Early trends that explain the Nationals' 1-5 start

TORONTO – Baseball players aren’t the type to look at the standings this early in the season, but if the Nationals happened to take a glance Wednesday evening at the NL East table, they wouldn’t like what they saw.

With two series in the books, the Nats are 1-5. They barely avoided a sweep against the Phillies. They couldn’t avoid a sweep against the Blue Jays. If not for the snakebit Braves, now 0-7 after giving up a walk-off homer to Shohei Ohtani, they’d reside in the basement. Not that their position in a distant fourth place is anything to get excited about.

“It’s difficult,” outfielder Dylan Crews said. “It’s something that we definitely don’t want. We want to win every single game. But it’s only April. April 2. So we’ve got May, June, July, August, September. I think we can really flip this thing around here in the future. … I see a lot of talent on this team.”

The Nationals clubhouse remained an optimistic place this week, even after three straight losses to the Blue Jays. The genuine belief in the room is that this is a significantly improved team from 2024, one that expects more of itself in 2025.

But they also know they can’t let things continue at this rate for long, lest they dig themselves into such a deep hole they can’t reasonably climb their way out of it.

“Obviously we have over 100 baseball games left,” designated hitter Josh Bell said. “And it’s not a matter of if we get hot. It’s a matter of when. Hopefully, it starts this weekend.”

The Nats get a chance to catch their breath today before opening a six-game homestand Friday against the Diamondbacks (4-2) and Dodgers (8-0). If they really are going to get hot soon, it’s going to require a reversal of several troubling trends from the season’s first week. Such as …

* The inability to take early leads
The Nationals have done the majority of their scoring late in games. Fifteen of the 21 total runs they’ve scored through six games have come from the sixth inning on. They have yet to score in the first inning, having produced only two hits in that opening stanza. They’ve scored twice in the second, also on two hits. And they haven’t yet scored in the third inning, totaling three hits.

“The at-bats have to get better early in games,” manager Davey Martinez said. “We talk about scoring first and trying to get on the starters early, and it just hasn’t happened. Late in the games, we’ve been swinging the bats good. But there’s nine innings. We’ve got to come out swinging from the get-go.”

What’s going on? In their defense, the Nats have faced some high quality opposing starters, from Zack Wheeler to Aaron Nola to Jose Berrios to Bowden Francis. But on Wednesday they faced Easton Lucas, a previously unknown left-hander with 14 career appearances for three franchises (all in relief) and a 9.82 ERA. They looked completely flummoxed by the 28-year-old, who tossed five scoreless innings of one-hit ball.

* The inability to produce clutch hits
In a complete reversal of their offensive formula from the last two seasons, the Nationals are actually hitting for power. They’ve got nine homers, eighth-most in the majors. But they aren’t scoring runs the old fashioned way, with only seven of their 21 runs scoring via batted balls that didn’t leave the yard.

With runners in scoring position, they’re just 7-for-42, a .167 batting average. Even worse, they’ve drawn only two walks in those situations, leading to an abysmal .205 on-base percentage.

And they aren’t even giving themselves that many scoring opportunities. The Nats actually went 1-for-1 with runners in scoring position Wednesday. That one hit and at-bat came with two outs in the ninth, when Bell tapped a dribbler down the third base line for a cheap infield single, one that could only advance Nathaniel Lowe from second to third.

* The inability to force the opposition to earn its way on base, especially late
We know the bullpen has been a mess so far, though it did perform better against Toronto than it did against Philadelphia. But that group’s biggest problem area hasn’t been loud contact. It’s been no contact at all, because not enough pitches have been in the strike zone.

Nats relievers have issued 18 walks in 19 2/3 innings. That’s third-most in the majors, but the two teams behind him (the Marlins and Cubs) have totaled at least 13 more innings than they have.

* The inability to execute with the game on the line
The record may suggest they’re getting dominated, but the Nationals have actually had a chance to win just about every game so far. In four of the six contests, they either held a lead or were tied in the sixth inning or beyond.

But aside from Sunday’s 5-1 win over the Phillies, in which they never trailed, they haven’t done the little things needed in big moments late to seize control of games. This has come in the form of errors in the field, outs made on the bases and contact not made at the plate.

“It is the sixth game of the year, and we’re not getting blown out or anything,” left-hander MacKenzie Gore said. “We just have to figure out how to win these games instead of lose them.”

Easy to say. Harder to do.