeout, of his final batter of the night). In a crazy alternate universe where the Nationals were a playoff team, I would feel more comfortable about Lord as a starter than perhaps any pitcher on the roster save MacKenzie Gore. His ERA of 3.39 is perfectly solid for a pitcher with 69 innings and only two bad outings to his name out of thirty-five appearances, and his FIP of 3.51 suggests that this is sustainable. I am fully on board with keeping him in the rotation for the rest of the year and seeing what he can do with a dozen starts, which should get him to 120-130 innings by October. He has an excellent chance to not only be on the next good Nats team but a serious contributor towards it, as either a starter or a reliever - but hopefully the former.

With Lord only available for a max of about fifty pitches last night and a bullpen that needed a fresh arm - and boy howdy, did it get one - the Nats were in a potentially precarious position, especially facing young phenom Chase Burns, making just his eighteenth professional start since the Reds plucked him from Wake Forest a year ago. The first fourteen plate appearances for the Nats: flyout, K, groundout, K, single, K, K, K, groundout, K, K, solo homer, K, K. Beginning in the fifth inning, Burns began leaving his wicked slider up a little, and the Nats got a single and a pair of doubles off of him to take a 3-1 lead, then struck again in the sixth, with a Riley Adams single and a throwing error on the relay plating three runners for what turned out to be the final margin.

The Nats’ pitcher of record turned out to be Konnor Pilkington, recalled from Rochester in lieu of Mason Thompson and added to the 40-man roster (the corresponding procedural move - and I do mean procedural - was transferring Dylan Crews to the 60-day IL) in order to refresh a depleted bullpen. Pilkington’s first appearance as a Nat and first MLB appearance in over two years (he was previously with Cleveland) could not have gone better as he went six up and six down, including striking out the Reds’ 2-3-4 hitters in the top of the sixth. From there Luis García, Andrew Chafin, and Andry Lara each tossed a scoreless frame to nail down the win and a series victory against a possible wild card team - and only the second series victory since the end of May.

As mentioned above, the roster move that created space for Pilkington on the 40-man roster was a transfer of Dylan Crews from the 10-day to the 60-day injured list. However, such a move is retroactive, and Crews last played on May 20th, meaning that he has already been out for the requisite 60 days and could theoretically be activated tomorrow. What this means is that Crews will probably get sent on a rehab assignment this weekend and be recalled to the majors after the trade deadline, when at least one of Josh Bell (who homered for the second night in a row), Amed Rosario, Nathaniel Lowe, Paul DeJong, or even Alex Call will have a different address. That would give him the final two months and ~55 games to get back into it and hopefully use as a springboard to a fully healthy and effective 2026.

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