Washington Nationals 2025 Season

THE LEAD

Happy Jackie Robinson Day! Pay attention today to how many people across baseball talk out of both sides of their mouth about Robinson as the current administration tries to minimize his story and impact.

Mike Rizzo is all about starting pitching, but has never figured out how to build a successful bullpen in over a decade and a half at the helm of the Nationals. Yesterday’s meltdown against the previously worst-hitting team in baseball (the Pirates entered the day with a cumulative slash line of .184/.273/.290) was yet another data point in support of that thesis, as three relievers allowed six of their own runs and two inherited runners to cross the plate on eight hits and two walks (to be fair to Jackson Rutledge, he pitched well - the two runs charged to him were surrendered by Eduardo Salazar after Rutledge had pitched two excellent innings and started a third. This is rather quickly looking like as bad or worse a bullpen than the one that blew four games per week after the Great Fire Sale of 2021. That’s on Rizzo for spending the limited money he had how he spent it, and on the Lerners for limiting Rizzo to a bottom-three active budget in the first place. Sell the team, Mark.

 Washington Nationals 2025 Season

Game Recap

Making his second MLB start while still being stretched out, Brad Lord had the rather impossible task of dueling Paul Skenes yesterday, only the best pitcher on the planet. And although he flirted with losing command a couple of times, he was bailed out by three double plays - two of the traditional ground ball variety and one strike-’em-out-throw-’em-out - to get him through four two-run innings on just 48 pitches. He flagged a bit to start the fifth, prompting Davey Martinez to call on human arsonist Colin Poche to face Oneil Cruz for the latter’s third plate appearance (Cruz had come preciously close to tagging an oppo taco off of Lord in his previous trip). Poche allowed one run of his own on top of both of Lord’s inherited runners thanks in part to a shallow pop up that Alex Call could not quite get to behind a drawn-in infield (Luis García Jr. appeared to lose track of the ball a bit in the twilight, but he was much closer to it after all), which turned a close 2-0 game into a not-so-close 5-0 game. The Nats clawed back three runs of their own while Rutledge mowed down six consecutive Bucs, only for Eduardo Sálazar to yet again crumble under the pressure of even a medium-leverage situation and turn the game into a laugher. And so the Nats, who just a few days ago outplayed the Dodgers for most of the 27 innings they played, are 6-10 and looking flatter than the crowds at either Loan Depot or PNC.

 STORY TYPE

What Does He Do Here, Exactly?

Fans of losing teams like to dump on coaches a lot when things don’t go well. Sometimes that’s the right thing to do, sometimes it’s not. Coaches probably matter less in baseball than in any other major sport when it comes to how much they can affect a game. Still, the Nats panic-extending all of Davey’s hand-picked crew (that has a lot of experience losing games) in August of last year, well before that was remotely necessary, was a curious decision. The member of that group that I take the most issue with is not Nats internet punching bag Darnell Coles but Ricky Gutiérrez, ostensibly the third base coach but rather more of someone who can’t seem to believe he gets paid to be that close to the action. Perhaps you remember a game last summer when the Nats committed a double TOOTBLAN because Gutiérrez changed his mind on whether or not to send a runner and then had a second guy come in on top of the first. As the play was horrendously unfolding right in front of him, Gutiérrez, rather than help out and try to correct his own mistake, quit on the play - very visibly on television - and turned away in disgust. Rizzo has DFA’d more than one reliever for less than that.

Yesterday Nasim Nuñez, on second base after a hustle double, broke for third when Pirates third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes booted a grounder. Skenes also saw the play and hustled over. Nuñez, who gives up nine inches and ninety-five pounds to Skenes, slowed to a jog as he approached the bag, not knowing that the pitcher was barreling towards - and then into - him. Somehow Nuñez managed to barely beat Skenes and hold the bag standing while the latter hit the ground and did a full somersault, but was Gutiérrez doing anything to tell Nuñez to slide and avoid potentially getting knocked into the dugout (or you know, tagged out)? He was not, in yet another case of appearing checked out. And Nats fans wonder why they continue to have these stinkers against bad opponents to kill any positive momentum from taking a series from the Dodgers.

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 WHAT WE THINK THE NATIONALS FRONT OFFICE IS READING

Speed Reads

📌 Timing Isn’t Everything (Fangraphs)

📌 Jenks’ Terminal Diagnosis (The Athletic)

📌 D1 Players Celebrate Robinson (MLB)