Going Deep with The Nats

Coming soon to Nationals Park will be outfielders James Wood and then Dylan Crews. Both are currently teammates with the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings after Crews was promoted officially on Tuesday. They were teammates last year in Double-A Harrisburg to finish the season, and then both were NRI teammates this year in Spring Training. There is a good chance that both will finish the season as teammates on the Washington Nationals roster. They will make up two-thirds of the Nats’ future outfield.

The other one-third of the Nats future outfield looks to be Jacob Young, and that is kind of like his defense where two-thirds of the earth is covered by water and the other one-third by Young. His center field defense has been so good — it looks like he will force Wood to right field and Crews to left field which is actually good because those spots are less demanding on the body. Of course you have Lane Thomas who would rotate in as an outfielder and DH. The 2025 season marks the final season of team control of Thomas.

What could have been, is usually how a team replays it in their minds, after a loss. The Washington Nationals were riding a 5-game winning streak coming into this game. They got everything they needed from starter Patrick Corbin who gave up only one-run in 5⅓ innings. The offense, defense, bullpen, and extreme BABIP bad luck were an issue. The bullpen didn’t miss enough bats when they needed strikeouts in this 7-2 loss. Also, 2-runs was not going to cut it for an offense that saw their bats go cold for the most part.

The team’s last 6-game winning streak was on September 27 of 2019. The pitcher who started that streak: Corbin. How do you like that for some historical coincidence. Unfortunately, the Nats bullpen feels like a bicameral split between good and bad. Kyle Finnegan and Hunter Harvey on the good side then everyone else. Finnegan and Harvey have a combined 2.42 ERA and most of that in high leverage spots, and the rest of the bullpen has a 4.67 ERA and that doesn’t include the 35 inherited runners who have scored mostly on the starter’s ERAs.