He entered the season as the Nationals’ most promising, highest ceiling, young starter. And two months in, MacKenzie Gore was building himself a case for an All-Star selection and the designation of staff ace.

Two-plus months later, the Nats are left wondering what in the world happened to make Gore’s season devolve this much. And what they’re supposed to do about it now.

With another laborious, abbreviated start featuring a lack of command, an inability to put away hitters and one back-breaking hit, Gore was roughed up yet again and left the Nationals in a hole they tried to climb out of but ultimately could not in a 6-4 loss to the Angels.

The left-hander lasted only four innings, giving up five runs (albeit five unearned runs) while letting 11 batters reach base, six via walk. His bullpen only poured more fuel on the fire, the team ultimately issuing 13 total walks during the affair, establishing a club record for a game of any length.

"If one guy walks, or you get a guy in scoring position, you're trying not to give up that hit or that run. You put a lot of pressure on yourself," manager Davey Martinez said. "That's the only thing I can think of. You're forcing yourself to get the ball over the plate. And that's when all the balls start happening. We've got to focus on just getting to the next pitch, and focus on that one batter, not try to get ahead of ourselves." 

The Nationals would probably prefer not to play extra innings today. They’ve gone to the 10th three days in a row, and the thought of another long game with an overtaxed bullpen can’t be real appealing at the moment. The good news: They’ve won the last two nights, which means they have a shot at a rare series sweep this morning.

Yes, this morning. Pre-noon baseball in the District of Columbia is no longer confined to July 4. The Nats and Angels today are playing on the relatively new "MLB Sunday Leadoff on Roku" package. That means it’s only available via online streaming, not conventional TV. But it is free, with no special subscription required. Click on this link for instructions, then enjoy the game with a mixed broadcast crew featuring Bob Carpenter on play-by-play alongside Angels analyst Mark Gubicza, with Dan Kolko serving as the on-field reporter.

MacKenzie Gore gets the start for the Nationals, and boy do they need some innings out of him today. Gore has been slightly better each of his last two starts, but he’s still nowhere close to the peak form he displayed earlier this season. This would be a wonderful time for the lefty to make a bigger step in that direction and give his team some sorely needed length.

The Angels have their own pitching issues right now, and today they’re sending rookie Jack Kochanowicz to the mound for only his third career start. The 23-year-old right-hander has given up 12 runs and 14 hits in only seven major league innings to date, suffering blowout losses to both the Mariners and Athletics.

The Nats are without CJ Abrams for the third straight game, at least in the starting lineup. Abrams did pinch-run in the 10th inning Saturday, but it appears there's still concern about his ability to bat with back spasms. With the team off Monday, he may just be playing it safe and gearing up to return Tuesday in Baltimore.

Upon reaching the dugout steps following a 1-2-3 top of the ninth, Kyle Finnegan caught Davey Martinez’s eye and told his manager he wanted to return to the mound for the top of the 10th.

To which the Nationals manager replied: “Well, I want to win right here and not send you back out. But if we have to, yeah.”

Much to Martinez’s chagrin, the Nats did not win Friday night’s game in the bottom of the ninth, so he did ultimately have to send his closer back out there for a second inning of work, one day after he’d thrown 28 pitches during a disastrous outing that resulted in three runs crossing the plate.

This time, Finnegan posted a zero, stranding the go-ahead runner at third base and giving his teammates another opportunity to walk-off the Angels. Which is exactly what they did, thanks to Alex Call’s game-winning hit in the bottom of the 10th.

“I’m happy they had trust in me to go back out there and try to strand that leadoff runner on base,” he said.

The Nationals already have enough trouble scoring runs and hitting for power when at full strength. Remove their All-Star leadoff hitter from the equation, and the task can feel impossible.

So, when word came down about an hour before first pitch tonight that CJ Abrams had been scratched because of back spasms, even the most optimistic Nats fan had to be concerned this could turn into a long night at the plate.

It was. Until the home team made it worth the wait with a late rally and a rare extra-inning win.

Alex Call’s line drive single just past drawn-in second baseman Luis Guillorme brought Jacob Young home from third and gave the Nationals a rousing, 3-2 victory in 10 innings to avenge Thursday’s 10-inning loss to the Giants.

"The boys wanted it," manager Davey Martinez said. "They wanted it tonight. You could tell. They didn't want another extra innings and not win. They wanted to celebrate."

What kind of memories flooded Anthony Rendon’s mind when he walked into Nationals Park today for the first time in five years?

“I mean, there’s a big sign, right when you get off the bus,” he said with a laugh. “You can’t miss it.”

That sign, located just outside the home clubhouse, is the 2019 World Series champions logo. It probably would not exist if not for Rendon, whose litany of clutch hits that October made him perhaps the Nats’ most valuable player throughout their postseason run.

That Rendon hadn’t been back to see that sign, or anything in this ballpark, until today involved quite the odd combination of events over the last five years.

He of course signed a seven-year, $245 million deal with the Angels a little more than a month after the World Series parade. And when COVID forced Major League Baseball to keep all interleague games regional in 2020 and 2021, that prevented the Nationals and Angels from playing each other. The Nats did go to Anaheim in 2022 and again in 2023 (when MLB debuted its new schedule including one series against every team from the opposing league).

Twenty-eight major league teams have come to D.C. to face the Nationals at some point during the last two seasons. The only one that hasn’t: the Angels, who remarkably haven’t played here since 2017. That streak finally ends tonight with the opener of a three-game series (weather permitting), and that means the long-awaited return of one of the most important players from the 2019 World Series roster.

Things haven’t gone so great for Anthony Rendon since he left Washington for Anaheim about a month after hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy. He hasn’t come anywhere close to playing at the same level for the Angels, and he’s dealt with a smorgasbord of injuries on top of that. But he’s healthy now and will finally get the chance to get the ovation he deserves from the Nationals Park crowd.

The Nats, meanwhile, really need a quality start out of Mitchell Parker tonight after four consecutive subpar outings from the rest of the rotation against the Giants. The bullpen is pretty gassed at this point, so a minimum of five innings – preferably six – from Parker would be much appreciated from Davey Martinez.

The Nationals lineup faces an unfamiliar foe in José Soriano. The 25-year-old right-hander was exclusively a reliever last season and didn’t appear in the series in Anaheim. He’s done well as a full-time starter this season, entering with a 3.47 ERA and 1.206 WHIP despite a relatively low strikeout rate (7.4 per nine innings).

UPDATE: CJ Abrams has been scratched from tonight's lineup for reasons not yet disclosed. Nasim Nuñez will get a rare start at shortstop in his place. 

Some stats and thoughts as everyone tries to forget Thursday’s rain-soaked, 10-inning loss to the Giants and looks ahead to tonight’s series opener against Anthony Rendon and the Angels …

* What’s the biggest reason the Nationals haven’t played as well over the last month as they did earlier this summer? The quality of the performances by their starting pitchers has gone dramatically downhill.

The emergence of a young rotation was the top storyline of the season’s first half, and there was a lot to like about the way MacKenzie Gore, Jake Irvin, Mitchell Parker and DJ Herz were not only pitching well but also pitching relatively deep into games. Over a 40-game stretch from May 22-July 4, the Nats had 17 quality starts (three or fewer earned runs over six or more innings). Unsurprisingly, the team’s record during that stretch was 20-20.

What’s happened since? Over their last 29 games, the Nationals have only five quality starts. Their record, unsurprisingly, is only 12-17 during this prolonged stretch.

Abbreviated outings have especially become a problem in recent weeks, with starters failing to complete five innings in 10 of the last 29 games. In other words, the Nats have been twice as likely to get fewer than five innings than a quality start for the last month.

With the threat of rain looming all day, the Nationals hoped their decision to move first pitch of today’s series finale against the Giants up from 4:05 p.m. to 12:05 p.m. would give them the best chance of playing the entire game. The only question was how long it would take for the game to be played, and how many times it would be disrupted by the weather.

In the end, it took nearly 5 1/2 hours of actual time, two disruptions totaling 2 hours, 2 minutes – one of them coming in the third inning, one in the eighth – and then dueling, last-ditch, three-run rallies in the ninth inning before the Nationals handed the game to the Giants in an ugly top of the 10th.

Despite getting an emotional lift from Luis García’s clutch, three-run homer that forced extra innings, the Nats still lost 9-5 when they failed to make three consecutive plays in the infield, allowing the winning run (plus three more) to score.

"It was good until it wasn't," said manager Davey Martinez, whose team was charged with four errors, three of them in the ninth and 10th, the final five runs surrendered all unearned. "We played in sloppy conditions, and we got sloppy in the last two innings."

A game that had been knotted at 2-2 since the fifth turned on its head in the ninth. Twice. The Giants got a bases-clearing double from Mark Canha on a 1-2, two-out pitch from Kyle Finnegan to take what looked like a commanding, three-run lead. Then García drove a 1-2, two-out pitch from Camilo Doval into the first row beyond the left field wall for a three-run, game-tying homer in the bottom of the inning.

Alex Call had already made one diving catch to end an inning, not to mention singled twice and produced the Nationals’ first run of Wednesday night’s game against the Giants. Eleven days into his latest stint in the big leagues, the 29-year-old outfielder had done just about everything that could be asked of him, providing a welcome spark for a roster that had just lost Lane Thomas and Jesse Winker to trades.

So when Jerar Encarnacion drove a ball deep to right field in the top of the eighth Wednesday, few would’ve faulted Call had he pulled up at the wall, played the ball on a bounce and held Encarnacion to a double.

For Call, that was never really an option.

“I think about making those plays on every pitch, because that really locks you in,” he said. “Playing the outfield, it’s tough sometimes just to stay locked in. That’s how I do it: I think of plays like that. So when you get the opportunity, you see the ball in the air, you run it down. … I’ve been running for a while. I’m still running. The wall’s coming. … And then it just happens and you make the catch and you can feel really good about it. Because that’s how I want to play and how I want to do.”

Call’s leaping catch brought a roar from the crowd and raised arms from his teammates. It also left him on the ground after absorbing the impact of the particular part of the wall he struck, right where the out-of-town scoreboard meets the green padding.

They managed to play the first three games of this series without interruption. Can they actually pull it off and complete the series without issues? The Nationals are sure hoping their decision to move today’s game against the Giants up from 4:05 p.m. to 12:05 p.m. pays off. The forecast isn’t great, but hopefully whatever rain falls this afternoon isn’t enough to completely disrupt the game.

The Nats are also hoping for a four-game split, not to mention a better start out of DJ Herz today than they got from Patrick Corbin, MacKenzie Gore or Jake Irvin each of the last three nights. Each of those starters allowed at least three runs in the first three innings, with the home run a huge problem. Herz kept the ball in the park in his last outing against the Brewers, during which he allowed one unearned run and only two hits over five innings. A comparable effort today against a Giants lineup that has never seen him before would be wonderful.

At the plate, the Nationals need to channel the at-bats they put together Tuesday night while exploding for 11 runs. They actually did a decent job Wednesday against Blake Snell and the San Francisco bullpen, though they squandered a few late opportunities to rally. Today the opponent is fellow left-hander Kyle Harrison, who faced them back in April and allowed three runs over six innings but struck out eight without walking anybody.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs. SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 12:05 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 88.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Rain, 79 degrees, wind 9 mph in from right field

NATIONALS
SS CJ Abrams
RF Alex Call
1B Juan Yepez
C Keibert Ruiz
LF James Wood
DH Harold Ramírez
3B Ildemaro Vargas
2B Luis García Jr.
CF Jacob Young

There wasn’t much of anything Jake Irvin could do about the two runs the Giants scored off him during a sequence of unfortunate events in the top of the third tonight at Nationals Park. There was quite a bit he could’ve done about the three runs that scored off him the next two innings, ultimately the decisive runs in the home team’s 7-4 loss.

Needing a top-flight effort to keep pace with San Francisco ace Blake Snell, Irvin was done in by a string of well-placed hits in the third but then three solo homers after that. It was the right-hander’s fourth subpar start out of his last six, a stretch that is threatening to undo what was a breakthrough first half for the 27-year-old.

"The defense played outstanding. The offense put up some numbers against a Cy Young winner and really good pitcher," Irvin said. "And I let the team down."

The Nationals, meanwhile, failed to carry over any positive momentum from their blowout victory Tuesday night and now need to win Thursday’s rescheduled series finale – first pitch has been moved up to 12:05 p.m. in hopes of beating the worst of the forecasted rain – to salvage a four-game split with the Giants.

"This is a tough time of year, for everybody," manager Davey Martinez said. "And I know they're grinding. These guys are grinding, and they're figuring some stuff out."

If the longtime baseball axiom is true and momentum really is only as good as your next day’s starting pitcher, the Nationals recognize their explosive offensive showing Tuesday night means nothing heading into tonight’s game against Giants ace Blake Snell.

Hence, Davey Martinez’s lineup for this one bears little resemblance to the one that busted out for 11 runs only 24 hours ago.

Luis García Jr. isn’t starting against the left-handed Snell. Neither is Keibert Ruiz or Travis Blankenhorn. Alex Call is suddenly batting second, with Ildemaro Vargas fifth. James Wood, on the heels of a historic performance, was dropped to the sixth spot, behind Vargas.

“I wanted to get righties up there in the lineup,” Martinez said. “Give those guys a chance. I always say try to get the starter. It gives us a chance to try to beat him today.”

This isn’t necessarily anything new for Martinez, who regularly sits García against lefties because of the 218-point difference in his OPS. Vargas, meanwhile, bats .305 with a .767 OPS against left-handers, better than Wood’s .239 and .683 marks.

It’s been a brutally hot summer here, but it hasn’t rained all that much. At least, not enough to have a major impact on Nationals games. That may change over the next three days, with what’s left of Hurricane Debby making its way up the coast and projected to impact the region from later this evening through sometime Friday. The Nats already announced Thursday’s series finale against the Giants has been moved from 4:05 p.m. to 12:05 p.m. in hopes of beating the rain. It remains to be seen if that proactive move will actually pay off. Fingers crossed.

First up, though, is tonight’s regularly scheduled 6:45 p.m. game, and the Nats face a daunting challenge in Blake Snell. The reigning National League Cy Young Award winner no-hit the Reds five days ago, the first time in his career he tossed a complete game. And that was merely the culmination of an utterly dominant stretch: Over his last five starts, Snell has allowed two runs on eight hits, striking out 41 over 33 innings. Yes, the Nats had a big night at the plate Tuesday. That may have no impact on their performance tonight.

Jake Irvin will need to be the best version of himself to give his team a chance tonight. The right-hander got off to a rough start in last outing, allowing three early runs to the Brewers. But he salvaged it and wound up allowing only one more run in 5 2/3 innings. He faced the Giants twice last season and was excellent: three runs, 10 hits, 14 strikeouts over 13 innings.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs. SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 88.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Rain arriving, 80 degrees, wind 10 mph in from right field

NATIONALS
SS CJ Abrams
RF Alex Call
1B Juan Yepez
DH Harold Ramírez
2B Ildemaro Vargas
LF James Wood
C Riley Adams
CF Jacob Young
3B Trey Lipscomb

The ball went soaring off James Wood’s bat and made a beeline for left-center field at Nationals Park, clearing the wall and clearing the red seats that reside in that one area of the stadium, finally coming back to earth at the picnic tables stationed behind the seats.

It’s the kind of territory only a handful of players have ever reached in an actual game since the park opened in 2008. And here was Wood, a 21-year-old rookie, a left-handed hitter, doing it.

“I definitely got it on the barrel,” he said.

Uh, yeah, he most definitely did. Wood’s eighth-inning homer during the Nationals’ 11-5 thumping of the Giants on Tuesday night was his most impressive to date in the big leagues, a 423-foot shot to the opposite field to cap a big-time offensive performance.

Wood had already tripled off the left field wall in his first at-bat, then drawn two walks and stolen two bases before stepping to the plate in the bottom of the eighth. Facing San Francisco right-hander Sean Hjelle, who at 6-foot-11 is one of the only players in the majors who actually dwarfs him, the 6-foot-7 Wood got a 94-mph sinker on the inner-third of the plate, belt-high and absolutely crushed it.

It’s not exactly the way anyone wants this to go, but the Nationals are developing a penchant for surviving disastrous first innings from their starters and finding ways to come back and win at the end of the night.

A sustainable formula for long-term success? No. But they’ll take what they can get right now, and they’ll gladly take tonight’s 11-5 victory over the Giants, in which MacKenzie Gore once again dug his teammates into a hole and those teammates proceeded to dig their way out.

A four-run top of the first against Gore seemed to spell doom for the slumping left-hander and created a big uphill climb for the rest of the Nationals. But they immediately stormed back to take the lead one inning later, then kept hitting against San Francisco’s pitching staff and actually gave their bullpen some cushion for the later innings.

"We went from real gloomy," manager Davey Martinez said, "to boom."

The first big swing came from shortstop CJ Abrams, who led the way with a much-needed, three-run homer during a five-run bottom of the second. Keibert Ruiz also homered, as did James Wood, who reached the picnic tables in left-center in the bottom of the eighth after already tripling, drawing two walks and stealing two bases to complement a well balanced offensive attack from the same lineup that scored only one run Monday night against Logan Webb and the Giants bullpen.

Plenty of hitters have enjoyed long, successful careers despite developing a reputation for being streaky. CJ Abrams may be trying to take that idea to a new extreme.

The Nationals’ All-Star shortstop has been through a roller coaster of a season to date, performing at both ends of the offensive spectrum.

Abrams posted an excellent .295/.373/.619 slash line in April, getting off to a fantastic start. Then he slumped in May, producing a slash line of .205/.216/.304. Once the calendar flipped to June, he turned red-hot again, finishing with a stellar .374/.464/.663 slash line that earned him his first career All-Star selection. But through July and the first five days of August, he’s plummeted back to earth, with a .167/.265/.283 slash line that has threatened to undo some of the good work he did in the season’s first half.

Nobody stays hot all season long at the plate. It’s inherently a streaky pursuit. But how can Abrams, in particular, turn those down periods a bit more respectable while waiting for another hot streak to kick in?

“Accept his walks,” manager Davey Martinez said. “He’s got to learn how to accept his walks. He’s seeing a lot more breaking pitches this year than he did last year. Last year, they were trying to pound him in, throw the ball up. He got better at hitting those balls. Now he’s getting a lot more off-speed stuff. He’s got to be able to identify them, get ready a little earlier and identify them early. And give himself a chance.”

If you create a short list of Nationals players for whom the season’s final two months are especially important, MacKenzie Gore would certainly be included. The left-hander had a really strong opening two months, producing a 2.91 ERA and 1.278 WHIP in 11 starts. His last 11 starts, though, haven’t come close to that level: a 6.36 ERA and 1.758 WHIP.

So, which version of Gore will we see in August and September? The answer to that question could go a long way toward shaping everyone’s vision of what the 25-year-old really is heading into next season. He was better last week in Arizona, though still not great. An even better showing tonight against the Giants would be a nice indicator of an upward trend for him.

The Nationals would also love to provide Gore with some run support. To do so, they’ll have to take down a foe none of them has ever seen before. Hayden Birdsong, a 22-year-old rookie in only his third professional season, gets the start tonight. The right-hander has been quite good, with a 2.51 ERA and 1.169 WHIP in 13 starts at Double-A and Triple-A before making his major league debut, then a 2.97 ERA and 1.220 WHIP in six starts since arriving. He strikes out a lot of batters (11.3 per nine innings) but he also walks a lot of batters (4.5 per nine innings).

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs. SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 88.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Partly cloudy, 90 degrees, wind 13 mph out to left field

NATIONALS
SS CJ Abrams
1B Juan Yepez
2B Luis García Jr.
C Keibert Ruiz
LF James Wood
DH Travis Blankenhorn
RF Alex Call
3B Ildemaro Vargas
CF Jacob Young

The trade deadline has passed, and what an eventual deadline it was for the Nationals this year. Four key veterans (Hunter Harvey, Lane Thomas, Jesse Winker, Dylan Floro) were traded for a horde of prospects, none of whom are in the big leagues yet. That leaves the Nats with a very different roster than they had a few weeks ago, with some obvious holes in both their lineup and their bullpen that have been difficult to adequately fill so far.

There are still nearly two months to go, though, and quite a bit still at stake for a number of players who are trying to secure their place on the roster of a 2025 team that still seems to believe it can contend if the right pieces are in place. That, for better or worse, is going to be the focus the rest of the way.

It's been a while since we did one of these Q&A's, so let's get back on the horse and give it a try. If you have a question you'd like to ask, please submit it in the comments section below, then check back throughout the morning for my responses ...

Twelve seconds. It took all of one dozen seconds for the air to be sucked out of Nationals Park this muggy Monday evening, the time between Patrick Corbin’s first pitch to Tyler Fitzgerald and his second pitch to the Giants leadoff man.

The first one was innocuous enough, a 91 mph sinker that caught the outer edge of the strike zone to give Corbin the early advantage. Then came the second one, another 91 mph sinker, this one over the plate and at the knees.

Fitzgerald took a mighty whack at it, the crack of the bat echoing throughout the ballpark, the ball soaring 416 feet to left field for a game-opening homer that set the tone for what would end up a 4-1 loss by the Nationals that felt like it was decided 12 seconds in.

What already loomed as a tough matchup on paper – Logan Webb vs. a groundball-hitting Nats lineup, Corbin on the heels of a disastrous start in Arizona, with a depleted bullpen behind him – only grew more daunting when the Nationals’ beleaguered left-hander dug his team into an immediate 1-0 hole.

"First batter of the game, if that happens, there's a lot of game left," Corbin said of Fitzgerald, who has 11 homers in his last 17 games. "Sometimes it takes you a pitch or two to locate your fastball. It's just unfortunate that he hit that one out of the ballpark."

Joey Gallo is finally ready to start playing in games again. Minor league games, to be sure, but games nonetheless.

Gallo, out nearly two months with a strained left hamstring, is set to begin a rehab assignment Tuesday with Triple-A Rochester, which could put the big slugger on track to rejoin the Nationals’ major league roster next week.

The 30-year-old is expected to play five innings at first base Tuesday when the Red Wings open a six-game road trip in Buffalo. He’ll then serve as designated hitter Wednesday, then play right field Thursday.

With the Nationals needing outfield help after the trades of Lane Thomas and Jesse Winker, and with Juan Yepez having hit well since taking over at first base last month, Gallo could wind up seeing more time in right field once he returns from the injured list.

“We’ll see how things go,” manager Davey Martinez said. “I love him playing first base; he’s done really well over there. But there will be some times when I might have to put him right field, so I want him to get some reps out there.”