Photo by Intrepid/Nats.Talk

We all expected James Wood, CJ Abrams, Daylen Lile and Cade Cavalli to be near the top of the WAR charts for the Washington Nationals. Nobody expected Foster Griffin, Brad Lord, Keibert Ruiz, Jacob Young, and Nasim Nunez to be in the Top-7 in that order at the midway mark tomorrow for the first half of the season.

While Curtis Mead isn’t in the Top-7, he and Richard Lovelady are the other names in the Top-10. Absolutely mind-blowing, and especially when you extrapolate their numbers to a full-time player. Ruiz basically has half the plate appearances of Abrams, and Mead has 68.5 percent of the plate appearances of Abrams.

No surprise on James Wood and CJ Abrams leading the #Nats in WAR but look at №3 Foster Griffin, №4 Brad Lord, №5 Keibert Ruiz, №6 Jacob Young, №7 Nasim Nuñez, №8 Daylen Lile, №9 Richard Lovelady, №10 Curtis Mead and №20 Dylan Crews is POSITIVE WAR! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/lQOu12FXGy

— Nats.Talk (@TalkNats) June 23, 2026

And if you scroll down on the WAR chart you will see that Dylan Crews just reached positive WAR at +0.1. That’s progress from his negative numbers since his call-up.

❝We’ve played a lot of playoff teams, and we’re up there above .500, and pushing for a Wild Card spot.

I’m really impressed with this team as a whole. We’re not backing down from anybody. It doesn’t really matter the names on the back of the jersey, or what team we’re playing.

We feel like we’ve got a good lineup — and a good staff to go out there and combat it.❞

— Foster Griffin said

The Nats are getting coached up, and the players are all buying in. Right before Opening Day, Wood was projected at a +2.1 WAR for the entire season, and he is at +3.3 today with over half the season to go. Abrams was projected at +1.8 for the entire season, and he is at +2.6 today. Ruiz was projected for a +0.4 for the full-season, and he’s more than tripled that number. Most of the players are crushing their projected numbers.

❝Why not us!❞

— Jacob Young said in an interview earlier in June

If the season ended yesterday, the Nats would win the tie-breaker and be in the postseason. Per Baseball Reference, the Nats have playoff odds of 37.3 percent to make the postseason, and 0.6 percent to win the World Series.

Speaking of the World Series, the College World Series wrapped up last night with Oklahoma crushing North Carolina to take the ring. The MOP of the CWS was Jaxon Willits. His father is Oklahoma’s Associate HC Reggie Willits. If those names sound familiar, Nats top prospect, Eli Willits, is Jaxon’s younger brother.

While Reggie played MLB baseball and is now a coach, he reasoned that, ❝When we recruit players, ‘make-up’ is the No. 1 thing we look for. It’s not just about talent, and we say it all the time — it’s not the best players that win — it’s the best team that wins.❞ Of course you need talent, but talent alone won’t get you to the top.

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The lesson here is that Oklahoma wasn’t even on the radar in the pre-season. They didn’t sniff the D1 pre-season Top-25. In fact, they were 14th in the SEC Division in the pre-season, which was third from last.

And Oklahoma had no players on the All-SEC first or second team in the preseason. Oklahoma actually finished 11th in the SEC in their regular season in 2026. They got hot at the right time to qualify for the college postseason.

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Why do we tell you about Oklahoma in an article about the Washington Nationals? Hopefully you see the parallels here. The Nats team has talent, and Griffin said it, ❝We feel like we’ve got a good lineup — and a good staff to go out there and combat it.❞ The Nats weren’t in the Top-25 as they were bottom-3 of the 30 teams in pre-season polls. They have a lot of similarities with this Oklahoma team.

Right now, almost anything is possible.