Photo by Jake Stephens/TalkNats

Welcome back, baseball!!!! The drag of the icy winter is subsiding (unless you live in Boone, North Carolina, where we are currently snowed in), the temperatures are slowly starting to rise, the yearly pilgrimage to Spring Training sites in Florida and Arizona have been made by the entire professional baseball world, and the game we all love is waking up from a long winter’s nap.

The Nationals played their first Spring Training games this weekend, with a split-squad simultaneous doubleheader on Saturday, going 2-0 in the W column with a 6-2 win over the Cardinals and a 2-1 victory over the Astros. The team then united yesterday for a massive 16-8 throttling of the Marlins, giving the low-expectations’ Nationals a 3-0 start to the first spring of the Blake Butera era. The way that these spring games work, with wins and losses not meaning much of anything, my game-by-game coverage leading up to the regular season will be much less about the actual game action and more about highlighting individual performances from guys whom we may be more familiar with, and guys that we may be getting to know sooner rather than later.

The Great

From the weekend, this section might may as well be called ‘the Brady House section.’ Brady made his spring debut yesterday and started with a bang, clobbering a homer off Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara. He followed that up with another one in the fifth inning, giving him a 2-4 showing with two home runs to begin his first spring training as the Nationals’ everyday third baseman. Trey Lipscomb got three at-bats in the split-squad game against the Cardinals on Saturday and reached base in all three, going 2-2 with an RBI double and a walk in his spring opener. On the pitching side of things, Mitchell Parker was one of the brightest shining returning big leaguers for the Nats this weekend, opening yesterday’s game with two scoreless innings. A very encouraging start for him to what needs to be a bounce-back season for Parker and a great many of the guys on this roster.

Updates on Other Roster “Locks”

James Wood made his spring debut yesterday and drew two walks in his four at-bats, and CJ Abrams appeared on Saturday and went 1-2 with an RBI double and a walk in his first three plate appearances of the spring, a good start for the Nats’ two cornerstone pieces of the lineup. Nasim Nunez made a nice first impression for his 2026 campaign yesterday, reaching base in two of his three plate appearances. Dylan Crews has made a lot of noise in the first couple of weeks of camp, but was 0-3 against the Astros on Saturday in his first action of the spring, as was Keibert Ruiz. Ruiz, however, got the opportunity yesterday to bounce back, and he did just that, going 1-2 with an RBI double and a walk to balance out his opening weekend. Daylen Lile left his first game of the spring with a 0-3 line, but he did come out with an RBI on his ledger at least. Robert Hassell will round out our offensive roster “locks,” getting into the matchup against Miami yesterday and going 1-3 with an RBI double of his own. Andres Chaparro got three plate appearances yesterday against the Marlins and cashed in all three times. The first baseman-hopeful contributed a single and two walks to the 16-run outburst from the Washington offense to kick off what could be called a “prove it” spring for him.

On the pitching side, the Nats featured a ton of new names this weekend, and to be honest, it’s hard to tell right now how many of them really have a shot at making the Opening Day roster, but we’ll just have to guess for now (isn’t that what Spring Training is for anyway?). Mitchell Parker, as I said, was probably the highlight performer for this group this weekend, but Jackson Rutledge followed him up with a scoreless inning, going 1-2-3 with a strikeout in there as well. Andry Lara pitched the third inning on Saturday against the Cardinals and put up a zero, allowing one hit in the frame, but nothing came of it. Getting the start in that game was Shinnosuke Ogasawara. If you read much from me last season, you know my thoughts on him, so I’ll spare you those for now, but Shin struggled on Saturday, allowing a run on one hit in 1.1 innings, where he also had to work around two walks as well, ultimately throwing 40 pitches and getting just four outs in his spring debut. Jake Eder, a lefty acquired in the trade for reliever Luis Garcia and Andrew Chafin last summer, got the start against Houston on Saturday and looked pretty good in his two innings. The southpaw allowed one unearned run in two frames, and added a pair of strikeouts, but a pair of walks to go with them. PJ Poulin and Richard Lovelady both added scoreless innings in that one, hopefully giving the Nationals some reliable left-handed options out of the bullpen this season.

“Who on earth is this…….oh wow!”

My favorite part of spring training each year is seeing guys who may not be ready for the big league level get opportunities to be around the big leaguers and then go share the field with them for a month. A big part of my coverage from the Nats’ 2026 spring training is going to be centered around highlighting great performances from guys in this category, as these are the names we may be seeing leading the Nationals into their next contending window hopefully in a few years.

The first notable player in this category is the Nationals’ newly acquired top catching prospect, Harry Ford. The #71-ranked prospect in baseball last season came over from Seattle this offseason in the Jose A. Ferrer trade, and in two games this weekend, Ford went 2-5 with a double and a walk, reaching base three times in six plate appearances. Look for him to put pressure on Keibert Ruiz and Riley Adams for a potential spot on the big league roster sooner rather than later.

The Nats took a first baseman from the University of South Carolina by the name of Ethan Petry in the second round of last summer’s draft. The youngster took full advantage of his first spring training opportunity on Saturday, hitting a go-ahead solo homer in his first and only at-bat against the Astros. The hype around the 2025 draft class for Washington has mainly been around the four high schoolers that were taken early on, but Petry deserves to be talked about in that same conversation, and wasted no time showing it this weekend.

Andrew Pinckney made a lot of noise in the Nats’ triple-A lineup last season, hitting .269 with 20 home runs in Rochester last year. The 25-year-old is beating on the door of the big leagues, and helped his case on Saturday by checking in with a double in the game against the Astros. The Nats have quite the loaded outfield room right now, but if you can play, this game finds a way to give you that opportunity; it will be a blast to watch Pinckney keep making his case for a shot in the bigs this year.

Isaac Lyon was the other piece that came over in the Ferrer trade with Seattle this fall, a 2025 draft pick out of Grand Canyon University. Lyon worked two innings on Saturday against the Cardinals in his first spring training action and impressed. The righty retired six batters in order, picking up three strikeouts in the two innings of action. Lyon saw just a little bit of action in Single-A Modesto last season after being drafted, so don’t expect to hear his name on the big stage anytime soon, but great to see him getting some positive confidence-building experience ahead of his first full professional season.

We’ve been hearing about Marquis Grissom Jr. for the past couple of seasons, and on Saturday, we saw more evidence of why we should probably continue to hear about him. The 24-year-old has been making his way up the organizational ladder quickly, reaching Triple-A last season, and despite some struggles, still flashed the stuff and the potential that could make him a key part of the Nationals’ big league bullpen very soon. Grissom pitched the final two innings of the game on Saturday against the Cards, retiring all six batters in order, and striking out two of them. All this he did on just 20 pitches, 16 of which were strikes. Keep an eye on this guy. While we may not see him in DC on opening day, he may not be too far off from making his major league debut.

Maxwell Romero Jr. is another intriguing catcher in the Nats’ system. The 24-year-old showed promise in his first few seasons in the system before struggling in Double-A last year, hitting just .196 in 86 games with seven homers. In my opinion, he’s probably not a guy we should expect to factor into the Nats’ immediate plans at all, but if he gets his game turned back around to what we saw from him in 2023, that could change. He made the most of his opportunity on Saturday, blasting a three-run home run to put the dagger into the Cardinals. A nice moment for him to hopefully kick off a bounce-back campaign for the youngster.

Sam Petersen was the Nats’ eighth-round pick in 2024 and has shot up the organization rankings since being added to the system. He had a breakout season in High-A last year, batting .297 with six home runs in just 44 games with Wilmington. He got an at-bat in the Saturday game against St. Louis and cashed in with a double of his own. One of the brightest young pieces of an already strong young outfield group within the organization appears to be picking up right where he left off last season. Keep an eye on this kid in the next couple of seasons.

While we can single out plenty of other guys who had encouraging starts to their spring training runs, like Warming Bernabel (third base depth option), Bryce Montes de Oca (bullpen option), Zach Penrod (bullpen option), Kevin Made (one of the top infield prospects in the system), Seaver King (2024 first round pick), Matt Mervis (first base option), and Orelvis Martinez (infield prospect), the true tests of the spring will come in the coming weeks as the Nationals will begin to give fewer and fewer opportunities to these youngsters to compete at the big league level.

In a season where we may admittedly not have much to hope for, I encourage you to join me and Talk Nats for another season of daily Nationals baseball coverage, as every single day, no matter how bad it gets, you and I will find the joy and find the positives in every win, loss, and blowout. This season, I’m excited to enhance and deepen my coverage of the team in these daily post-game recaps. Each day we’ll break down the Nats’ game like usual, but we will also take a look at what’s happening elsewhere in the Nats system, scores from each level of the minors, as well as top prospect standouts from each day, to remind us daily that there is hope, there is help on the way, and the next World Series championship could be brewing in places like Fredericksburg, Virginia, Wilmington, Delaware, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Rochester, New York. I hope you’re as excited as I am that our game has returned, and about the times we’re going to have following this team and organization this year!

The Nats are back in action this evening in West Palm Beach, taking on the Phillies at 6:05. Jake Irvin will get the ball for his 2026 spring debut, another guy, like Mitchell Parker, in need of a bounce-back season. Let’s see if he flashes some growth tonight!