Josh Bell and Nathaniel Lowe have understood the assignment from the moment the Nationals acquired them. Yes, they were brought here to do multiple things, but the most important thing was to hit the ball in the air with authority.

It took a few days and more than a few swings to get there, but the big boys in the middle of the lineup got there this afternoon. Behind Bell’s three-run homer and Lowe’s two-run blast, the Nats coasted to a 5-1 victory over the Phillies, avoiding a demoralizing weekend sweep.

Thanks to 6 1/3 scoreless innings from Mitchell Parker and some much-needed, lockdown work from a beleaguered bullpen, the Nationals emerged from their season-opening weekend with one win, boosting clubhouse spirits as they prepare to head north of the border for this week’s interleague series in Toronto.

"It's promising, because we were in position to win all three games against a perennial contender," Lowe said. "We just need to execute, take that as a reminder going forward and have a good series in Toronto."

Parker joined MacKenzie Gore and Jake Irvin in holding down the Phillies lineup for five-plus innings. Bell and Lowe supplied the offensive fireworks to give their team the lead for the third straight game. And unlike the previous two, the Nats bullpen this time finished the job.

Dylan Crews may be young, but he’s played baseball at a high level long enough to know how not to make a big deal out of one bad game, especially one this early in the season.

“It’s the second game,” the Nationals rookie said. “There’s a whole lot of games left. We’re just going to keep stacking these days, put it in the past and keep looking forward.”

Crews’ second game of the season, though, was about as bad as they get at the plate. He opened Saturday’s ballgame against the Phillies with a brilliant play in right field. But he then proceeded to go 0-for-5 with five strikeouts, the at-bats progressively getting worse as the afternoon progressed.

Crews was caught looking in each of his first two at-bats, with plenty of credit going to Phillies left-hander Jesús Luzardo, who painted the corner with a 98 mph fastball in the bottom of the first and then a slider in the bottom of the third. His subsequent three at-bats, though, each lasted only three pitches, the first against Luzardo, the latter two against relievers who exploited his overaggressive approach and got him swinging.

“They’re pounding him a lot with fastballs in, and a lot of sliders down and away,” manager Davey Martinez said. “Yesterday, Luzardo got him to think in and then went hard away. Some of those pitches – I looked at them last night – are tough to hit. They were right on the line.”

The last position the Nationals wanted to find themselves in today is the one they’re in, needing a win over the Phillies to avoid an 0-3 start to their season. They certainly had a chance to win Thursday’s opener before falling in 10 innings. And they briefly had a chance to win Saturday’s game, until the bullpen gate swung open in the sixth and turned a 2-2 game into an absolute mess.

We’ll have to see how the bullpen shakes out today. The best thing the Nats could do to help their case would be to score a good number of runs themselves and take some pressure off the pitching staff. The good news: They’ve hit four homers through two games, two of them off the bat of Keibert Ruiz. The bad news: They’re 3-for-21 with runners in scoring position. That has got to improve.

The challenge today is a stiff one against the Phillies’ Aaron Nola, who has been very good in these matchups in recent seasons. In nine starts against the Nationals since 2022, the right-hander is 4-1 with a 1.70 ERA.

The Nats got a dominant start from MacKenzie Gore on Opening Day and a solid start from Jake Irvin on Saturday. They’ll hope for more that today from Mitchell Parker, who actually gets the third game of the season even though he’s technically the No. 5 starter. Davey Martinez wanted another lefty against the lefty-heavy Philadelphia lineup, so Parker gets the call. He faced the Phillies once as a rookie, and it did not go well: nine runs and 10 hits in only three innings of work.

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES at WASHINGTON NATIONALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 1:35 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Mostly cloudy, 76 degrees, wind 13 mph out to center field

Jake Irvin had gutted his way through five innings of two-run ball. Keibert Ruiz had blasted his second homer in as many games to get his season off to a rousing start. Game 2 of 162 was knotted up, and now the Nationals had to place their faith in a relief corps that entered the season as a major question mark and only reinforced those concerns on Opening Day.

As he did Thursday, Davey Martinez entrusted key moments in the game to Colin Poche and Lucas Sims, two experienced big leaguers who nonetheless were still available in February at bargain prices. And as was the case in the opener, the result was tough to watch for the locals.

Poche and Sims combined to give up five runs while recording only one out during a torturous top of the sixth that turned another tight ballgame against the Phillies into another lopsided loss, this one by the count of 11-6.

It made for an agonizing afternoon for many in the bipartisan crowd of 38,446 (the largest second-home-game crowd in club history). Not just because it ruined this game. But because it felt way too much like Thursday’s game, a 7-3 loss in 10 innings.

"You can't walk eight, nine guys in a game and expect to win," Martinez said. "We've got to throw strikes, pound the zone like we normally do. You walk guys, give free passes with a team like that? You're going to get beat. They're going to score a lot of runs."

Luis García Jr. was the Nationals’ surprise No. 3 hitter on Opening Day. Perhaps more surprising is the fact he’s not even in the lineup for Game No. 2.

With left-hander Jesús Luzardo on the mound for the Phillies, García is on the bench this afternoon, with Amed Rosario instead starting at second base and batting fifth.

“It’s early,” manager Davey Martinez explained. “I want to try to get everybody in there, try to get some at-bats to some of these guys. And the reason why we signed Rosario is because he hits lefties really well. So we’ll give him some at-bats today.

García often sat last season against lefties, though he started to get more opportunities later during his breakthrough season. Even so, the 24-year-old was far more effective against right-handers (.796 OPS) than lefties (.641).

Rosario, on the other hand, owns a career .798 OPS vs. left-handers, not to mention a .298 batting average. The Nationals signed the 29-year-old utilityman to a major league deal over the winter, envisioning him as a part-time second baseman who can also play third base, shortstop and the outfield if needed.

After the hullabaloo of Opening Day, after the much-needed rest of an off-day, the actual grind of the 162-game season begins today. The Nationals and Phillies meet in game two of the opening series, and it’s the debut of the Nats’ new City Connect uniforms.

MacKenzie Gore dominated the Phillies’ potent lineup Thursday. You probably can’t as for the same from Jake Irvin in his season debut, but the Nationals do need the right-hander to be on point. He had an excellent spring, until his final start, in which his fastball lost several ticks. Irvin insisted he felt fine physically that day, but we haven’t had a chance to see him since. (He was supposed to pitch Monday’s exhibition finale against the Orioles before that game was rained out.) So keep an eye on him in the first couple innings today, especially the velocity readings. Is he in the low-90s or the mid-90s?

The Nationals lineup sees a familiar left-hander today in the form of Jesús Luzardo, the long-ago organizational prospect who has since faced his original team many times as a member of the Marlins. Now he’s in Philly, going up against some hitters he’s got a book on. One of those hitters, Luis García Jr., is just 2-for-16 in his career against Luzardo. Amed Rosario, meanwhile, is 3-for-8 with a double and a triple. Hence, the different look at second base today. Don’t be surprised, though, if García comes off the bench to pinch-hit against a righty at some point.  

UPDATE: Trea Turner was scratched from the Phillies' lineup with back spasms. Edmundo Sosa will now start at shortstop.

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES at WASHINGTON NATIONALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 4:05 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Mostly cloudy, 83 degrees, wind 11 mph out to center field

If the Nationals had to pick only one player off the roster who most needs to get his season off to a positive start, Keibert Ruiz would reside at the top of almost every list.

After a miserable 2024 season, the young catcher knows he must be better in 2025. And the road to better starts with a good opening month, giving him a chance to set the bar from the outset and not feel like he’s facing an uphill climb right away like he did a year ago.

So consider what Ruiz did Thursday during the Nats’ Opening Day loss to the Phillies a critical first step in the right direction.

“It’s awesome,” manager Davey Martinez said. “He works so hard, over the winter, during spring. He really wants to get off to a good start. My big thing with him is not to put that much pressure on him. Just go out there and play. He did the work. Now just go out there and have fun and play the game. He did that today.”

Ruiz opened his Opening Day by throwing out his first baserunner of the season. Maybe Kyle Schwarber isn’t the biggest threat to steal a base, but when the big Philadelphia designated hitter decided to try to swipe second in the top of the second, Ruiz was ready and fired a strike to nab him.

Whether anyone outside – or even inside – Washington believes it, the Nationals themselves believe they’re ready to take the next critical step in their long rebuild and compete head-to-head with the top three teams in perhaps baseball’s toughest division.

Consider today’s Opening Day extra-inning thriller a first message sent by this talented, young squad, which saw its new ace overwhelm a star-studded Phillies lineup and several key members of their own lineup deliver in key spots late in the game.

Now, they just need to learn how to finish the job and walk away victorious.

Alas, that wasn’t to be on this otherwise glorious late afternoon. Alec Bohm’s two-out, two-run double off Colin Poche and J.T. Realmuto’s two-run triple off Eduardo Salazar in the top of the 10th gave the Phillies the lead for good in a seesaw game, the Nationals ultimately falling 7-3 before a sellout crowd of 41,231 that desperately wanted reason to celebrate at day’s end but was forced to trudge home disappointed.

"It's not the result we wanted, obviously," said second baseman Luis García Jr., via interpreter Kenny Diaz. "But we battled. We continued to battle throughout, and we battled to the end. That's all we can ever ask for."

DJ Herz is getting a second opinion on his sprained elbow ligament, one that will determine if the Nationals left-hander needs Tommy John surgery or can attempt to come back merely with rest and rehab.

Herz, who was placed on the 15-day injured list Tuesday and then transferred to the 60-day IL on Wednesday, already had an initial MRI taken that revealed a sprain of the ulnar collateral ligament. He’s now scheduled to get a second opinion in Dallas from Keith Meister, the noted orthopedist who has performed a number of Tommy John surgeries and internal brace procedures on other major leaguers. According to a source familiar with the injury, the Nationals don’t intend to wait long if surgery is suggested, preferring Herz get it done now and be able to return for the majority of the 2026 season.

Herz was one of the brightest developments of last season, debuting in June and proceeding to make 19 big league starts, going 4-9 with a 4.6 ERA but also authoring several of the team’s most dominant starts of the year. He came to camp this spring competing with Mitchell Parker and Shinnosuke Ogasawara for the fifth starter’s job but struggled with command and saw his fastball velocity drop into the upper 80s.

Herz told club officials and reporters alike he was physically fine, but that he wasn’t throwing as hard due to a lack of adrenaline. He cited similar situations playing out in previous spring trainings, noting his velocity always showed up during the regular season.

The Nationals saw some better signs during a simulated game Herz pitched late in camp, but still decided to option the lefty to Triple-A Rochester last week, giving him more time to build his arm up. After learning of the demotion, Herz informed the team he wanted to see a doctor in case there actually was something wrong with his arm.

And away we go! Welcome to the 2025 Major League Baseball season and the 21st season of Washington Nationals baseball. That’s right, this ballclub now enters its third decade in the District, pretty remarkable for anyone who remembers the three decades this town spent without baseball.

The Nats have renewed hopes entering this season, perhaps even hopes of a winning record for the first time since 2019. The early schedule, however, is not kind. Their first four series come against the Phillies, Blue Jays, Diamondbacks and Dodgers, though three of those four at least come at home.

It all begins this afternoon against Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber and the Phillies, who have visions not only of a winning season but of a championship parade come November. That lineup will present a good challenge for MacKenzie Gore, who just so happened to shut out that same group over six innings in his final start of the 2024 season.

Gore’s opponent that day was Zack Wheeler, who also gets the start today. The veteran right-hander has established himself as one of the best workhorses in the sport, one with Cy Young Award visions. We’ll have to see how a newly constructed Nationals lineup in search of more power fares in this one.

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES at WASHINGTON NATIONALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 4:05 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Sunny, 59 degrees, wind 9 mph out to right field

Alright, the time has come. We survived a long, cold winter. We endured through six weeks of spring training. We fretted over transactions made and transactions not made. We thought we knew what the roster would look like, then we had to make last-minute adjustments due to injuries and a few surprises.

But there’s no more time to decipher, agonize or evaluate. Opening Day has arrived, and that means it’s time for predictions.

For the 16th consecutive season, we proudly present the Nationals media Opening Day predictions. We’ve got several familiar names here who have been participating through the entire run of this annual tradition. We’ve got several more who have joined us in recent years. And we’ve even got a few new entrants this season who are excited (or is that terrified) to reveal their picks.

The most important thing to remember about this exercise: We will republish all of the predictions at the end of the season and find out who knew what they were talking about and who had no clue. (Spoiler alert: Usually, we’re proven to have had no clue.)

And with that, away we go …

The Nationals’ Opening Day roster will include Riley Adams, José Tena, Orlando Ribalta and Brad Lord. It will not include Andrew Knizner, Juan Yepez or Jackson Rutledge.

The Nats announced their final roster moves late this afternoon, in the process leaving 26 remaining active players who will take the field Thursday against the Phillies.

The official transactions:

* Lord had his contract purchased, putting him on both the 26-man and 40-man rosters for the first time.

* Yepez and Rutledge were optioned to Triple-A Rochester, with Knizner (who wasn’t on the 40-man roster) reassigned to Triple-A.

Now entering his eighth season as Nationals manager, Davey Martinez knows no team is like any of its predecessors.

The 2018 Nats were desperate to get over the October hump, maybe too desperate, and never even got there. The 2019 Nats were much looser, once they reached the depths of 19-31 and decided to just start having fun, all the way to a thrilling championship.

The 2020 Nats were ready to enjoy a victory lap, only to have it shut down by COVID. The 2021 Nats tried to run it back one more time with a veteran roster, then flamed out in July.

The 2022 Nats had to cope with the reality of a rebuild, then the shock of one of the biggest trades in baseball history. The 2023 Nats were young and hungry but knew they weren’t anywhere close to ready yet. And the 2024 Nats were energized by the arrival of two elite prospects but weren’t deep enough to sustain success for six months.

What, then, did Martinez see in the 2025 Nats over the course of six weeks in Florida? Youth. Talent. And a universal desire to move out of the organization’s agonizing rebuild phase and set the bar much higher.

The Nationals placed DJ Herz on the 15-day injured list this morning with a UCL sprain in his elbow, a potential season-ending ailment for the left-hander that would explain his spring training struggles.

Herz had been optioned to Triple-A Rochester on Friday, capping off a difficult spring that saw the 24-year-old deal with diminished velocity and poor results while ceding the No. 5 starter competition to fellow lefty Mitchell Parker.

At the time, club officials suggested Herz simply needed more time to get his arm in shape and that he would be in the running for a promotion back to the majors once he looked more like himself.

“We know his velo was a little bit down, but just go down there and start getting built up,” manager Davey Martinez said Friday after the demotion was announced. “And understand that last year, he only had (19) starts. He hasn’t pitched that much. So he’s going to go down there and get ready to help us.”

Herz was one of the brightest developments of the 2024 season for the Nationals, called up to make his major league debut in early June and then remaining in the rotation for most of the remainder of the year. He finished with a 4-9 record and 4.16 ERA, but he authored some of the team’s most dominant starts of the season, including six innings of one-hit ball with 13 strikeouts against the Marlins on June 15 and 10 strikeouts with one run allowed July 2 against the Mets.

The 2025 season will be Bob Carpenter’s final season as the Nationals’ lead play-by-play television announcer.

Carpenter revealed at the start of today’s broadcast of the Nats’ exhibition finale against the Orioles he plans to step down at the end of the season, his 20th with MASN.

“I've got a new deal working for next year as a full-time husband, dad and grandpa,” he said. “My objective is to, all season long, thank you Nats fans for the way you've been to my wife, Debbie, and I and our family over these 19 years previously. Let's make No. 20 a lot of fun.”

Though Carpenter made the official announcement today, it wasn’t a sudden decision.

“This has been on my mind for quite a while,” he said in an interview last week. “And I’ve got to tell you, it’s the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make. Because I feel like I still have my fastball. I don’t feel like I’ve lost it yet. But I’ve seen some guys who stayed too long, and I don’t want to be one of those guys.”

Over the last six weeks, we’ve written a lot of words here about the Nationals. A lot more about some of them than others. It’s just the nature of spring training, where a handful of seemingly important storylines get most of the attention while others get ignored.

But that’s why we write this final piece at the end of camp every year. It’s an opportunity to look back at the last month and a half and question if we might have been paying attention to the wrong things all along.

So without further ado, here’s our annual look back at what storylines we made too big a deal out of, and what storylines we potentially glossed over …

TOO BIG A DEAL: THE FIFTH STARTER
The biggest position battle of the spring was between three young left-handers trying to win the only open spot in the Opening Day rotation. Truth be told, it wasn’t much of a battle. DJ Herz struggled to get his velocity up and ultimately needs more time at Triple-A. Shinnosuke Ogasawara pretty clearly wasn’t big league material yet and needed to be sent to Triple-A as well. So Mitchell Parker won the job not by doing anything special, but just by looking OK. Here’s the thing, though: We’ll probably end up seeing all of them in the majors at some point this season. And we could see other starters as well: Brad Lord, Tyler Stuart, Andry Lara. Oh, yeah, there’s also Cade Cavalli, who could be ready by June or so. Point is, it doesn’t really matter who the fifth starter is in April. It’ll probably be someone else come September.

GLOSSED OVER: IMPROVED DEFENSE
Most of the attention given to the newcomers to the Nationals lineup centered on their offensive prowess (or lack thereof). But the biggest improvement might actually be in the field. Nathaniel Lowe is a Gold Glove first baseman who will make everyone around him better. Paul DeJong looked spectacular at third base and will be a massive defensive upgrade over last year’s consortium at the hot corner. Dylan Crews isn’t a newcomer, but a full season of him in right field could be special. And we already know Jacob Young is outstanding in center field. If the middle infielders and catcher can just be average, the Nats could have their first really good defensive team in a while.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – The Nationals broke camp this afternoon and left for Palm Beach International Airport. They’ll arrive in Washington this evening having spent the last six weeks evaluating a roster they believe is much improved from a year ago, but one that’s still not 100 percent settled.

Manager Davey Martinez said the team won’t make its final cuts until after Monday’s exhibition finale against the Orioles at Nationals Park, leaving the fates of a number of players on the bubble up in the air for another 24 hours.

“This is tough,” Martinez said following an 8-5 loss to the Astros in the Grapefruit League finale. “It really is.”

The Nats settled their fifth starter competition Friday, optioning DJ Herz and Shinnosuke Ogasawara to Triple-A Rochester to leave the spot for Mitchell Parker. But they’ve still got four more roster spots to figure out: backup catcher, 26th man on the bench and two bullpen jobs.

The bullpen situation is the most complicated, because of several moving parts. Derek Law, projected all along to make the team, now appears likely to open the season on the 15-day injured list because his arm hasn’t recovered well enough from the couple of times he’s faced live hitters in the last week-plus.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – The day has arrived at last. It’s the Grapefruit League finale. (Er, actually, finales, because there’s a split-squad game as well, though hardly any major leaguers will be there for that one.)

The Nationals and Astros square off one more time at CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches, a final tune-up before heading north. There’s still another exhibition game to play Monday in D.C. against the Orioles, but this will be it for the Florida portion of the spring.

With that in mind, Davey Martinez has a potential Opening Day lineup out there. The only twist: Nathaniel Lowe is dropped to the sixth spot, with Luis García Jr. moved up to the fifth spot. Could we see that alignment Thursday against Zack Wheeler? We’ll have to wait and see.

Trevor Williams gets the ball for his final tune-up before the season begins. The right-hander has felt good all spring and should be good for five-plus innings today.

Meanwhile in Jupiter, it’ll be Alex Call, José Tena, Juan Yepez and Riley Adams joining a bunch of guys from minor league camp to face the Cardinals in the other game at 1:05 p.m.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. – As the Mets kept fouling off everything MacKenzie Gore was throwing at them, driving up his pitch count and limiting him to only three innings in his spring training finale, you could only imagine the Nationals left-hander’s frustration mounting.

Then mention it to Gore, inform him of the gargantuan foul ball tally (24 of the 74 total pitches he threw) and watch his eyes actually light up.

“That’s probably a good thing, really,” he said. “Because I think everyone was kind of aware what was going on. I’m not going to get too caught up in location, trying to be perfect. I was going at them with heaters, and we did get a lot of foul balls, which is good. I thought it was good.”

What exactly was going on today during the Nats’ 5-5 exhibition tie at Clover Park? Gore, confident he was already ready for Opening Day and cognizant he’ll be facing the Mets plenty of times this season, opted to keep his pitching plan as basic as could be. He threw 47 fastballs, compared to only 13 curveballs, 12 changeups and two sliders.

If this game counted, he never would’ve done that, deploying much more deception in an attempt to induce way more than eight total whiffs from New York’s batters.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. – Colin Poche has made the Nationals’ Opening Day bullpen, the club purchased the left-hander’s contract this morning to officially put him on the club.

Poche signed a minor league deal with an invitation to big league camp in early February, but given his track record, he always looked like a safe bet to make the team.

The 31-year-old has 225 games of major league experience, all with the Rays, and last season delivered a 3.86 ERA and 1.152 WHIP in 43 appearances. He was a 12-game winner with a 2.23 ERA in 66 games (all out of the bullpen) in 2023.

With Jose A. Ferrer the only other left-hander in the Nats bullpen, Poche was in good position all along to head north with the team, provided good health. His spring got off to a rough start when he surrendered three runs on four hits and two walks Feb. 25 against the Marlins, but he rebounded after that. In four appearances since, he has allowed just one run on two hits with one walk and six strikeouts.

Poche joins Ferrer, closer Kyle Finnegan and right-handers Jorge Lopez, Derek Law and Lucas Sims to fill out six of the eight slots in the Nationals bullpen. The final two remain up for grabs this weekend, with two traditional relievers and two young starters in the mix.