SEATTLE – The starts keep coming to Orioles outfielder Heston Kjerstad, with injuries presenting more opportunities than otherwise would be available to a struggling hitter.

Kjerstad appeared in his 51^st game last night, making his 18th start in right. He’s made 25 in left and served as designated hitter in one game.

Opportunities aren’t the issue here. It’s the results, which lowered his average to .185 with a .231 on-base percentage and .308 slugging percentage heading into last night.

Kjerstad tripled on Sunday, the first of his career, but was picked off third base. He broke an 0-for-20 streak and was 3-for-38 in his past 10 games.

Batting eighth last night against Mariners right-hander George Kirby, Kjerstad lined a 96.5 mph fastball up the middle for a one-out single in the second inning and lined out to left field to end the fourth. He lined to center on Sunday, and to third and left field on Saturday.

SEATTLE – The Orioles kept jabbing at Mariners starter George Kirby tonight, with all eight of their hits against him singles. Ramón Urías clipped the right side of Kirby’s jaw with a 102.7 mph line drive that resulted in the final out of the fifth inning – the ball rolling to first baseman Rowdy Tellez - and left a thin stream of blood running past his mouth.

Kirby was coming out anyway after 95 pitches, but it still resembled a knockout blow.

Tomoyuki Sugano and Colton Cowser wouldn’t let the Mariners get up. Sugano held them to one run in seven innings and Cowser marked his return with an opposite-field homer off former teammate Eduardo Bazardo in a 5-1 victory over the Mariners at T-Mobile Park.

Heston Kjerstad drove in Coby Mayo with a double in the ninth, pinch-runner Jordyn Adams scored on Jackson Holliday’s single, and the Orioles improved to 23-36 with their first four-game winning streak since June 26-29, 2024. They’ve won seven of their last nine games and are 8-8 under interim manager Tony Mansolino.

Sugano delivered the rotation’s fourth quality start in a row and lowered his ERA to 3.04. He allowed five hits, walked one batter and struck out five.

The Nationals returned home from the West Coast as one of the hottest teams in baseball. Entering tonight after a 4-2 road trip, their 11-5 record since May 14 was the fourth-best in the major leagues.

Their next challenge? The Cubs, who were tied for the best record in the majors over the same stretch at 12-4 and who were singularly the best over a longer stretch at 15-5 in their last 20 games.

A great litmus test for this young Nats team that started this homestand only three games below .500.

Unfortunately, the Nats now find themselves four games under .500 after tonight’s 8-3 loss to the Cubs in the series opener, a game in which they let an early lead slip away.

“It was a weird game," manager Davey Martinez said after his team lost for just the second time in their last six games. "A couple of mistakes on defense. And then, really, the one inning it was the walks. The walks got us that inning, and then a base hit. So we just got to come back tomorrow. We try to eliminate all that stuff. And today was just weird.”

SEATTLE – The Orioles are making their latest attempt to get healthy. This time, it involves Colton Cowser.

Cowser is in center field tonight for the first game against the Mariners at T-Mobile Park. He was reinstated from the injured list yesterday, leaving the Orioles with 11 players on the shelf.

Cowser hasn’t played for the Orioles since fracturing his left thumb on March 30 in Toronto. He completed a rehab assignment that consisted of three games with High-A Aberdeen and three with Triple-A Norfolk.

“Feeling good,” he said. “It was one of those things where, had to get some ABs and was able to do so. Was fighting the weather a little bit a couple of those days, but feeling good.”

Cowser went 6-for-11 with four doubles at Norfolk, but he wasn’t using statistics to measure his readiness.

SEATTLE – Colton Cowser was reinstated from the injured list yesterday and he’s playing center field tonight and batting sixth for the series opener in Seattle.

Jackson Holliday remains the leadoff hitter.

Coby Mayo is the designated hitter, Heston Kjerstad is in right field and Dylan Carlson is in left.

Ryan O’Hearn, the cleanup hitter and first baseman, is batting .329 against right-handers and the Mariners are starting three in the series. O’Hearn’s average is tied for fourth-highest among left-handed hitters versus right-handers in a minimum 100 plate appearances.

Tomoyuki Sugano has posted a 3.23 ERA and 1.063 WHIP in 11 starts. He’s got a 3.67 ERA and 1.223 WHIP in six home games and a 2.73 ERA and 0.876 WHIP in five road games.

The Nationals return home after a very successful 4-2 West Coast road trip against two contending teams. The competition doesn’t ease up on South Capitol Street, however, as they face another first-place squad in the Cubs.

Craig Counsell’s club has the second-best record in the National League at 37-22, trailing only the Mets by a half-game. They are 14-4 since May 12, the best record in the majors in the span, with the Nats just behind them at 11-7.

The Nats offense will try to stay hot against rookie right-hander Cade Horton, who is the owner of a 2-0 record, 3.98 ERA and 1.230 WHIP over his first four major league appearances (three starts).

Meanwhile, Trevor Williams will look to carry over his dominance from his last outing, against the Mariners, in which he pitched six shutout innings on three hits, no walks and two strikeouts. The veteran right-hander is 3-5 with a 5.69 ERA and 1.446 WHIP over 11 starts this season and 4-8 with a 4.55 ERA and 1.518 WHIP in 18 career appearances (14 starts) against the Cubbies.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs. CHICAGO CUBS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 The Fan, DC 87.7 (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Clear, 81 degrees, wind 8 mph out to left field

During their recently completed road trip to Seattle and Arizona, the Nationals took 240 total plate appearances. Only five of them were taken by a full-time, right-handed batter: Riley Adams, who started one of the six games behind the plate in place of Keibert Ruiz.

Every other plate appearance the entire week was taken by someone who either bats left-handed all the time or switch-hits, a highly unusual situation for any major league club.

But wait, it gets weirder. Though only five of the Nats’ 240 plate appearances were taken by someone who only bats right-handed, a whopping 167 of them were taken by someone who throws right-handed. That’s because six of the team’s current nine regular position players (infielders Nathaniel Lowe, Luis Garcia Jr., CJ Abrams and Jose Tena, plus outfielders James Wood and Daylen Lile) all bat exclusively left-handed despite throwing right-handed.

“I never really put a thought on that,” Tena said, via interpreter Mauricio Ortiz. “But now that you’re saying it … yeah. It feels good to know there are other teammates who also do it.”

Players who bat left/throw right aren’t that unusual in the majors. Of the 540 position players who have appeared in a big league game so far this season, 132 of them bat left/throw right. That’s the second-most-common combination, well behind the 294 players who bat right/throw right. There are 59 switch-hitters (55 who throw right-handed). There are 53 true southpaws who both bat and throw left-handed. And then there are the two real misfits who bat right/throw left: Chas McCormick and Jake Meyers, both from the Astros.

SEATTLE - The mailbag is on the West Coast and three hours behind in being awesome.

The last batch didn’t include a handful of questions that will get some play this morning, while we wait for the Orioles to begin their series against the Mariners at T-Mobile Park, which will always be Safeco Field to me. Same as Jacobs Field in Cleveland.

I refuse to bend.

And that’s what …

You ask and I try to answer. Here are a few more after yesterday’s glorious off-day and my painfully long flight to Seattle, with the prerequisite shoulder bumping from the aisle seat every 15-20 seconds.

You don’t have to look far to find the local connections with new Orioles senior advisor John Mabry.

He grew up a fan of the team, which happens when you’re raised in Cecil County and attend Bohemia Manor High School in Chesapeake City, played for the renown Johnny’s amateur baseball team and participated in the Crown All-Star Game at Memorial Stadium.

“Favorite players Cal Ripken, Eddie Murray, the whole nine yards,” Mabry said. “I’ve been watching the Orioles since Wild Bill Hagy type stuff. So it’s a cool opportunity, and at this time it was cool for our family, as well.”

Mabry was at Camden Yards this morning to fulfill his role as senior advisor, a move consummated a few weeks after the Orioles fired manager Brandon Hyde and made third base coach Tony Mansolino the interim, and it’s a broad set of responsibilities.

“Just gonna be a helping hand,” he said. “Just be an available resource for coaches and players. Get to know everything that’s going on and just be available.”

The Orioles have made the following roster moves:

• Reinstated OF Colton Cowser (left thumb fracture) from the 60-day Injured List.
• Designated UTL Cooper Hummel for assignment.

The Orioles’ 40-man roster currently has 40 players.

PHOENIX – Informed late Saturday night that the Nationals had just completed their first winning month in nearly two years, only their second winning month in four years, Nathaniel Lowe was pleasantly surprised.

“Oh? Sweet,” the veteran first baseman interjected.

Lowe, of course, would have had no way of knowing such information. He wasn’t here when the Nats began to tear down their roster in July 2021. He wasn’t here when they finally put things together enough to go 17-11 in August 2023, a modest blip during an otherwise losing season. He only joined the organization this winter, having spent the previous four years with a Rangers team that won the World Series in 2023.

“We should get used to it,” he said. “You play this game to win. So ideally you show up every day with a chance to compete and win. Losing is not why we play at all.”

The Nationals are not a winning team yet. They got home from Arizona early this morning sporting a 28-31 record, having lost Sunday’s series finale to the Diamondbacks. Real success remains elusive for this franchise, which hasn’t gotten to two games over .500 since the end of June 2021, at which point everything fell apart and the plan to rebuild emerged.

The Orioles went to extremes today to prove that they can score without relying too much on home runs, that the small ball approach remains in their skill set.

That station-to-station doesn’t always require movement.

A two-run third inning that broke a scoreless tie featured a single, double, two more singles and a sacrifice fly. The exit velocities in three straight at-bats were clocked at 79.3, 77.9 and 76.3 mph.

Charlie Morton didn’t need the Orioles to bring much thunder on a sunny day. They gave him a lead and he allowed an unearned run in a season-high 6 2/3 innings in a 3-2 victory over the White Sox before an announced crowd of 33,037 at Camden Yards that completed the first sweep in 2025.

Morton lowered his ERA to 6.20 and raised the Orioles’ record to 22-36 with their sixth win in eight games and seventh in 11. They’ve gone 7-8 under interim manager Tony Mansolino. The White Sox (18-41) have lost 12 of 16.

PHOENIX – A wildly successful road trip for the Nationals ended as it began: With a dud.

They may have won four straight thanks to some unprecedented offensive fireworks in every game, but sandwiched around those wins were a pair of losses featuring very little in the way of offense, including today’s 3-1 defeat at the hands of the Diamondbacks.

Less than 24 hours after producing the first 10-run first inning in club history to clinch the first four-game streak with at least nine runs scored in club history, the Nats were shut down by ace Corbin Burnes (before he departed with an elbow injury) and Arizona’s bullpen.

It was a tough way to wrap up an otherwise excellent week on the West Coast, but it shouldn’t overshadow what did take place in both Seattle and Phoenix, where this lineup finally showed off the best version of itself and offered hope for what may still be to come the rest of this season.

The Nationals still head home having won 10 of their last 14, creeping ever so close to the elusive .500 mark.

PHOENIX – At the end of a long Saturday night, at the end of a stretch of five straight late-night games on the West Coast, the last four of them Nationals victories, Davey Martinez was asked who had been available out of his bullpen to close out this one.

“Um, you saw the availability,” the manager said with a laugh. “That’s what we had.”

With Kyle Finnegan needing a night off, and with Jorge López designated for assignment earlier in the day, what they had was Jackson Rutledge, Jose A. Ferrer and Cole Henry. And after five runs crossed the plate with Rutledge on the mound in the sixth, and after Ferrer tossed a scoreless seventh in his third appearance in four nights, that left Henry to finish out an 11-7 win over the Diamondbacks.

It got a little dicey in the bottom of the eighth, with Henry allowing three straight batters to reach base. But the rookie escaped the jam unscathed, thanks in part to a fantastic defensive play by James Wood and Keibert Ruiz, and then he closed out the ninth with no drama in arguably the biggest relief appearance of his young career.

“It’s definitely been pretty fast. I feel like just yesterday I was throwing in blowouts,” he said. “It’s been cool to get in there in close games, the adrenaline pumping, everything’s on the line.”

PHOENIX – We have come to the final day of a West Coast trip that has been both eventful and successful. The Nationals have gone 4-1 against the Mariners and Diamondbacks, and they’ve done with the most impressive offensive run in club history: Four straight games scoring at least nine runs, capped off by Saturday night’s historic 10-run top of the first.

Given all that, the Nats could be excused if they take their foot off the gas pedal today. They’ve already won the series and the road trip. They’re physically exhausted after five straight late-night games and now have to make the quick turnaround to a 1:10 p.m. local time finale at Chase Field. And they’re facing Arizona ace Corbin Burnes. Then again, with this team you never really know what you’re going to get until the game starts, so perhaps there’s a fifth straight offensive explosion coming.

This much is certain: Mitchell Parker desperately needs a solid start, and he faces a tough challenge in a Diamondbacks lineup that has scored 14 runs the last two nights with nothing to show for it. Parker started off this trip way back on Tuesday night with a dud in Seattle in which he served up three homers in 4 2/3 innings. He hasn’t had a quality start since April 22 against the Orioles. He may not be pitching for his job quite yet, but he’s inching in that direction if he doesn’t right the ship.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS at ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS
Where: Chase Field
Gametime: 4:10 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN2, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Indoors

NATIONALS
SS CJ Abrams
LF James Wood
1B Nathaniel Lowe
2B Luis García Jr.
DH Josh Bell
CF Robert Hassell III
C Keibert Ruiz
3B José Tena
RF Daylen Lile

Coby Mayo is starting at first base today and Jorge Mateo stays in center field for the Orioles’ final game of the homestand.

Ramón Urías moves up to second in the order.

Ryan O’Hearn is the designated hitter. O’Hearn batted .365/.450/.542 in May and posted a .447 average and .681 slugging percentage on fastballs. He has a 10-game hitting streak (19-for-40) and 17-game on-base streak.

Dylan Carlson is in left field and Heston Kjerstad is in right. Adley Rutschman goes to the bench, giving Maverick Handley the start behind the plate.

Charlie Morton rejoined the rotation and held the Cardinals to two runs in six innings to lower his ERA from 7.68 to 7.09. He’s allowed four runs in 15 1/3 innings in his last four appearances.

The Orioles are trying to mix two vastly different mindsets as they enter the month of June.

This is a team with an opportunity to evaluate younger talent by providing regular starts that could allow it to get a jump on the 2026 season. To offer valuable experience to these players and possibly make some earlier decisions while plotting an offseason plan.

That’s the seller attitude, conceding that 2025 is a lost cause as they sit in last place and try to make the best of a crappy situation.

Interim manager Tony Mansolino recognizes the opportunity available to a prospect like Coby Mayo, but he isn’t giving up on the season. There are no concession speeches during his pre-game and post-game media sessions.

Mansolino kept Heston Kjerstad in the lineup yesterday, an easier task with all three Opening Day starters and one backup on the injured list. Kjerstad played right field, Jorge Mateo got another start in center and Dylan Carlson was in left. Ryan O’Hearn played first base in Ryan Mountcastle’s absence rather than getting another start in right or left.

PHOENIX – It began innocently enough, with CJ Abrams getting hit by a wayward 0-2 pitch from Brandon Pfaadt, with James Wood singling to right and with Nathaniel Lowe doubling to left to give the Nationals a quick lead over the Diamondbacks.

And then it kept going. And going. And going. And going some more until the only thing the demoralized Chase Field crowd of 29,434 could do was give the loudest, most sarcastic standing ovation in history to the Arizona pitcher (Scott McGough, in relief of Pfaadt) who finally recorded the first out of tonight’s ballgame.

That out, by the way, was made by Lowe, who was making his second plate appearance of the top of the first, the Nationals’ 12th plate appearance of the game. They already led 9-0 at that point, en route to a 10-run top of the first and an 11-run lead by the top of the second.

And though the D-backs made a spirited attempt to pull off what would’ve been one of the most remarkable comebacks in major league history, the Nats ultimately did win 11-7 thanks to the greatest first inning in team history.

"I've been a part of some crooked numbers, but that was a good one," Lowe said. "It was nice to jump on a pretty solid major league starter and put up a first inning like that. You don't see it often, but we capitalized off it. And obviously, we like a win."

PHOENIX – The Nationals cut ties with another struggling veteran reliever, designating Jorge López for assignment prior to tonight’s game against the Diamondbacks and recalling Eduardo Salazar from Triple-A Rochester to take his place in a bullpen that has undergone a significant overhaul since Opening Day.

López was signed over the winter for $3 million to serve as the team’s primary setup man and backup closer when Kyle Finnegan wasn’t available. He had a handful of moments, which in part led to his surprising 6-0 record. But he was plagued by inconsistent performances, which led to an inflated 6.57 ERA and three official blown saves over 26 appearances.

The 32-year-old right-hander immediately comes off the 40-man roster, which now has an open slot. If another team claims him off waivers in the next 72 hours, that team would take on the remainder of his salary. If he clears waivers and is released, the Nats would be responsible for the full $3 million.

“Sometimes, places aren’t the right fit,” manager Davey Martinez said. “And I don’t think this was the right fit for him. And I’d rather, instead of dragging things on, go ahead and do something different.”

López becomes the third veteran reliever signed by the Nationals prior to this season to be dropped before June 1. Lefty Colin Poche, who made $1.4 million when he made the Opening Day roster off a minor league deal, was designated for assignment May 1 and opted to become a free agent four days later. Righty Lucas Sims, who like López was signed for $3 million, was released May 10 after posting a 13.86 ERA in 18 games.

PHOENIX – It’s the final day of May, and though it had some bumps along the way, this turned out to be a successful May for the Nationals. Regardless of the outcome of tonight’s game against the Diamondbacks, they already clinched a rare winning month with Friday night’s wild 9-7 victory. It’s only their second winning month since the teardown of July 2021, the previous one coming in August 2023 when they went 17-11.

The Nats enter this one on a three-game winning streak, having won nine of their last 12 overall to get to three games under .500 at 27-30. They would love to keep their offensive explosion going, though it might be too much to ask for a fourth straight nine-run output. Let’s see what they can do against Arizona right-hander Brandon Pfaadt, who enters with a 7-3 record and 3.90 ERA.

Michael Soroka gets the ball for the visitors, looking to build off his quality start last weekend against the Giants (three runs in six innings) even though he was charged with a tough loss in a 3-2 game. We’ll see who’s available in the bullpen tonight, though we already know one name who won’t be: Jorge López, who was just designated for assignment. Eduardo Salazar was recalled from Triple-A Rochester to take his place, leaving rookies Cole Henry, Brad Lord and Jackson Rutledge as Davey Martinez’s top right-handed setup men in front of closer Kyle Finnegan.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS at ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS
Where: Chase Field
Gametime: 10:10 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN2, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Indoors

NATIONALS
SS CJ Abrams
LF James Wood
1B Nathaniel Lowe
2B Luis García Jr.
DH Josh Bell
CF Robert Hassell III
C Keibert Ruiz
3B José Tena
RF Daylen Lile