We have reached the finish line. It’s Game 162, and while this one doesn’t officially matter for either team, there are still some personal achievements on the line. And for the Nationals, a chance to close out the year with a surprising sweep of the playoff-bound Phillies and to top last year’s win total with No. 72.

It’ll be Jake Irvin on the mound one last time. And as was the case Saturday with MacKenzie Gore, he’ll be looking for win No. 11, a number no Nats starter has reached since 2019. Unlike Gore, Irvin can’t get his ERA down below the 4.00 mark – unless he can go 10 2/3 scoreless innings – but he can finish on a high note. And if he can complete 6 2/3 innings, he’ll reach the 190 mark for the season, no small accomplishment.

At the plate, James Wood needs another homer to reach 10 in his rookie season. Dylan Crews needs a good day to get his batting average over .200. Oh, and in the bullpen, Derek Law needs to record one more out to get to 90 innings for the season.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 3:05 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 88.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Chance of rain, 74 degrees, wind 7 mph in from center field

NATIONALS
2B Luis García Jr.
LF James Wood
DH Juan Yepez
3B José Tena
RF Dylan Crews
1B Joey Gallo
C Drew Millas
CF Jacob Young
SS Nasim Nuñez

The Nationals want MacKenzie Gore to be the ace of their next winning team. MacKenzie Gore wants to be the ace of the Nationals’ next winning team.

To get there, the left-hander knows he needs to find a level of consistency that has heretofore eluded him in two full big league seasons. But if he can bottle up what he did over the last six weeks of this season – and especially what he did in the last of his six scoreless innings today – he’s got an awfully good chance of realizing his full potential.

With strikeouts of Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner and Bryce Harper, Gore concluded his 32nd and final start of 2024 with a flourish. And though the final innings of today’s 6-3 win over the Phillies would feature plenty more drama – Turner’s game-tying homer off Jose A. Ferrer, a jawing match between Harper and Ferrer that prompted benches and bullpens to empty, Keibert Ruiz’s go-ahead single scoring James Wood, Joey Gallo’s three-run homer for good measure – none of that should overshadow the significance of Gore’s performance.

"Here's a guy who can win 18-20 games for us," said manager Davey Martinez, whose team matched last year's total with its 71st win. "When he's in the strike zone, he's really good. Today, he proved that."

The last two innings of this game, played before a bipartisan, sellout crowd of 38,135, had plenty of action (and offense) after a classic pitchers’ duel between Gore and Zack Wheeler.

The Nationals’ decision in mid-August to re-sign their entire coaching staff caught most outside observers by surprise. Yes, the team had shown signs of progress, but not so much progress that the decision to bring everyone back was a no-brainer.

If nothing else, conventional wisdom suggested the front office would wait until season’s end to evaluate coaches’ performance and then make decisions about everyone’s fate heading into 2025.

The early decision, prompted by manager Davey Martinez’s desire to let all of his coaches have peace of mind and not have to sweat out the season’s final month-and-a-half, was approved by general manager Mike Rizzo and ultimately by club ownership.

The Nationals owned a 55-65 record on Aug. 14 when Martinez announced the decision. They’ve gone 15-25 since and are now 20 games under .500 in the season’s final weekend. They need to win their final two games to surpass last year’s win total of 71.

Rizzo, who met with beat reporters Friday for the first time since the coaching decision, was asked both about the timing of the move and the rationale for retaining the whole staff.

Who were those guys in Nationals uniforms Friday night, and why haven’t we seen more of them during this final month of the season? It’s too late for them to rewrite the past, but maybe that 9-1 thumping of the Phillies bodes well for the rest of the weekend.

Then again, for the Nats to keep the good times rolling, they’re going to have to do it against Zack Wheeler, the perennial Cy Young candidate who enters his final tune-up before the postseason with a 16-7 record and 2.56 ERA, with two of those wins coming against Washington. This is remarkably Wheeler’s 35th career start vs. the Nationals, and though his overall numbers (14-15, 4.50 ERA) aren’t great, he’s been much better since leaving the Mets and joining the Phillies in 2020.

MacKenzie Gore makes his final start of an up-and-down season, hoping to finish strong. The lefty enters with 10 wins and a 4.04 ERA. In order to end up with an ERA in the 3.00s, he either needs to give up one run in at least 4 2/3 innings or two runs in at least 6 1/3 innings. That will be a challenge against this lineup, but we’ll see if he can pull it off.  

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 4:05 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 88.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Partly cloudy, 84 degrees, wind 7 mph out to left field

NATIONALS
2B Luis García Jr.
LF James Wood
C Keibert Ruiz
3B José Tena
DH Juan Yepez
RF Dylan Crews
1B Joey Gallo
CF Jacob Young
SS Nasim Nuñez

Anyone who paid zero attention to Trevor Williams over the last two seasons would probably have a hard time grasping how he pitched for the Nationals, based solely on his final stat lines.

2023: 6-10, 5.55 ERA, 1.600 WHIP in 30 starts.

2024: 6-1, 2.03 ERA, 1.035 WHIP in 13 starts.

What was wrong with the right-hander in his first season in D.C.? And how did he pull off a complete 180 the following season? And why did he only make 13 starts when he was that good?

All valid questions, and the kind of questions that can only be answered by those who watched it all and understand the wild path he took to get to this point.

The ball went soaring off Stone Garrett’s bat and made a beeline for the left field bleachers, one of those no-doubters that leaves the crowd oohing and aahing before anyone officially knows where it’s going to land.

Garrett, of course, knew it too. And his reaction – fist pumps, verbal exclamation – revealed everything you needed to know about the significance of this moment for the 28-year-old slugger.

"I don't even know the word to describe it," he said. "Rounding the bases, I blacked out."

In his first major league plate appearance in 13 months, his first since he broke his left leg and tore his ankle ligament in a gruesome injury at Yankee Stadium, Garrett had hit a 431-foot home run, the signature moment of the Nationals’ 9-1 thumping of the playoff-bound Phillies in the opener of the final series of the season.

He finished 3-for-4 with three RBIs and a walk, a triple shy of what might’ve been the most remarkable cycle in baseball history.

The Nationals’ decision to demote CJ Abrams for disciplinary, not performance, reasons last week hasn’t changed the organization’s outlook on their All-Star shortstop for 2025 and beyond, general manager Mike Rizzo insisted today.

“No, absolutely not. He’s still our guy,” Rizzo said in an end-of-season session with reporters. “We love him, and he’s going to be a great player for us. Optioning him out wasn’t the end of the world. We have a standard here, and we have to keep people accountable. He still has great upside and is still going to be, in our minds, a great major league shortstop.”

Abrams was shockingly optioned to Triple-A Rochester one week ago after he was reportedly caught staying out all night in Chicago prior to the team’s afternoon game at Wrigley Field. With the minor league season ending the following day, the 23-year-old was sent to West Palm Beach, Fla., where he has spent this week working out with a handful of other Triple-A players who are on standby in case the Nationals need to make any last-minute roster moves.

The very public demotion of Abrams, which both Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez have acknowledged was not performance-based, stunned the entire baseball community and raised questions about his future with the organization.

Both Rizzo and Martinez, though, have stressed the message they delivered to Abrams – while disciplinary – was one of encouragement.

It has not been an encouraging finish to what had been looking like an encouraging season for the Nationals. They’ve lost nine of their last 10 and now would need to sweep the Phillies this weekend just to get to 72 wins and surpass last year’s total. The odds of that happening? Probably not great, especially with Philadelphia still trying to catch the Dodgers for home field advantage in the National League playoffs. Los Angeles leads by one game entering tonight, but the Phillies hold the tiebreaker.

Patrick Corbin made his final start for the Nats on Thursday, and tonight Trevor Williams is making what may or may not be his final start. The right-hander’s contract expires, but given how well he pitched (when healthy) there’s a case to be made for bringing him back on a modest deal, either as No. 5 starter or a long reliever. First things first, he needs to do to the Phillies what he’s done to so many other lineups this year and keep them in the ballpark and off the scoreboard.

The Nationals are really struggling to score runs right now, and the challenge tonight doesn’t get any easier against Ranger Suárez. The lefty owns a 3.15 ERA and 1.157 WHIP this season. He faced the Nats only once this year, way back on April 6, and allowed two runs over six innings to earn the win.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES
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, 74 degrees, wind 14 mph in from right field

NATIONALS
RF Dylan Crews
LF James Wood
1B Juan Yepez
C Keibert Ruiz
DH Stone Garrett
2B Luis García Jr.
3B Ildemaro Vargas
CF Jacob Young
SS Nasim Nuñez

When Patrick Corbin signed a six-year, $140 million contract with the Nationals on Dec. 7, 2018, it was praised as yet another massive free agent signing to reinforce one of the best starting rotations in baseball.

The left-hander, who chose to sign with the Nats over a Yankees team he grew up rooting for, joined Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and Aníbal Sánchez in Washington’s rotation after going 11-7 with a 3.15 ERA, 1.050 WHIP and 11.1 strikeouts-per-nine-innings rate in an All-Star season in Arizona.

His first year in a Curly W cap was everything he and the Nats could have hoped for. He finished 14-7 with a 3.25 ERA and some National League Cy Young Award votes before becoming a postseason hero while helping the Nats win their first World Series championship by being credited as the winning pitcher of Game 7 of the Fall Classic.

But after making his first career appearances in October (five of them coming out of the bullpen), Corbin’s career in D.C. took an unexpected turn for the worse.

Starting with the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Corbin statistically became one of the worst pitchers in the major leagues over the next five years of his contract.

Wins and losses aren’t the only measures of success, especially for a rebuilding team. But for a rebuilding team like the Nationals, who believe they are closer to competing than not, the win-loss column is a good marker for improvement.

The five seasons since the 2019 World Series championship have been marred by sub-.500 records, bottoming out with 107 losses in 2022. But the Nats made a lot of progress last year, with a 16-win improvement in 2023. And they were on pace earlier this year to make even more progress by the end of the season.

Eleven days ago, the Nats were only four victories away from surpassing last year’s 71 wins with 13 games remaining. But after a long slump, they were running out of time to achieve that.

Now after a 7-4 loss to finish a sweep at the hands of the Royals, the Nats need to win at least two games against the Phillies this weekend to match last year’s win total and sweep the National League East champions (who are still playing for home-field advantage in the postseason) to surpass it.

"Once again, we just couldn't score any more runs," said manager Davey Martinez after the game.

With the minor league season over, the Nationals player development staff has turned its attention to the various offseason leagues and which young prospects will participate in the coming months.

The official rosters for the Arizona Fall League were announced yesterday, with seven Nationals prospects set to play for the Salt River Rafters: outfielder Robert Hassell III, third baseman Cayden Wallace, catcher Maxwell Romero Jr., right-handers Michael Cuevas and Chase Solesky, and left-handers Matt Cronin and Dustin Saenz.

Hassell is the highest-rated player of the group, ranked as the Nats’ No. 9 prospect by MLB Pipeline and No. 14 by Baseball America. The 23-year-old returns to the AFL for the third straight season after only playing in two games before breaking the hamate bone in his right hand in 2022 (the same year he was acquired by the Nats in the blockbuster Juan Soto and Josh Bell trade with the Padres) and impressing in 20 games last year.

Finally healthy as a non-roster invitee to spring training, Hassell entered this season with high hopes. He started the year strong at Double-A Harrisburg, but another hand/wrist injury limited him to 85 games between the Senators, High-A Wilmington and Triple-A Rochester.

Across the three levels, he slashed .241/.319./.328 with a .647 OPS, five home runs and 28 RBIs in just 362 plate appearances. So the Nats want him to get more at-bats this fall before spring training next year.

Well, today is seemingly the day. Almost seven years after signing a six-year, $140 million deal as a free agent, Patrick Corbin will make what is likely to be his last start with the Nationals this afternoon against the Royals.

Corbin’s impressive debut season and postseason heroics in 2019 have been well documented. So too have been his struggles in the years since being credited as the winning pitcher in Game 7 of the World Series. But through all of that, the veteran left-hander has always been praised for being able to take the ball every five days.

He’ll likely do so for the last time in a Nationals uniform with a 6-13 record, 5.58 ERA and 1.506 WHIP over his first 31 starts this season. If Corbin can turn in one final quality start, he would end his Nats career on a high note with a possible nice ovation from the fans in attendance.

On the other side of the mound, Michael Wacha will make his 29th start for the Royals with a 13-8 record, 3.28 ERA and 1.194 WHIP. If the veteran right-hander can keep this struggling Nats offense in check, the Royals will take one step closer to their first postseason berth since winning the World Series in 2015.

But the Nationals need a win. A week and a half ago, they were only four victories away from surpassing last year’s 71-win total. Now they need to win three of their last four games to achieve that.

The primary object of the great game of baseball is to score runs. You can’t win games without doing that. And the Nationals are being made all too aware of that here in the season’s final week.

For the third straight game, they were shut out, this time in a 3-0 loss to the Royals. They have not scored a run in their last 31 innings.

"I think they're pressing, for sure," manager Davey Martinez said. "We've just got to go out there relaxed tomorrow. Just get a good pitch to hit."

The last member of the Nationals to cross the plate? Joey Gallo, via his three-run homer in the top of the sixth Saturday afternoon at Wrigley Field. Gallo, as a matter of fact, has driven in six of the team’s last nine runs.

Not depressing enough? How about this one: The Nats have been held to zero or one run in seven of their last nine games.

Cade Cavalli was in the Nationals Park bullpen this afternoon, throwing 25 pitches of all varieties at full velocity. He was all smiles afterward. He feels like he would be ready to pitch in games soon, if only the calendar had cooperated.

“We just ran out of time this season,” he said. “I hate it, because I want to be out there more than anything. I miss competing like crazy. We just ran out of time. I’m very excited. There’s a lot of fuel for the fire for 2025.”

Cavalli never did pitch in the major leagues this season, just as he never pitched last season following his March 2023 Tommy John surgery. It appeared the 2020 first-round pick was close this summer. He made three minor league rehab starts and also faced live hitters in a simulated game here in D.C. in which his fastball topped out at 98 mph.

And then he was shut down in late June and didn’t pitch competitively again. What happened?

Cavalli did deal with a bout of the flu at one point, but the larger issue involved his arm. It wasn’t injured, per se, but it wasn’t responding to the workload the way he and team doctors wanted it to, especially the day after he pitched. The term “dead arm” was used to describe the condition.

The Nationals need to score a run tonight. Preferably more than a run. But at least a run after getting shut out each of their previous two games. They’ve actually been held to zero or one run in six of their last eight games, which is a tough way to try to win baseball games.

It’s an interesting matchup tonight against Royals right-hander Michael Lorenzen, who you probably remember no-hitting the Nats last year in Philadelphia. You may not remember that they faced him again nine days later and roughed him up for seven runs in 3 1/3 innings. So, who knows if any of that history matters tonight.

On the other side, DJ Herz takes the mound tonight for the 19th and final time this season. While other members of the Nationals rotation have tended to fare worse in the second half than they did in the first half, Herz had been the exception. In 10 starts since the All-Star break, he owned a 2.76 … until he was beaten up by the Mets last week to the tune of seven runs in 3 1/3 innings (sense a recurring theme here?). So now the young lefty has one last shot to end his season on a high note against a Kansas City lineup that has struggled to score runs as well.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs KANSAS CITY ROYALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN2, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 88.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Chance of rain, 71 degrees, wind 7 mph right field to left field

NATIONALS
RF Dylan Crews
LF James Wood
DH Luis García Jr.
2B José Tena
1B Joey Gallo
3B Ildemaro Vargas
C Drew Millas
CF Jacob Young
SS Nasim Nuñez

Asked if he could remember the last time he made a behind-the-back play in the field like the one he pulled off in the top of the first Tuesday night, Mitchell Parker laughed.

“A long time ago,” he said. “High school.”

And what did Parker think when he realized he had somehow snagged Freddy Fermin’s 98-mph comebacker in such stunning fashion?

“Oh geez, now I’ve got to get it to first base,” he said with another laugh.

Credit the 24-year-old Nationals left-hander for having a keen sense of self-deprecation. He knows how many times he has botched much easier plays in the field than this one, leading to his reputation as one of the worst-fielding pitchers in club history. He also knows he has the ability to get better at it, and Tuesday’s web gem was the best example of that yet.

Neither the Nationals nor the Royals have been able to score runs with any regularity down the stretch of the season, so maybe it was appropriate tonight’s interleague series opener between the two was scoreless into the ninth inning.

The only difference: One of these teams is fighting for its life to secure an unlikely postseason berth, while the other is playing out the string for the fifth straight year.

And at night’s end, the Royals managed to keep their hopes alive with a 1-0, 10-inning victory made possible only because of a Nationals error.

Nasim Nuñez’s low throw to first allowed automatic runner Kyle Isbel to score from second to finally break the scoreless deadlock. And when the Nats couldn’t get their automatic runner home in the bottom of the inning, they were left to stew over their 17th shutout loss of the season.

"It all came down to one play. And execution, not being able to hit the ball," manager Davey Martinez said. "It's kind of been a common theme these last few weeks."

Stone Garrett stood in front of the same locker he occupied in the Nationals Park clubhouse last season, right next to good friend MacKenzie Gore, and smiled wide as he was asked what it felt like to be back here for the first time in 2024.

“It’s like getting called up to the big leagues again,” the outfielder said. “Honestly, it feels like the first time I ever got called up.”

Garrett is indeed back in the big leagues, even if for only a few days during the final week of the season. With Andrés Chaparro going on paternity leave, the Nationals called Garrett up from Triple-A Rochester, rewarding the 28-year-old for his perseverance following last year’s devastating left leg injury.

On Aug. 23, 2023, Garrett attempted to make a leaping catch at the right field wall in Yankee Stadium and fell to the ground in agony. He was eventually carted off the field, having suffered a broken left fibula. He also tore a ligament in his ankle on the play, which required “tightrope” surgery to be repaired and ultimately prolonged his full recovery from the gruesome injury.

Though he was able to play in the minor league games by mid-April and made it through the entire season with few interruptions, Garrett clearly wasn’t 100 percent for some time. The Nationals managed his workload, rarely playing him on back-to-back days during the first half. His power numbers regressed. His running form still didn’t look right.

We have reached the final week of the season, and that means six more scheduled home games, all against teams still playing for something. The Phillies, who have clinched the division but are fighting with the Dodgers for home field advantage, will be here this weekend. First up, though, it’s the Royals, who had been among the season’s best stories, trying to make the playoffs after losing 106 games last year. Now, though, Kansas City is fighting for its life, having lost seven in a row while seeing the Tigers shockingly come out of nowhere to catch them in the standings.

The Royals have a lot of young talent, and that includes tonight’s starting pitcher: Cole Ragans. The 26-year-old left-hander was an All-Star this season and enters this game with a 3.24 ERA and 217 strikeouts in 180 1/3 innings. This is the first time he’s facing the Nationals in his career.

Kansas City’s lineup, featuring MVP candidate Bobby Witt Jr., will be facing an unfamiliar foe as well in Mitchell Parker. The rookie left-hander makes his final start of the season, hoping to bounce back from a rough outing against the Mets last week and close out what has been an impressive debut campaign on a high note.

The Nationals made a roster move today: Stone Garrett is back in the major leagues, recalled from Triple-A Rochester about 13 months after breaking his leg at Yankee Stadium. He takes the roster spot of Andrés Chaparro, who has gone on paternity leave.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs KANSAS CITY ROYALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN2, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 88.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Chance of rain, 69 degrees, wind 8 mph right field to left field

A simple ground ball single up the middle may never have felt so good to Dylan Crews.

The Nationals rookie needed that eighth-inning base hit Sunday in Chicago to snap out of the worst slump of his brief big league career, perhaps the worst slump he’s experienced in a long time at any level of the sport.

Crews had been hitless in his previous 19 at-bats before that sharp grounder past Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson, a slump that left him staring at a .196 batting average across 106 major league plate appearances. The single didn’t really mean much during his team’s 5-0 loss, but it did at least get that average back over the Mendoza Line.

Heading into the final week of the season, Crews is trying to rediscover his swing. It may be too late to salvage his rookie stat line, but it might do some wonders for his confidence heading into the offseason.

“He’s really fighting through some things,” manager Davey Martinez said. “I’m proud of him, because he’s going to give you everything he has. We’ve just got to get him to slow down a little bit, stay behind the baseball a little bit better.”