Photo Intrepid/Nats.Talk
They say that a baseball season is a marathon with a sprint to the finish line. Over 162 games played over nearly six months, the 12 playoff teams emerge and the other 18 head to their offseason homes. Since 2019, the Washington Nationals were part of that latter group. This year the plans could be very different. “Vive la différence!”
For the Washington Nationals, they haven’t played baseball with a winning record after the All-Star break since 2019. We are not inferring that this is an apples to apples comparison to that improbable team of 2019. Just that this Nationals team is truly in playoff contention for the first time in the past six years. Nobody expected it until maybe center fielder Jacob Young appeared on a radio interview over two months ago and said that the players have a ❝WHY NOT US❞ attitude.
Many laughed off the notion of the Nats being a playoff contender back in May. There was too much baseball to be played, and now with 56 games remaining in this 2026 season, the Washington Nationals enter today at just 1.0 game from a Wild Card spot.
The Nats needed to take care of business and win at least 2-of-3 games against the Arizona Diamondbacks this weekend while pitching their two worst pitchers, Zack Littell and Miles Mikolas, in that series — and the Nats did win two games. If not for an unusual wind blowing in from right field on Friday night, the Nats might have won that game and swept the series.
This team enters today at 2-games above .500, and in third place in the NL East. They just pulled off the first big trade leading up to the trade deadline on August 3ʳᵈ at 6 pm when Paul Toboni traded third baseman Curtis Mead for starting pitcher Connelly Early.
If you thought the Nats’ offense would sputter without Mead, think again. He was replaced on the roster by Brady House who was called up from Triple-A, and he smashed two doubles en route to the team smashing four homers, two apiece from James Wood and CJ Abrams, along with two RBI hits from Young, and the Nats scored 10 runs for the 15ᵗʰ time this season.
Nobody knows the impact that House versus Mead will have for the rest of the season, but on this day, House got it done, and the Nats continued to motor around the bases.
At this point in the season, the Nats offense leads MLB in the most important stat: Runs Scored. They also just took the lead in OPS as of yesterday. If you are into power and speed, the Nats also lead the majors in home runs and stolen bases.
If Drew Millas wasn’t injured a little over a week ago and replaced by Harry Ford, the position roster would be the same as it was in 2025 except for only Jorbit Vivas. The other 11 players are all from the 2025 roster. Basically the same players in name, not in stature in the year-over-year. And you want to tell us that coaching, analytics, and technology doesn’t matter?
Every returning offensive player is ahead of their 2025 stats this season except for Daylen Lile who is still putting in a positive season. And Young leapfrogged Mead fractionally in FanGraphs WAR as another of the surprising offensive turnarounds. And what about Dylan Crews? He only has 226 plate appearances, and just about playing every day, and he has a +0.7 WAR to this point. Extrapolate that for a full-season and he is near a +2.0. Not too shabby for a player some wanted DFA’d or traded shortly after he returned from Triple-A to the lineup on May 19ᵗʰ.
Speaking of Crews, if he only faced left-handed pitching, he would be an All-Star. He is hitting .338 with a .423 OBP and a .997 OPS against southpaws. Truth be told, Young has a better split over Crews against right-handed pitching by nearly 100 points of OPS. Really, the only offensive deficiency the Nationals have is they don’t have a platoon left-handed outfielder. That was supposed to be Robert Hassell III. He was traded two weeks ago after he was DFA’d.
At the end of the day, no roster will be perfect. And while the Nats offense is at the tops of baseball, their pitching is 4ᵗʰ from the bottom in ERA. Things got so overwrought in the 9ᵗʰ inning yesterday that it felt like a San Fran meltdown was going to happen again as the Nats were one-swing away from losing their 5-run lead. Fortunately, the Nats got the job done — but the pitching has to be upgraded at a time where the team’s best pitcher, Foster Griffin, could be traded by a week from today.
While both Toboni and manager Blake Butera are talking about the playoffs, they should be adding quality as a buyer this week, not trading away from a pitching staff that cannot afford to be weakened any further.
Here are some gut-punch stats for you on the pitching staff: The Nationals are a combined 3-12 in Mikolas and Littell‘s last 15 games combined with their respective ERAs of 6.35 and 5.89 in that span. Mikolas should at most be in the bullpen or just DFA’d. Jake Irvin could return as soon as Wednesday from his stint on the IL. This is not the time to trade Griffin. This is the time to surround him with a better pitching staff.
We identified a modest upgrade in a trade candidate with Seth Lugo. He has a 4.36 ERA which is not good and with his $21.5 million owed for this year and next year along with a $3 million option buy-out for 2028, he is a liability for the Royals. They would have to send a lot of money to make him tradeable. But the Nats are one of the few teams in the postseason hunt who could take on close to the $7.4 million that Lugo is owed the remainder of this year as long as the Royals sent around $17 million for next year to offset what will be $24.5 million owed after this season with that option buy-out.
That 4.36 ERA for Lugo would shave off nearly 2.00 runs of ERA versus Mikolas. That’s a large incremental improvement. With Early and Irvin in this Nats’ rotation, this is what you could be looking at:
Do we expect Toboni to get another starting pitcher? No. That would mean that Littell would be the 5ᵗʰ starter if Griffin isn’t traded. The team’s closest prospect pitcher to the Majors at this point is Jackson Kent. In Double-A, he was dominant. His Triple-A ERA is 5.30 in a mixed bag with recent improvement, and he does have 58 strikeouts in 52 ⅔ innings.
The hope would be that Toboni would at least improve the bullpen. The team could really use a shutdown closer. There is no help in the minor league system unless they attempt to convert fireballers Luis Perales and Jarlin Susana to bullpen arms.
Trading for shutdown closers are extremely expensive in terms of prospect capital. That probably won’t happen. Toboni needs to find a Daniel Hudson who his predecessor acquired for a player who wouldn’t even be in the Nats’ Top-40 prospects on this roster.
“A lot of it is how the [trade] market shapes up on both sides. … There have been some [pitchers] who have been traded that we’ve been deep in conversations with to try and go get and hasn’t worked out to-date, and we’re still going to be active in those conversations — and try to upgrade any way we can.”
— Toboni said on the Sports Junkies radio show on Wednesday
“I think we got a real shot [at the playoffs]. And that goes independent of what we do at the [trade] deadline. I think if you buy or if you sell, I think we have a real shot. … If we do end up and sell a couple pieces, and buy a couple of other pieces, I believe in the team.”
There is a lot to digest in those quotes from Toboni. While he previously said that he won’t trade Wood, there are plenty of rumors swirling on trade talks on Abrams, Luis Garcia Jr. and Griffin.
This is the time to improve, not sell-off from the current roster.
Leave a Reply