Baseball’s regular season will be ending soon. And what makes the future unclear is that baseball could go on strike to threaten the 2027 season. All we can do is talk about what we do have, and try to enjoy it. Yes, the Washington Nationals season might not end with optimism for some. Who knows, we have not reached the finish line yet.

Can the Nats get on a winning streak as there are just 32 games remaining in this regular season? To avoid a 100 loss season, the Nats need to win two more games. To avoid a 90 loss season, the Nats need to win 12 more games. And to get to a winning season, the Nats would have to go 21-11 to finish the season.

If we told you in February that the Nats would win 73 games, you probably would have been thrilled. But once you got a taste of winning baseball, you immediately wanted more. What looked possible on July 26ᵗʰ at 1-game from a Wild Card spot has now made it to a point where getting to a winning season seems like a long-shot. Yes, time is no longer on the side of the Nationals for this season — but longer term, things are looking up.

The emergence of Cade Cavalli as a true №1 starter seemed to be the opposite on April 13ᵗʰ after Cavalli was pulled at 1⅓ innings in his 4ᵗʰ start of this season at a 4.60 ERA. Cavalli was a mess. He had 12 walks to his 13 strikeouts at that point in his season. But after that is when Cavalli’s season took-off. He’s had a 3.05 ERA from that point forward with a 5:1 K/BB rate, and has become a reason for optimism.

The Nats offense is still №1 in all of baseball, and with James Wood out of the lineup with an oblique injured suffered over two weeks ago, we get it, the lineup just is not the same. Then CJ Abrams hurts his ankle, and the lineup yesterday resembled some travel roster from a Spring Training game.

At some point, maybe we get a look at some minor league callups like Seaver King who has certainly earned it. Time will tell on this. We’ve heard the 40-man excuses why they shouldn’t. There are too many reasons why they should.

The bullpen has looked much better of late, and that is an encouraging sign. Yes, there was that Yovanny Cruz blown-save loss last week, but besides that, this new bullpen is showing some promise. And speaking of promise, Andrew Alvarez bent but didn’t break yesterday in his outing only giving up 1-run. The Nats just ran into Jacob deGrom who was better. That happens.

While the debate will rage on of what Dylan Crews is as a baseball player, there are 30+ games remaining to see what he has. Brady House worked two walks yesterday and had the one hit in the game. He just leapfrogged over Daylen Lile in OPS, and that makes Lile a question mark for being a player who got worse on a roster where almost every offensive player has surged ahead.

So yes, there are some question marks where we thought we had sure things. Clearly, there will be plenty of information to put in the offseason Powerpoint presentations for each player.

We have to talk about the Nats farm system that was ranked №6 by MLB Pipeline as the best farm system in baseball and №7 by Baseball America. The Nats have some prospects ranked far back on the Top-30 list who would have been a Top-10 prospect in prior years when the system was weaker. An example is Ethan Petry who is ranked №25 and could be the best power hitter in the Nats system. Petry is in his first full-year of pro ball and is currently at Double-A Harrisburg. This Top-30 is packed with talent. Most of them are future MLB players.

This new minor league player development group has done more to progress Elijah Green in four months than the previous group did in four years. They have shown that if you aren’t improving as a batter then the player is not going to work in their system. They released former top prospect Robert Hassell III a month ago, and he is not the only one — just the biggest name. Top international signing, Armando Cruz, was signed in 2021 for $3.9 million and he was gone at the end of March.

All in all, this final push to the 162ⁿᵈ game might feel like the Nats are limping to the finish line, and really the focus should be on the team’s future. But some baseball is better than no baseball, and these final 32-games are good for assessments.