Where to begin? The Milwaukee Brewers and Washington Nationals have roughly equal payrolls ($141 million and $135 million, respectively, although $35 million of the latter figure is going to Stephen Strasburg) but are clearly going different directions. The Brewers currently own the best record in baseball at 67-44 and present like a well-oiled machine: eight of their nine regulars have an OPS+ north of 100 (only shortstop Joey Ortiz is a black hole at 63), they play excellent defense, they run the bases smartly and aggressively, and only one member of their entire pitching staff has an ERA+ below 100 (reliever Tyler Alexander, 65). They are well-coached, disciplined, and dialed in on every pitch, none of which are attributes used to describe the Washington Nationals. They are almost as young as the Nationals - only three currently active players are older than 31: Brandon Woodruff (32), Christian Yelich (33), and José Quintana (36). They are cruising toward their seventh playoff appearance in eight years, with 2022 the only blemish (they still went 86-76 that year).

Last spring almost every national pundit wrote the Brew Crew off after their manager took a job with the Cubs and they traded ace Corbin Burnes to the Orioles (for Ortiz, among others) a year ahead of his free agency; they only won the NL Central at 93-69 behind the internally promoted Pat Murphy - a 22-year college head coach who had just a 96-game interim managerial sample with the 2015 Padres before stepping up to replace Craig Counsell - but lost their wild card series 2-1 to the Mets thanks to some Pete Alonso heroics. Their catcher development program is the best in the sport, turning everyone they get their hands on into an above-average pitch framer or better. Consequently, their pitcher development program is also elite, pumping out an assembly line of anonymous relievers with wipeout stuff (and colorful gloves!) and rotations that never seem to have a tomato can among their number. They work at-bats and get on base - Ortiz is one of only two Brewers regulars this year (21-year-old phenom Jackson Chourio, who went on the IL right before this series, is the other) that gets on base less often than one out of every three trips. If it felt like way more this weekend, it was - Milwaukee made 148 trips to the plate this weekend and reached base in an astounding 72 of them (that’s a team OBP of .487).

The only thing the Nationals have in common from the preceding two paragraphs is that they are young - only Josh Bell (32), Paul DeJong (32), and Nathaniel Lowe (30 just last month) have hit their thirtieth birthday. In every other aspect, they are substantially worse than the Brewers. The Nats got their a**** well and thoroughly kicked this weekend - the 56 hits Milwaukee rapped out smashed the previous record for any three-game series (50 by the Astros against the Rangers two years ago) - and the most disappointing thing is that this young team with at least a dozen players who are no worse than interesting lacks energy. Kevin Frandsen was right on the broadcast yesterday; a young team should be good in day games (because they bounce back quicker), but yesterday’s drubbing dropped the Nats to 14-33 - a .298 winning percentage - under the yellow face. Call them the Washington Gollums. In those 33 losses, they have been outscored by 140 runs, an average of more than four per game - they can’t even get within slam range more often than not. This series - an aggregate score of 38-14, with half of the Nats’ runs coming in meaningless ninth innings that started with a double-digit margin - highlighted just how much that this may not be the worst Nationals team that we have ever seen (2008, 2009, and 2022 were absolutely brutal), but it is definitely the most disappointing.

The 14-3 final score certainly does not show it, but Brad Lord pitched fine yesterday in his 4 2/3 innings - I would give him a B/B-: six hits - one a homer by Bryce Turang - two walks, six strikeouts, and three runs, all earned. The issue was that, once again, a bullpen whose most experienced member is now Jose A. Ferrer, he of the 122 career appearances, took a game that was moderately close (3-0 at the time Miguel Cairo walked out to get the ball from Lord, 3-1 after the Nats’ next ups) and blew it up, with Zach Brzykcy surrendering a touchdown in relief of Cole Henry; the Brick faced seven batters, giving up three hits, two walks, and a bases-loaded HBP immediately after a Jim Hickey mound visit. Ferrer pitched the eighth just to get some work in and allowed the Brewers to tack on two more runs, so only Henry - who allowed both of his inherited runners to score and sailed a pickoff attempt into center field in the process - and human white flag Andry Lara had scoreless outings. If you left early, you made the right call.

The absolute most frustrating thing about watching this team with, again, a dozen players who rate as at least interesting (in order: Wood, Gore, Crews, Abrams, House, Lord, Lile, Hassell, Ferrer, Henry, Ribalta, and Young - he is last because I think we have the clearest idea of who he is as a player among the group) is how utterly lifeless they look most of the time. If Abrams is not having himself a day at the plate/on the bases, the energy of the entire team is flat in these matinees. The bad first innings by virtually the entire rotation on a consistent basis lately is a serious indictment of the preparation level provided by the coaching staff - yes, it is officially time to start wondering about whether Sean Doolittle should remain beyond the end of the season - and the mental toughness of its members.

This team needs to activate Dylan Crews - who may still be very much an unfinished product as a major league player but absolutely brings a level of contagious focus and high energy - just to improve the general professionalism of the entire team. For that matter, I would also support a DFA of Paul DeJong (who could easily be scooped on waivers by a contender to be a defensive replacement infielder) in place of Nasim Nuñez, whose demotion from “26th man aura/vibes guy” to AAA Rochester corresponds almost exactly with the Nats’ slide from .500ish interesting but inconsistent team into maddeningly frustrating train wreck. Crews can be the replacement for Lowe, who sat out a game for the first time in yesterday’s debacle but has spent his 2025 looking disinterested, out of shape, and downright statuesque on defense. He might also hook on with the Red Sox or someone who is desperate for a first base solution, but it is time to cut bait on the Lowe experiment. He is in the way, to quote the former GM’s most famous line.

And then there is the coaching staff. As mentioned above, the first-inning meltdowns and inabilities to get past a mistake - either of their own doing or of someone behind them - without imploding are a massive, massive indictment of both Jim Hickey AND Sean Doolittle’s approach with preparing their starters. Something has to change there. The lineup’s utter lack of a coherent approach against any particular pitcher or staff is indicative of a hitting coach whose message at best isn’t getting through at all. There is the third base/infield coach overseeing a unit with one even average defender (House/DeJong at the hot corner) who has quit his base coaching post twice in the last calendar year as terrible plays of his own making played out right in front of him. What about the bullpen coach, whose charges have yet to meet a deficit that they cannot turn into a rout within the span of three or four batters? Or the outfield/base running coach whose players make so many bad reads in both avenues - graceful athletes like James Wood and Daylen Lile have gotten turned around too many times on fly balls, and Jacob Young gets such horrible reads that he leads the majors in times caught stealing with nine despite 96th percentile speed - that it seems like not a game occurs without a Three Stooges pratfall by either an outfielder or a base runner? Perhaps we should discuss the catching coach, “teaching” the worst unit in the majors on both sides of the ball, improving modestly now that its overused leader is on the shelf with a second concussion suffered when he was irresponsibly rushed back after the first?

The Washington Nationals need to seriously reevaluate what they are doing at every level. Minor league wins and losses matter a lot less than major league wins and losses, but it is worth noting that only the Nats’ rookie ball Florida Complex League team has a winning record this season among their six affiliates. Things are rotten, and what we learned courtesy of the Washington Post’s Andrew Golden after the Kyle Finnegan trade - that Finnegan, a good soldier and the longest-tenured player on the entire roster who had never ducked a tough question or spent even a single day on the injured list (an absolutely gob-smacking acievement for a reliever), had had to swallow the deferral of two-thirds of his one-year salary that wasn’t even an increase over his 2024 pay - it appears that things are rotten from the top all the way down. If the Lerners are not willing to pay even a modest one-year deal without deferrals (this also happened with Joey Gallo’s contract last year), then they need to seriously reevaluate if they should own a baseball team in the nation’s seventh-largest (and second-wealthiest) market. Especially after their product just got thrashed by the smallest-market team in baseball, that’s been doing everything right despite fewer resources for a solid decade.

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