When you watch October baseball, you see a sense of urgency with the pitching. While facing the other team’s best pitching, you have to put together your best at-bats for a chance of getting on-base. In the regular season, the stakes are not as high. Situational hitting and situational awareness has to be worked on and the regular season is like the proving grounds for the postseason.

The regular season should feel like the test kitchen for getting it all done correctly. As we look at the Washington Nationals, they were doing a lot of that on offense. James Wood started off slowly, and luckily Joey Wiemer came onto the scene en fuego. Yes, over time, Wood found his timing, and whatever Wiemer had to start the season proved to be short-lived unfortunately. Players like Jacob Young, Keibert Ruiz, Curtis Mead, Luis Garcia Jr., and Andres Chaparro had career years (listed lowest to highest OPS).

In 2025, the Nats were the 20ᵗʰ scoring offense in baseball with 687 runs scored — this season, the Nats finished No. 3 in runs scored (821) with nearly the same lineup as last year.

Before we take a victory lap on the offense, there is work to be done here with situational hitting. The Nats finished near the MLB middle for RISP hitting at .250, 1,350 strikeouts (8.33 per game), and swinging outside the strike zone at 33.4 percent (known as 0-Swing). Situational hitting is where the Nats must improve going forward.

First off, the Nats were exceptional about scoring runs, but they should have been even better. Where they excelled was that they got runners in scoring position at the fourth highest level in baseball to give themselves more chances even though their batting average in RISP was 16ᵗʰ in baseball. The Nats led baseball in extra-base hits and stolen bases, while finishing sixth in home runs.

The 10ᵗʰ best team in RISP hitting had a .260 batting average. Again, with the Nationals at a .250 batting average, they would have to increase by exactly 4.0 percent to get to that .260 number. With 1,399 RISP at-bats, that 4.0 percent increase would have resulted in 56 more hits and kept more innings alive. Assume just 56 more runs, and the Nats would have finished No. 1 in runs scored in all of baseball by a large margin.

Staying on the RISP theme, the other bad news is that two of the Nats best RISP hitters are gone: Luis Garcia Jr. hit .330, and Curtis Mead was at .311. The other Nats above .250 were Yohandy Morales in a small sample size was at .400, Andres Chaparro at .341, CJ Abrams at .311 and Jacob Young at .276. That’s it. You now know that six other starters were below the .250 and there is work to do. By taking out Garcia and Mead, that makes the numbers worse.

So how can Nats’ hitting coach Matt Borgschulte improve these players on situational hitting — and especially RISP, with fewer strikeouts and chases out of the strike zone?

That is what Borgschulte and his staff of coaches, analytics group, and front office have to figure out. This is the low hanging fruit in the process. Nobody is saying you have to hit more home runs — just hit more singles in RISP spots.

They say RISP hitting is part of the clutch stat — and some say it is not. Depending on which side you are on in that equation is part of the debate. Yes, part of RISP is affected by the BABIP luck. But there was a huge difference between Jorbit Vivas getting 101 RISP plate appearances and hitting .187 versus CJ Abrams‘ 175 PAs and batting .311. With disparities that large, it has to be more than BABIP luck. Sometimes it is more about situational awareness and approach.

Let’s look at some at-bats from the final week of the season:

What you see in those charts is a lot of O-Swing and missing balls in the zone. Hey, the pitchers get paid too. Some of those pitches might look like strikes until they veer off out of the zone like an optical illusion. The Brady House chart was telling because he swung at three consecutive sliders and couldn’t pick up the grip or the spin.

One of the frustrating parts of the O-Swing was how many Nats’ hitters chase high fastballs. That was certainly an issue with Dylan Crews in his pro career and in this particular at-bat an issue with Yohandy Morales.

One thing about Borgschulte is that he did what he said he was going to do. The year-over-year improvement was incredible. The point here is that there has to be continual improvement from the macro to the micro.

“The overarching philosophy is the goal of the offense to score runs.”

“We’re going to value every aspect of hitting that we can to maximize that run-scoring potential of the offense, whether that’s hitting the ball over the fence in the gap and driving for extra bases, or whether that’s taking a good at-bat, taking our walks and really owning the zone.”

“So having a simple approach, giving the hitters what they need, information-wise, and working with them on their swing, on what they need to do to improve, but also keeping it simple and making sure that when they go into the box, their mind isn’t on what they need to do in their swing. It’s simply on the approach, staying in the present moment — and executing the plan that they’re set out for.”

— Borgschulte said when he was hired

To excerpt: “We’re going to value every aspect of hitting that we can to maximize that run-scoring potential of the offense … taking a good at-bat, taking our walks and really owning the zone.”

Young hitters are supposed to improve with more repetition. The Nats brought in Trajekt Arc machines to simulate opposing pitchers. Pitch recognition and a solid approach would certainly help. We say it all the time, “Walks are fine — move the line” and “take your walks.” Sometimes taking your walks is the most unselfish part of baseball.

In 1,188 plate appearances with a 3-ball count, the Nats took 555 walks and that was 12th best in baseball. The best were the Cubs and Brewers in taking their walks — and guess what, they were also the two best teams in scoring runs. The Brewers had the highest OBP in baseball while the Nats were 8th.

To reiterate again, the Nats were really good offensively. What we are talking about here is getting even better. This can be done. The Brewers are the model here. They don’t have any big-time free agents. The average fan outside of Milwaukee would struggle to give one name on their roster beyond Christian Yelich or Jackson Chourio. That Brewers team won 103 games with a payroll of $154 million.

Do you know in 2025 that the Brewers and Nats had the same $140 million Opening Day payroll. Kind of amazing considering this year that they are paying Brandon Woodruff over $22 million, and he has been injured most of the season after only pitching in 46 full innings this season.

Almost everything here is inter-related. Improve 0-Swing — and you get more walks with higher OBP, fewer strikeouts, and more RISP opportunities while putting higher pitch counts on the opposing pitchers that all leads to scoring more runs and winning more games.

The End.