Hollywood magic is amazing when you think about how they would splice together actual film celluloid before the digital age. Throw on some pixie dust and you could splice together time to be seamless and believable.
The Los Angeles Angels’ home stadium is minutes from the original Disneyland in Orange County. When the Washington Nationals swept the Angels this weekend, my mind wandered back to 45 days earlier to July 29ᵗʰ. What if? You know, what if the Nats played this series on that date and went to +5-games over .500?
We have a Nats’ fan in our midst who is one of Hollywood’s most-gifted film editors in Kevin Nibley, and he could recreate this as a digital mirage. Wink wink. But what if that was real? Instead of getting swept by the Braves at the end of July to the beginning of August, the Nats swept the Angels.
If only we could swap out segments of time then the Nats would have been buyers at the trade deadline and got a shutdown closer — and Tom Cosgrove would not have that blown-save-loss on August 3ʳᵈ, right? While we are all about movie magic, maybe the Nats blown-saves would have stopped at No. 27 before that Cosgrove meltdown.
Some say everything happens for a reason in a divine line of destiny. And we snap back to the reality that the Nats started that meltdown from 2-games over .500 to their current 11-games under .500. A 13 game swing in the wrong direction. When losing happens, you get time to dive into the deep end and analyze the situation. Figure out what is right — and what is wrong. Below, that is exactly where we are headed.
The Starting Pitchers
Out of the trade deadline carnage, Cade Cavalli emerged as an ace, and now, Andrew Alvarez has thrown his hat into the ring and shown that he wants a spot in the next great Washington Nationals rotation.
Don’t look now, but Alvarez would be a Top-30 starter in MLB (min. 100 innings) for this season with his 3.39 ERA. That is front page stuff on FanGraphs! Look at the names on that list. Quite impressive. Sprinkle some movie magic on there and sort by just NL pitching and all of a sudden you have Foster Griffin, Cavalli and Alvarez all on the same leaderboard, and in that order with Washington next to their names. That is quite the 1-2-3. If we can really turn back time, let’s not trade Jake Bennett, and he would make a formidable 1-2-3-4 with his 3.69 ERA. Yes, if only.
So how has Alvarez, born and raised in the shadows of Disneyland, become a viable starting pitcher? He has quietly become one of the success stories of this 2026 Nats’ season. Alvarez was a player who spent a good chunk of his season in Triple-A this season as well as pitching out of the Nats’ bullpen. On Saturday, the lefty turned in his best performance of the season with a 7.0 inning 1-hitter with 0-runs, 8 strikeouts on 97 pitches. In fact, Alvarez had a no-hitter going into the 6ᵗʰ inning.
What Alvarez has done is changed the shape on his curveball to be his primary pitch in this 2026 season. That coupled with an excellent changeup on righties, and a fastball that is tunneled has made him into a viable pitcher with a 5-pitch repertoire. Alvarez just needs the cutter and splitter to be a clone of Griffin. The similarities are very noticeable.
A source told us there was a mentorship going on with Griffin teaching Alvarez about pitch execution, routine, and video preparation on the competition. Both players are represented by the same agency, Excel Sports Management.
- Preparation: Griffin helped Alvarez on the how-to’s of constructing a daily routine as a left-handed pitcher.
- Video Study: Instead of just reading paper reports, Griffin showed Alvarez how to watch the last 30-days of opposing hitters’ sequences against left-handed pitchers.
- Pitch Design: Alvarez credited Griffin with helping to improve his mindset, pitch sequencing, and tunneling.
Alvarez, 27, has similar velocity to the lefty the Nats traded at the August 3ʳᵈ trade deadline. This is how finesse pitchers are supposed to work to be effective. And the behind-the-scenes as you pull back the curtain is extremely important.
In 2025, Alvarez was a fastball/slider pitcher in usage, and now he is curveball dominant as his main offering with much fewer sliders as his third most-used pitch just ahead of the sinker and changeup. The tunneling from that consistent release point is a key, and this is what we pointed out with Jackson Kent a month ago. Can Alvarez mentor the younger Kent and impart some of Griffin’s wisdom on the lefty?
It is kind of incredible to think that with Alvarez, Kent, DJ Herz, and Connelly Early, the Nationals have four viable southpaws in their starter pipeline to go with the right-handed Cavalli.
The Shortstops
Now let’s turn the page back to before the season in A-ball when the Nationals had a logjam of 20-and-under shortstops. They had Devin Fitz-Gerald, Ronny Cruz, Coy James, Gavin Fien, and Eli Willits. The team moved Fitz-Gerald up to High-A, and the other four started in Single-A. Willits, 18, would eventually finish the season with Fitz-Gerald as the middle infielders for Double-A Harrisburg. Cruz would finish at High-A, and Fien and James in Single-A. They all had monster years, even though Fien’s was shortened by an injury.
That quintet of players would all play other positions with Willits being the only one who was a primary shortstop the whole year. In fact, SIS would name him the top defender in all of the minor league baseball.
At Triple-A Rochester, Seaver King, 23, would be the primary shortstop, although his defense has been inconsistent at times. Still, you could see King making his MLB debut before Willits. And August 17, 2027 is the date we have circled on the calendar for Willits MLB debut.
There are interesting parallels between Willits and Bryce Harper in Washington Nationals history as you can see in that chart. There are also some good comparisons with Willits and Bobby Witt Jr. The path that Willits is on puts him in rare air. Of course he has to translate that to the big leagues at some point.
Add to all of this the other middle infielders with first round selection, Chris Hacopian, who was drafted this year and was playing second base at High-A until he was hurt. Hacopian, 22, is a year younger than King, and like King, should move up the levels quickly. Some think Hacopian will end up in left field given the logjam. On the other end in the Florida Complex League is Marconi German. He turned 19 last week and had a good season with a .910 OPS.
Looking at MLB Pipeline’s Top-30 prospects for the Nationals. The other names for that list would be the Lukes. That’s Luke Dickerson and Luke Williams who was the Nats top infielder drafted this year from the high school prep class. He was kept in the bridge league where sources tell us he was the best position player the Nats had there.
What all of this means for CJ Abrams is up-in-the-air right now. His struggles continue with a terrible fielding gaffe yesterday that should have ended an inning with a tailor-made double play that he booted. That error just lends to the equation that he shouldn’t be playing shortstop — and frankly, his second base range has not been good. But you want Abrams in the lineup.
Do the Nationals move Abrams off the dirt and to the outfield or do they trade him? That is going to be a Paul Toboni question to answer. But without knowing if King is the answer at shortstop, do you wait for the 2027 trade deadline or beyond to decide on Abrams? He is team-controlled through 2028. The team has plenty of time to decide.
The offense really flows with Abrams. Personally, I would keep him because my thinking is the trade capital won’t be good enough — and the best deal Toboni might have seen was what he turned down before the trade deadline from what sources told us. That was all before the Red Sox took a deal with the Orioles to acquire catcher Adley Rutschman who was injured at the time. The Red Sox were in need of both a shortstop and a catcher as they were playing at the time without Trevor Story who seems to spend more time on-the-mend than in the lineup.
Again, will Toboni want to splice together the film and do that sourced trade or was he happy he kept Abrams? Time will tell on that. Abrams is a special athlete — he just isn’t a good fielder. Decisions will need to be made.
The Bullpen
All of that chest pain you have been feeling has been caused by the bullpen. Somehow, some way, Toboni is going to get this fixed. That bullpen had a 4-run lead on Saturday and cost Alvarez a win. Fortunately, the extra drama worked out as the Nats won via their second walk-off win of the season.
Who knows how Toboni will fix the ‘pen. Will it be via a trade or a free agent signing or will he fix it from within? The organization that Toboni left, the Red Sox, have arguably the best bullpen in all of baseball. Their 14 blown saves, 25 fewer than the Nats, has only produced eight losses. The Nats have 23 losses via their MLB record 39 blown saves.
Do the math on those 23 blown-saves that turned into losses. What if there were only 12 losses instead of the 23? That would put the Nats at 81 wins and 70 losses this season and possibly in the playoffs. Obviously if this bullpen was as good as the Red Sox, the Nats would be 85-76 and a playoff team and 3-games from first place.
This team can really go places if the bullpen is fixed to be better than league average. As they say, it can’t be any worse, right?
The Lineup
Much of what happens next season will depend on what the team does with Abrams. He seems to be the key to how the lineup is shaped. Without him, the offense could be a major issue. Why not keep him and just move him permanently to second base and hope he improves.
Make a few other tweaks to the lineup and hope for more positive improvement with the youngest lineup in baseball. Given their ages, you could see more upward trajectory. This is where the Nats have really shined this year with one of the best lineups in baseball.
Also, give hitting coach Matt Borgschulte a major raise and a long-term contract. Whatever he is doing in his hitting lab has been transformative. With roughly the same lineup along with Curtis Mead, we showed how the returning starters had all improved from last season.
Across the board, the full-year players from 2025 have all improved this season in OPS and that includes Dylan Crews (+5.1%), James Wood (+11.3%), CJ Abrams (+11.5%), Luis Garcia Jr. (+24.5%), Keibert Ruiz (+32.8), Jacob Young (+20.9%), and Brady House (+20.7%). Take those numbers, and that is an increase of 18.2 percent in an unweighted average.
A Brighter Future
Just taking a glass half-full look at 70-wins and those 23 losses via the bullpen on the blown saves, you can easily see that if the bullpen was as good as the Red Sox that this IS a playoff team with no other changes.
The good news is that Toboni knows where the issues are or as we like to see here — the weak links. “A Team is only as Strong as its Weakest Player,” said Andrew Eifler. Now you have to shore up those weak links — and voila, you have that film strip that shows this in the future:
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