Good morning, Washington Nationals fans.
Here are the latest headlines and analyses around the Washington Nationals and Major League Baseball for today, July 25.
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Welcome to the Morning Briefing!
Leading this Morning's Briefing: Padres Continue to Stymie Nats
Some years, a team just has your number, you know? Fortunately that's no longer the intra-divisional Marlins, but the Padres have now beaten the Nats about every way possible in five games this season. The only reasons to stick around and continue to watch last night were to see if a) James Wood could manage to hit a missile somewhere other than right at someone with a glove on (he could not) and b) which position player would ultimately pitch the top of the ninth (Ildemaro Vargas, although I was hoping for Nasim Nuñez).
Last Game Out
The Nats got off to a strong start with a three-run first inning punctuated by a Juan Yepez home run (he continues to swing an incredibly hot bat), and it looked like one of those games where the knuckleballer just doesn't have it and is serving meatballs up on a platter. Alas, those were the only runs that Michael Waldron and the Padres allowed, whereas Mitchell Parker continued his midsummer swoon, barely making it through three innings while allowing six runs (to be fair, the Padres got great results on several perfectly placed pitches from Parker - maybe he was tipping?). Jordan Weems came on for the fourth and dumped a barrel of gasoline on the fire, allowing five runs in a single frame that made the rest of the game academic (pay attention to the clubhouse reporting this morning - it was the kind of performance that usually presages a DFA). Vargas wound up pitching the ninth and giving the Nats something to take their minds off of the beatdown, tossing 33-mph knuckleballs and eephus pitches from multiple arm angles and then mixing in some low-70s "heat" to surprise the Padres. He allowed two singles but ended with a clean frame when Jake Cronenworth ripped a liner right at his head that he caught acrobatically:
Nationals Headline of the Day: Lomavita Signs
Even though he's a Boras client, first-round compensation pick Caleb Lomavita had pretty minimal leverage to sign a massively over-slot bonus. Yesterday Lomavita signed for a hair below slot ($2.325 million out of $2.4 million), which leaves the Nats with about $4.2 million (counting the 5% overage) to sign second rounder Luke Dickerson, fourteenth rounder Yoel Tejeda, fifteenth rounder Sir Jamison Jones, and/or twentieth rounder Colby Shelton. Dickerson and Jones are reportedly signing today.
Down on the Farm
Most of the full-season teams had as rough a go of it yesterday as the parent club did: Rochester fell 10-2 to Lehigh Valley, as Kyle Luckham's AAA debut did not go well; Harrisburg eked out just four hits (two each by Daylen Lile and Jeremy de la Rosa) in a 7-1 loss to Hartford; and Fredericksburg got strafed 17-5 by Delmarva, although the struggling Cristhian Vaquero (.160/.273/.269) managed to hit a home run in garbage time with the FredNats down by a couple of touchdowns. Only high-A Wilmington held it down for organizational pride with a 4-1 win yesterday afternoon over Hudson Valley.
Featured Baseball Story of the Day
Mike Trout played his first rehab game since tearing his left meniscus on May 3rd...and exited the game early with left knee soreness. What a dagger. Trout is already a surefire Hall of Famer and the Millennial Mickey Mantle, but man, the injuries that have kept him from playing many games over the past four seasons (he has missed 321 of a possible 587 games and counting since the start of 2021) have been brutal. Even this diminished version of Trout is still very good when he can get on the field; over that timeframe he's hit .276/.376/.575 (160 OPS+) with 76 home runs in 266 games. Let's hope he bounces back soon.
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