PITTSBURGH - Matt Wieters' return from the disabled list was rather uneventful. The veteran catcher went 1-for-4 at the plate, caught all eight defensive innings and allowed two Pittsburgh runners to steal second base. Of greater importance to Wieters was that his surgically repaired hamstring held up and allowed him to play a full big league game for the first time in nearly two months.
"Obviously, would've liked to get a win, but it was fun to be out there with the guys again," he said....
PITTSBURGH - The Nationals have any number of issues right now, from a super-erratic lineup equally capable of being shut out or scoring 17 runs on any given night, to a steady stream of mistakes made on the bases and in the field.
None of those issues, however, can or should take priority at the moment over the most glaring problem facing this club: a starting rotation that shockingly has morphed from the roster's biggest strength to its biggest weakness.
Aside from Max Scherzer, the...
PITTSBURGH - Stephen Strasburg will make a rehab start Tuesday for Single-A Potomac and remains on track to rejoin the Nationals' rotation coming out of the All-Star break.
And that'll be not a moment too soon for a Nats ballcub that desperately needs one of its elite starters back after a brutally difficult stretch over the last month.
Strasburg, who went on the 10-day disabled list June 10 with right shoulder inflammation, is slated to pitch Tuesday for Potomac in a road game at Lynchburg....
PITTSBURGH - Not quite eight weeks removed from right hamstring surgery, Matt Wieters is back on the Nationals' active roster and back in the starting lineup for tonight's series opener against the Pirates. Now the Nats can only hope the return of their No. 1 catcher makes a significant difference for a pitching staff that floundered with Pedro Severino and Spencer Kieboom behind the plate.
"He led our pitching staff a lot," manager Davey Martinez said. "And Sevy did a great job. For being...
PITTSBURGH - The Nationals have scored 14 or more runs in three of their last 10 games. The Pirates have given up 17 runs twice in their last six games. So, what to expect in tonight's series opener at PNC Park? Maybe a 1-0 nail-biter?
Seriously, though, who knows what to expect from the Nats these days? They seem just as likely to hit five balls into the Allegheny River as they are to get shut out. You just don't know what you're going to get on any given day.
The Nationals do know they...
The Nationals' record-breaking, 14-12 victory Thursday night had some eye-popping moments. Most of them were positive. But not all of them were. There were still some issues on display during 3 hours and 15 minutes of chaos on South Capitol Street.
Start with the starter. Jeremy Hellickson was pounded by the Marlins, giving up nine runs in four innings, and doing all this when he supposedly wasn't 100 percent healthy. Prior to the game, manager Davey Martinez acknowledged Hellickson had been...
It's easy, in hindsight, to claim you believed you could come back from nine runs down to win a major league baseball game. Deep down, there had to be plenty inside the Nationals dugout who figured they were headed for one of their most demoralizing losses of the year when the Marlins put up nine runs to their zero in the first 3 1/2 innings tonight on South Capitol Street.
And yet, the vibe inside the home bullpen suggested the sense of hope was real. Even when things looked their worst,...
There isn't a players-only meeting in the world that can accomplish what a good old-fashioned, club-record, come-from-behind victory can.
Forget about the fact the Nationals gathered after Wednesday's loss to the Red Sox to air their grievances and vow to start playing better. That mattered not a whit if they didn't follow it up by beating the Marlins tonight.
And boy did they beat the Marlins. Despite spotting them a nine-run lead after 3 1/2 innings.
With their season seemingly teetering...
For all the attention lavished upon Wednesday's postgame players meeting, the only thing that really matters for the Nationals is that they start hitting, pitching and catching the ball significantly better than they have been in weeks.
They haven't been doing any of those things well so far tonight in what felt like a must-win game at the outset.
One day after players held a 15-minute meeting following a series sweep at the hands of the Red Sox, the Nationals put themselves in a nine-run...
The Nationals wasted no time placing Erick Fedde on the disabled list, even though they don't expect the right-hander to miss significant time with his shoulder injury. And they wasted no time calling up Jefry Rodriguez to replace Fedde in the rotation ... unless the rookie is needed in emergency relief of Jeremy Hellickson tonight.
Fedde, who departed Wednesday morning's game after only 25 pitches when his shoulder was "having trouble getting loose," underwent an MRI afterward that...
The Nationals are in a tough spot, we all know that. Here's what else we know: Their final 11 games before the All-Star break come against the Marlins, Pirates and Mets. If they've got a major turnaround in them, now would be an opportune time to get started.
The Nats have faced the Marlins only three times this season, and they won all three of those games in Miami. So these guys are going to be seeing a whole lot of each other over the next 2 1/2 months, beginning tonight with Jeremy...
The headlines Wednesday at Nationals Park focused on what happened after the home team's 3-0 loss to the Red Sox, when players spent 15 minutes airing their grievances to each other and deciding it's time to quit assuming they're going to coast to another division title and start actually scratching and clawing to try to get back to the postseason.
Lost in the shuffle were some important details and reactions to the events that actually took place on the field during that 3-0 loss, the...
It took their 17th loss in 22 games (the club's worst stretch since 2009), their eighth shutout in 30 games (more times than they were shut out in all of 2017) and a sub-.500 record in July (the first time that's been the case since 2015) for someone inside the Nationals clubhouse to decide it was time to gather everyone together and let the emotions flow.
That someone, as you might expect, was Max Scherzer. The three-time Cy Young Award winner and staff ace wasn't the only one who spoke out...
No matter what happened the previous night, or any other night during this agonizing stretch of baseball, the Nationals reported for work early this morning trying to feel optimistic for a change. They had Matt Adams back on the active roster only 19 days after he fractured his index finger trying to bunt. They had a full house for an 11:05 a.m. game on Independence Day in the nation's capital.
And then, one inning in, optimism was quashed at the sight of another player (starter Erick Fedde)...
Whatever good vibes the Nationals hoped to get from their annual Independence Day morning game quickly dissipated in the top of the second inning when Erick Fedde walked off the mound with an apparent injury and left this reeling pitching staff in a major bind as it tries to avoid a sweep at the hands of the Red Sox.
Fedde threw only 25 total pitches, four of them to Rafael Devers to lead off the top of the second. His fastball velocity, which topped out at 95 mph in the first inning, dropped...
When he learned he had fractured his left index finger June 15 in Toronto, Matt Adams assumed he'd be forced to miss a considerable amount of time, certainly more than a month.
Only 19 days later, though, Adams is back on the Nationals' active roster, available off the bench for today's series finale against the Red Sox and set to rejoin the lineup this weekend against the Marlins.
"From everything that was being told to me, I think it's a little sooner than we expected," the left-handed...
The Nationals have lost 14 of their last 18 games. They're seven games out of first place, 4 1/2 games out of second place. They're a .500 club right now that can't seem to do anything right. But you know what? It's Independence Day in the District of Columbia, and there's a ballgame being played today in town. It could be worse, a lot worse.
It would be better, of course, if the Nationals could pull off a win today against the Red Sox and avoid a series sweep (not to mention a sub-.500...
Davey Martinez praised the Nationals for the effort they displayed during Monday night's 4-3 loss to the Red Sox, right down to Anthony Rendon's scorched line out to left field for the final out in the bottom of the ninth.
"If they keep playing with that kind of intensity, we'll start winning games," the rookie manager said. "Things will turn around for us. Think about it, the last ball hit was smoked. I think it was 111 mph off the bat (actually 105 mph). So I got no problem with the way...
The Nationals keep doing just enough to lose ballgames. When they need to drive in the tying runner in scoring position, they strand him. When they need to keep a deficit at one run, they give a run back. When they need to make sure all 27 outs they make are at the plate, they make one on the bases.
Is it any wonder they keep losing one-run games?
Add tonight's 4-3 defeat at the hands of the Red Sox to the mix. It's the Nationals' fifth straight loss by one run, their 16th of the season...
When things aren't going well, Davey Martinez is a big believer in the "less-is-more" approach. He's a big believer in it, in part, because he saw it work firsthand last year in Chicago.
The Cubs, you may have forgotten, entered the 2017 All-Star break two games under .500 and 5 1/2 games back in the National League Central.
At some point that summer, manager Joe Maddon (with input from Martinez, his bench coach) decided to cancel batting practice and have his struggling players just show...