Keep the band together or try to build a new champion?

Keep the band together or try to build a new champion?
For 15 years - but especially for the last eight years - they tried to find the right combination of talent, character and toughness to win a championship. And when they finally found it this season, the Nationals enjoyed one of the greatest October runs in baseball history. So it's only natural to now wonder how they might best try to put themselves right back in the same position next October in search of back-to-back titles. And the easiest answer is: Just keep the band together. Why...
Continue reading

What are the Nationals' positions of need this winter?

What are the Nationals' positions of need this winter?
As stated over the last couple of days, the fun is now over and it's time to start looking ahead to 2020. Not that the Nationals wouldn't love to just freeze time for a while and keep celebrating their championship. Unfortunately, the rest of the baseball world doesn't care about that and has already proceeded into the hot stove league. Thus, the Nats have no choice but to start making plans for next season. Which means we have no choice but to start looking at what they need for next...
Continue reading

With free agency underway, Nats extend two qualifying offers

With free agency underway, Nats extend two qualifying offers
Five full days have passed since the Nationals won the World Series, and a lot has a lot happened in those five days. The celebration phase of the post-Game 7 victory time period, alas, is over. And now it's time to get down to serious business. Free agency is now fully underway, with all unsigned players free to negotiate with anybody they want. That doesn't mean there's going to be a sudden flurry of moves in the next 48 hours. Baseball, lest you forget, doesn't act that way. It's a...
Continue reading

Nationals wrap up title celebration with White House visit

Nationals wrap up title celebration with White House visit
One by one, they walked out, players and coaches filling the steps on both sides of the South Portico, where they were greeted by a crowd of several thousand that included team employees, administration employees and fans with connections who were given the opportunity to fill out the South Lawn and watch as the Nationals wrapped up their three-day World Series victory celebration with a White House visit. These events, offered to most professional and major college teams that win...
Continue reading

A look at every player's contract status entering the offseason

A look at every player's contract status entering the offseason
As you may have already realized, the offseason came quick this year. Not because it began any earlier than any previous one. Because the Nationals' season lasted longer than any previous one. So even though the Nats are still in the midst of a World Series championship celebration that continues this afternoon with a trip to the White House, they're already in the process of figuring out who's going to be on the roster in 2020. Stephen Strasburg opted out of the remaining four years of his...
Continue reading

Strasburg opts out; Nats decline options on Zimmerman, Gomes

Strasburg opts out; Nats decline options on Zimmerman, Gomes
Only hours after riding through a sea of red-clad fans and then speaking from his heart during the club's World Series celebration parade and rally, Stephen Strasburg opted out of the remainder of his contract with the Nationals and officially became a free agent. The opt-out, first reported by MLB.com and confirmed by a source familiar with the move, had been expected for some time. Strasburg had four years and $100 million ($40 million of which was deferred through 2030) remaining on the...
Continue reading

A wild, funny, emotional celebration for champs

A wild, funny, emotional celebration for champs
It began at 15th Street NW and Constitution Avenue, where more than a dozen buses filled with Nationals players and coaches embarked on a mile-long parade along with plenty of marchers, including front office employees, local Little Leaguers, students from the team's Youth Baseball Academy and more. The final bus held (among others) Ryan Zimmerman, Davey Martinez and Mike Rizzo. Oh, and the Commissioner's Trophy, which was hoisted high in the air to the delight of the tens of thousands who...
Continue reading

Three-day celebration begins with parade and rally

Three-day celebration begins with parade and rally
To the victors go the spoils, and the Nationals are about to be very spoiled over the next three days. After enjoying one day off at home to recover from their World Series-clinching victory (and subsequent celebration) in Houston, the Nats are about to go into full-scale party mode over the next 72 hours, with a parade, a stop at a Capitals game and then a trip to the White House. It begins today with a parade so many people have waited so long to experience. Here are the pertinent details: *...
Continue reading

Nationals decline $4 million mutual option on Adams

Nationals decline $4 million mutual option on Adams
The offseason waits for no one, not even the World Series champions. So even as they finalize plans for Saturday's parade and Monday's White House visit, the Nationals still had to make the first of many key baseball decisions that loom this winter. The club declined its portion of a $4 million mutual option for the 2020 season on first baseman Matt Adams, electing instead to pay the veteran slugger a $1 million buyout and thus making him a free agent. The Nationals could still re-sign Adams...
Continue reading

Memories from the greatest month in Nationals history

Memories from the greatest month in Nationals history
It's been roughly 32 hours now since the Nationals won the World Series, and I'm not sure it's really sunk in to anyone yet that it actually happened. Everything remains such a blur, the tension of the first six innings of Game 7, the shock of the three-batter sequence that flipped the game in the Nats' favor in the top of the seventh, the nervous energy of waiting for those final nine outs to be recorded and then the celebration that ensued. Really, the entire postseason remains a blur....
Continue reading

Star-studded, resilient Nationals earned this title

Star-studded, resilient Nationals earned this title
HOUSTON - It would be easy to look at the 2019 Washington Nationals as a good team that went on a great October run to win the World Series. Really, it's one of the great October runs (12-5 to topple the Brewers, Dodgers, Cardinals and Astros) in baseball's wild card era. But that's still not entirely fair to this team. It seems to minimize the big picture and label the Nats as a team that simply got red-hot at the right time and rode the wave all the way to a championship. Here's how they...
Continue reading

National champs: D.C. rallies again to win World Series (updated)

GettyImages-1184542302

HOUSTON - It had to happen this way. It could not have happened any other way.

If the Nationals were going to win the World Series, if they were going to deliver Washington its first Major League Baseball championship in 95 years, they were going to have to do it the same way they had done it all season long - and especially all postseason long.

They were going to have to get a courageous pitching performance from one of their two aces. They were going to have to come from behind - and late - in a winner-take-all October classic. And they were going to have to trust the back end of their bullpen to hang on and finish off the biggest victory by a ballclub from Washington since 1924.

So when it happened, when it actually happened, when Max Scherzer gutted out five innings without his best stuff, when Anthony Rendon and Howie Kendrick homered during a stunning seventh-inning rally, and when Patrick Corbin and Daniel Hudson combined to pitch four innings of scoreless relief, when the Nationals mobbed each other at the center of the diamond upon sealing a 6-2 victory over the Astros in Game 7 of the World Series, it just felt right.

"This is the most 2019 Nats thing ever," reliever Sean Doolittle said. "Another elimination game. Another come-from-behind win."

Continue reading

Suzuki scratched from lineup, Gomes to catch (Nats win 6-2)

Suzuki scratched from lineup, Gomes to catch (Nats win 6-2)
HOUSTON - Much as he hoped to be behind the plate one more time in 2019, Kurt Suzuki instead will have to watch Game 7 of the World Series from the bench, with perhaps a chance he comes off the bench at some point. Suzuki, who hasn't played since injuring his right hip flexor in Game 3 on Friday, was initially included in tonight's starting lineup, batting eighth and catching Max Scherzer. But he was scratched by the Nationals about 2 1/2 hours before first pitch, with Yan Gomes taking his...
Continue reading

World Series Game 7 lineups: Nats at Astros (updated)

World Series Game 7 lineups: Nats at Astros (updated)
HOUSTON - Well, here we are. It's the day before Halloween. There's one baseball game remaining on the 2019 schedule. And the Nationals are playing in it. Who'd have thunk it? There's really nothing like Game 7 of the World Series. It's something so many other teams and fan bases have experienced before, including the Astros only two years ago, but it's completely new for the Nationals, who had never even been involved in a Game 6 in any round of the postseason prior to Tuesday night....
Continue reading

"It had to be this way": Remarkable season comes down to Game 7

"It had to be this way": Remarkable season comes down to Game 7
HOUSTON - Sean Doolittle was holding court with a large group of reporters long after Game 6 had ended Tuesday night. There were some familiar faces in attendance, but most of those interviewing the veteran reliever don't regularly cover the Nationals and perhaps are just now starting to get a real sense of what this 2019 campaign has been like. Was Doolittle surprised, someone asked, that the World Series was now going to a decisive Game 7? He was not. "For the people that followed the team...
Continue reading

With chaos around him, Strasburg sends Nats to Game 7 (updated)

With chaos around him, Strasburg sends Nats to Game 7 (updated)
HOUSTON - Chaos was consuming every corner of Minute Maid Park, Game 6 of the World Series having turned into one of the wildest, most entertaining, most infuriating contests the Fall Classic has ever experienced. Alex Bregman and Juan Soto were trying to out-homer and out-celebrate each other. Adam Eaton and Anthony Rendon were getting in on the act as well, at least the home run part. Trea Turner was trying not to blow his stack after the latest (and probably most egregious) call to go...
Continue reading

Suzuki sits again, but would catch Game 7 (Nats win 7-2)

Suzuki sits again, but would catch Game 7 (Nats win 7-2)
HOUSTON - Though he's not in the lineup tonight for the third consecutive game, Kurt Suzuki is expected to return to the Nationals lineup and catch Max Scherzer if the World Series is extended to Game 7. Suzuki, who suffered a right hip flexor injury during Game 3 on Friday, said Monday he was getting better and hoped he'd be ready to start Game 6 tonight. But manager Davey Martinez elected to go with Yan Gomes, who will catch Stephen Strasburg and try to extend the season one more...
Continue reading

Scherzer throws, able to start potential Game 7

Scherzer throws, able to start potential Game 7
HOUSTON - If there's a Game 7 to the 2019 World Series, Max Scherzer will start it for the Nationals. Manager Davey Martinez made that proclamation late this afternoon after Scherzer completed a 10-minute throwing session in left field at Minute Maid Park and reported himself good to go just two days after he was scratched from his scheduled Game 5 start and received a cortisone injection in his neck. "He threw, he felt good," Martinez said. "We'll see what transpires between now and...
Continue reading

World Series Game 6 lineups: Nats at Astros

World Series Game 6 lineups: Nats at Astros
HOUSTON - They've played 177 games, won 103 of them, three of those when staring elimination in the face. They'll play Game 178 tonight, and the only way they can ensure there will be a Game 179 is to win. Is this the biggest game in Nationals history? Well, yeah. The Nats themselves, of course, will insist they can't think of it that way. They've specialized all year long in focusing on the daily task at hand and ignoring the larger significance. It's worked up until now. Might as well...
Continue reading

Backs against wall again, Nats try to pull off rare World Series feat

Backs against wall again, Nats try to pull off rare World Series feat
HOUSTON - They've won three elimination games in the last month, twice when trailing by multiple runs in the eighth inning. And that's to say nothing of the uphill climb they faced after opening this remarkable season 19-31 before reaching the World Series. So while there are plenty of reasons to doubt the Nationals' ability to come back from three straight home losses to the Astros over the weekend and now flip the 115th Fall Classic back in their favor the next two nights at Minute Maid...
Continue reading