After an horrific road trip out west, the Washington Nationals returned home and swept the Los Angeles Angels with three late inning comeback wins. The Nats tacked three blown saves on the Angels in each of the games this weekend. As bad as the Nats’ bullpen has been, the Angels were worse in this series.
Credit to the Nats for not mailing it in, and pushing hard late in each game to win these tight games. When the Nats made mistakes, teammates would pick those players up. This was good to see during this series.
The Nationals had their share of mistakes in the game, but came up clutch when the game mattered most. The Nats two best players made mistakes, and Ryan Zimmerman was on the microphone and called out James Wood for not hustling during a bases loaded slow grounder to shortstop. Zim said, ❝… You’re supposed to be running hard all the time.❞ The Nats wouldn’t score that inning.
Later, it was CJ Abrams booting what looked like a routine ground ball double play that eventually led to two runs scoring and a 4-2 deficit in the 8ᵗʰ inning. But the Nats showed that they weren’t laying down and scored four runs in the bottom of the inning to take a 6-4 lead.
The Nats 8ᵗʰ inning started with a Yohandy Morales single followed by a Daylen Lile triple. That was welcomed as Lile was on an 0-20 funk until the mid-game when he got a single. Jorbit Vivas knocked in Lile to tie the game. After that, Jacob Young would hit a booming double off of the center field wall, and the final run, that proved to be the game winner was a Dylan Crews single to score Young from third base, after he stole third.
On the Nats offense, they had 13 hits, but only took two walks to go with a hit-by-pitch. Eight of those hits were credit to Abrams, Lile, Morales, and Wood. The Nats were an 4-for-10 in RISP hitting. But you hoped for more runs with all of the traffic on the bases.
Credit to Jack Sinclair who earned his first win yesterday to go with his first career save today. His 0.9400 WHIP is looking good. A nice addition to this roster. The Nats used Riley Cornelio as an opener. He threw 2.0 scoreless, and Jake Irvin went the middle innings and turned in 5.0+ innings.
The Nats have 11 games remaining in their season and will enjoy a team day-off tomorrow ahead of a quick 2-game series with the Phillies. The Nats have another scheduled game on Thursday ahead of their final 6-game road trip of the season. The Nats will start Jackson Kent on Tuesday against Cristopher Sanchez followed by a matchup of Cade Cavalli and Zack Wheeler on Wednesday.
All of the games in this weekend series were 1-run wins by the Nats. This was win No. 70, and gets the Nats closer to putting together a season to show major progress over last year’s 66 wins. Getting to 73 wins would show over a 10 percent win improvement from last season. Any wins over 71 would be an improvement over every season since the 2019 World Series season.
Progress is a key here. There are several players trying to prove they belong and deserve a space on next year’s roster. There could also be some roster moves coming up to get pitchers like Josiah Gray, DJ Herz, and Connelly Early some late season reps.
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