Nats win! Nats win! Nats clinch the series and return to .500 in front of a sell-out crowd of 40,559.

The elusive .500 mark has been achieved. The Washington Nationals started the season at 1.000 and went down to .500 and up to .667 and further up to .750 — and then lost some games. The last time the team saw .500 was on April 1. Fitting, right? The team was 0-6 before today in their attempt to try to get back to .500 since that point — but there’s a reason for that. Almost every time they were in position to win to get back to .500, they were facing some really good starting pitchers like Tyler Glasnow, Paul Skenes, Logan Webb, Janson Junk, and Chase Burns.

From here, the quest is to get ahead of .500. ❝We could be 4-or-5 games above .500 right now,❞ President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, said on Thursday on his weekly appearance with the Sports Junkies radio show. He is not wrong. Too many blown saves, but mostly the bad defense that has given up over 30 free runs this year due to the bad defense has cost this team in the win column.

Cade Cavalli was great for 6.0 innings but got bombed in the 7th and almost lost the lead as the bullpen had to save him and the 4-run lead evaporated to one. It could have been worse when you consider that Jacob Young in that 7th inning sprinted to a spot and climbed the wall to make it look easy as he robbed an extra base hit.

Saved by great defense, a key challenge by Keibert Ruiz and eventually an onslaught of runs to win 13-3 thanks to a 7-run 7th inning. Ruiz was the star of this one with 5 RBIs and a triple shy of a cycle. Jacob Young added great defense, a 3-run homer and a single. Brady House came off the bench and cranked a pinch-hit RBI double and then the final exclamation point with a 2-run homer.

The Washington Nationals lead all of baseball in runs scored with 252. No other team is close. The Nats are averaging 5.48 runs scored per game. That is not a misprint. It is a pleasant surprise on a team that didn’t really change their position player roster over the offseason — although they changed all of their hitting coaches led by Matt Borgschulte and added some very expensive Trajekt pitching machines and other technology.

This was a full team win. And the Nats did it in front of their largest crowd since the opening series against the Dodgers. The first 20,000 fans were treated to Alex Ovechkin bobbleheads of Ovi in a Nats uni. How fitting to win on his bobblehead day.

This is the deepest into a season the Nats have been at .500 since July 2, 2021.