CHICAGO – Josiah Gray is ready to pitch in a competitive game for the first time since his Tommy John surgery more than a year ago.

The Nationals right-hander has been cleared to depart West Palm Beach, Fla., and will make a rehab start Sunday for Single-A Wilmington, his first game action in more than 14 months. He’s scheduled for two innings and 30-35 pitches.

It’s a long-awaited development for Gray, the Nats’ Opening Day 2024 starter who made only two big league appearances last year before going on the injured list with a flexor strain in his forearm. He made it back to start five minor league games on a rehab assignment early in the summer and appeared on the verge of rejoining the major league staff when he suffered a setback in his June 30 outing for Triple-A Rochester. An MRI revealed a torn ulnar collateral ligament, and he underwent Tommy John surgery and an internal brace procedure July 24, 2024.

Gray knew at that point he would at best have a shot at returning before end of the 2025 season, and he expressed optimism earlier this summer during a stop at Nationals Park he would be able to pitch in the majors sometime in September.

Time is running out for that to happen, but if Gray makes it through Sunday’s two innings with no issues and is able to build up his arm in a couple more rehab starts, it’s possible the Nats would decide to activate him for a cameo appearance during the season’s final week.

CHICAGO – The Nationals proved this week they can beat the Marlins. Three times in a row, to be exact. And with a four-game series coming up next week in Miami, there’s some genuine optimism around this team for the first time in a while. But before that, there are three games to play this weekend at Wrigley Field against a much better Cubs team that remains in the thick of the National League wild card race.

The Nats swept the Marlins by jumping out to early leads and getting solid work from their starters, then lights-out work from their resurgent bullpen. So it’s imperative for Jake Irvin to keep the good rotation vibes going this afternoon. Irvin felt better about his last start against the Rays than any of his other recent outings, but he still allowed two homers in that game, leaving him with a league-leading 31 surrendered for the season. Well, the wind is going to be blowing out to right field today. Irvin has to find a way to keep the ball within the friendly confines and out of the bleachers.

The Nationals face Cubs right-hander Javier Assad, who didn’t make his season debut until Aug. 12 due to an oblique strain. He’s delivered back-to-back quality starts against the Angels and Rockies, and he pitched well in two starts against the Nats last season, allowing three runs each time (once over five innings, once over six).

Reminder: Today’s game is only available on Apple TV+. Bob Carpenter, Kevin Frandsen and Dan Kolko will be back on MASN for Saturday’s game.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS at CHICAGO CUBS
Where: Wrigley Field
Gametime: 2:20 p.m. EDT
TV: Apple TV+
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Partly cloudy, 65 degrees, wind 20 mph out to right field

Mike Bielecki was a local guy who needed a favor.

Bielecki grew up in Dundalk and attended Loyola College. He rooted for the Orioles as a kid and a young adult. And right there in front of him, on Sept. 6, 1995, was the chance to throw a pitch in an historic game at Camden Yards.

Cal Ripken Jr. was about to break Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games record, with the milestone becoming official after the top of the fifth inning – known simply as 2,131. The digits do all the explaining.

Bielecki was on the California Angels’ roster, two years before the team changed its name to Anaheim. They were in town to play the Orioles, and Bielecki requested that manager Marcel Lachemann use him in relief behind starter Shawn Boskie. It didn't have to be for long. 

“I had pitched a few days before that,” said Bielecki, who owns a home in Lutherville with his wife and step-daughters, and two others in Ocean City and Bradenton. “That night was supposed to be my side day for a starter, and I asked my manager if there was any way possible he could let me get in the game just for one hitter. I didn’t care. Just let me throw to one hitter so I can get my name in the box score.

The Orioles have made the following roster move:

• RHP Corbin Martin cleared outright waivers and accepted an assignment to Triple-A Norfolk.

From hot dogs’ validity as a sandwich to drawing up the best starting 11 if the Orioles were fielding a soccer team, all bases were covered in Episode 100 of “The Bird’s Nest.” We talked about some baseball, too. 

If you didn’t get the chance to tune in, you can watch the full episode here: https://masn.me/tc1q2qs8 

As we did on the show, let’s start with the fun ones. 

If you both were stranded on an island and could listen to only one album, which one would it be? And is lasagna a casserole?

I have no idea how to pronounce the name of the person that asked this question. Roch? Strange spelling. 

Even when asked about his own home run Wednesday afternoon, Brady House couldn’t help but pivot to teammate Nasim Nunez’s more impressive power display during the Nationals’ 10-5 win over the Marlins.

“It’s a good feeling to put the ball in play, especially whenever I have runners on,” the rookie third baseman said. “And I feel like everyone did that today, especially Nas. Crazy work from Nasim today.”

OK, so House’s fourth-inning homer didn’t steal the show the way Nunez’s pair of homers (the first two of his major league career) did at Nationals Park. But it was plenty significant in its own right, because it had been a long time since the 22-year-old connected on a ball like that.

House made his big league debut June 16. He finally hit his first home run July 12 in Milwaukee, then hit another in that game just for good measure. It seemed like he had turned a corner and was poised to go on a sustained run that would showcase the power he had always owned at every prior level of the sport.

Except it didn’t happen that way. House went more than a month and a half before homering again, a stretch of 116 plate appearances that didn’t even include many close calls. Over that 33-game stretch prior to Wednesday, he hit a paltry .214 and slugged a paltry .259, drawing only one walk while striking out 39 times.

SAN DIEGO – The Orioles are home this weekend for a three-game series against the Dodgers that would generate a lot of buzz if standing alone. However, there’s much more happening Saturday with the club celebrating the 30^th anniversary of Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig’s supposedly indestructible consecutive games record.

Ripken played his 2,131^st in a row Sept. 6, 1995 against the Angels at Camden Yards. In typical Ripken fashion, he homered on the nights that he tied and surpassed Gehrig.

He always rose to the occasion, an Iron Man filled with helium.

Ben McDonald made his major league debut during the “Why Not?” season in 1989, the same year that the Orioles drafted him first overall out of LSU. He appeared in 14 games in 1995, his final season with the club before signing with the Brewers as a free agent.

As an analyst on MASN broadcasts, McDonald provides a link to a distant past on a young team with players who only know what they’ve read, heard and watched on video.

SAN DIEGO – The Orioles are pulling more players off the injured list, reducing the number to 10 with a little more than three weeks left in the season.

They might need to send out the homer hose for repairs. Maybe chip in to pay the Petco Park water bill.

Jackson Holliday cleared the right-center field fence against former Orioles Rule 5 Draft pick Nestor Cortes to begin today’s game. Colton Cowser, Coby Mayo and Alex Jackson went back-to-back-to-back in the third to send Cortes to the showers, accompanied by a chorus of boos.

The Orioles cleaned up on the Padres, completing the series sweep with a 7-5 victory before an announced crowd of 35,019 at Petco Park.

A 4-2 road trip has left the Orioles with a 64-76 record as they wait for the Dodgers to arrive in Baltimore for a weekend series.

Life was oh so different the last time the Nationals swept a three-game series. Set the wayback machine to May 18 – if your memory banks go that far back – and recall when the Nats won three straight over the Orioles at Camden Yards. They would win their next two over the Braves, as well, for a season-best five-game winning streak that carried some legitimate optimism with it for a franchise attempting to prove it was ready to be a winner again.

The ballclub that put itself in position to sweep the Marlins this afternoon bears little resemblance to that one. The general manager and manager are long gone. A sixth consecutive losing season has already been clinched. Most of the veterans have been traded or released. The entire bullpen has been remade.

The 28 players who dressed for today’s game had no qualms about celebrating a 10-5 victory, one that completed a series sweep over Miami. It may have come before a season-low announced crowd of 11,190, but it was nevertheless meaningful for these young guys, especially the 25-year-old shortstop who enjoyed the greatest game of his life.

Nasim Nuñez, the former Rule 5 Draft pick acquired from the Marlins, launched both the first and second home runs of his major league career in his first major league appearance in three months. Starting in place of CJ Abrams at shortstop, he also delivered a run-scoring single, giving him four RBIs on the afternoon. (He entered the day with six RBIs in 74 career big league games.)

"I see the comments. I see the things people say: 'Can't hit,'" Nuñez said. "And even for myself, it's not about proving to everyone else. It's about proving myself right. I really proved myself right. I have to be the one to believe I can hit. When you go out there and see it, it gives you a little more belief."

SAN DIEGO – A couple of injured Orioles are nearing their returns to the active roster this month. The injured list holds 10 players and can get down to single digits.

Consider it an accomplishment in 2025.

Infielder Jordan Westburg (ankle) is doing full baseball activities and should go on a rehab assignment next week.

Westburg hasn’t played since Aug. 18 in Boston.

“Everything is getting closer and closer,” said interim manager Tony Mansolino.

SAN DIEGO – The rest of baseball also recognizes Trevor Rogers’ brilliance on the mound.

Rogers was named the American League’s Pitcher of the Month for August, while Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta won the honor in the National League.

Rogers is the 14^th Oriole to earn the distinction and the first since Corbin Burnes last September. Erik Bedard was the last left-hander in 2007.

This is the first time that Rogers has won it.

It was fairly predictable.

It’s been quite a while since the Nationals were last in a position to sweep a three-game series. You have to go all the way back to July 23 when they took the field against the Reds having already won two straight, hoping to win one more and complete the sweep. Alas, they did not, getting shut out by Nick Lodolo during a 5-0 loss.

Well, here they are again at last, having defeated the Marlins each of the last two days and now giving themselves a shot at a sweep this afternoon. They’ll need Mitchell Parker to give them a chance, something the left-hander did finally do over the weekend against the Rays, albeit still in a losing effort. Parker has faced Miami twice this season, and the results haven’t been pretty: 10 runs over 9 1/3 innings. We’ll see if he can turn it around today.

The Nats scored five runs Tuesday night off rookie Adam Mazur. Now they face Eury Pérez, the one-time top prospect who is trying to reestablish himself after missing a year and a half following Tommy John surgery. He was pretty good when he faced the Nationals back in June, allowing only one run over four innings. He failed to make it out of the first inning last time on the mound, though, at Citi Field.

MIAMI MARLINS at WASHINGTON NATIONALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 1:05 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Partly cloudy, 79 degrees, wind 5 mph out to left field

MARLINS
2B Xavier Edwards
C Agustín Ramírez
CF Jakob Marsee
SS Otto Lopez
DH Heriberto Hernández
3B Connor Norby
1B Eric Wagaman
RF Joey Wiemer
LF Javier Sanoja

SAN DIEGO – It keeps happening. In every game and every start that he makes.

Rookie Jeremiah Jackson slashed .323/.344/.484 last month in 96 plate appearances, his first in the majors. Of course, he stayed in the lineup Monday afternoon at Petro Park, shifting from third base to right field, and tied his brief-career high with three hits.

Batting second again last night, Jackson fell behind 0-2 to Yu Darvish in the first inning and pulled a sweeper into the left field seats. He’s homered in three of his last four games. And his fielder’s choice grounder in the eighth scored Dylan Beavers with an insurance run.

The Orioles won’t try to carry over his rookie status to 2026. He isn’t in any Top 100 prospect rankings. He might not break camp with the team next spring, though he’s making a solid case for it.

Jackson is in a different kind of phase as the season draws nearer to a merciful conclusion. The Orioles aren’t focused as much on exposing him to big league pitching as they are figuring out who he really is and whether he can fill a utility role next season.

SAN DIEGO – Tyler Wells waited 508 days to pitch in a major league game. He could handle another 18 minutes.

Padres starter Yu Darvish threw 30 pitches in the top of the first inning, surrendered a home run to Jeremiah Jackson, hit two batters and issued a walk. The three strikeouts extended his stay on the mound while Wells paced in the dugout.

Finally able to pick up the baseball, Wells gave the Orioles five innings with two runs allowed and had teammates waiting to slap hands and hug him after his final batter in a 6-2 victory over the Padres before an announced sellout crowd of 42,536 at Petco Park.

Jackson has homered in back-to-back games and three of the last four. Emmanuel Rivera delivered two-out, two-run singles in the third and fifth innings to tie his career high in RBIs.

The Orioles claimed the series after dropping three in a row, improved their record to 63-76 and made certain that they wouldn’t lose 100 games.

As summer turns to autumn and a long-lost baseball season approaches its conclusion, the Nationals must cling to whatever bright spots remain. And there may be no bigger bright spot the rest of this month than the one that continues to follow Cade Cavalli nearly every time he takes the mound.

Cavalli has been far from perfect, and his most recent start at Yankee Stadium was downright ugly, but there still has been far more good than bad from the finally-healthy right-hander. And there was a lot of good tonight during the Nats’ 5-2 victory over the Marlins.

Bouncing back nicely from that seven-run, four-homer barrage in the Bronx last week, Cavalli shut down Miami’s lineup over five strong innings, a 75-pitch outing that probably could have continued if not for the team’s caution in extending the 26-year-old too much as his healthy-to-date season nears the finish line.

Cavalli’s efforts tonight – with some offensive help from James Wood (two-run homer), Daylen Lile (double, RBI single), Riley Adams (RBI double) and Jacob Young (2-for-2, RBI, stolen base) – earned him his second career win in his seventh career start.

Don’t let the lack of victories, though, overshadow Cavalli’s true performance so far. He has now allowed three or fewer runs in four of his six starts this season. He has notched 28 strikeouts and only eight walks in 29 2/3 innings.

SAN DIEGO – Jeremiah Jackson is in right field again tonight and Dylan Beavers is in left, as the Orioles try to clinch their series against the Padres following last night’s 4-3 win.

Beavers has reached base safely 25 times to begin his career, tied with Glenn Gulliver (1982) for second most in franchise history through the first 15 games behind Curtis Goodwin’s 26 in 1995.

Ryan Mountcastle is the designated hitter and cleanup hitter. Coby Mayo is starting at first base and batting ninth.

Emmanuel Rivera gets another start at third base. Samuel Basallo is catching Tyler Wells.

Jorge Mateo is on the roster and the bench. He wasn’t in the clubhouse during media access.

The Nationals’ ever-changing catching corps underwent more change today when the club signed veteran Jorge Alfaro to a major league deal and sent C.J. Stubbs back to Triple-A one day after he was part of a shutout win in his major league debut.

The move, which caught plenty by surprise, brings a more experienced player to a Nats roster lacking in that area, especially behind the plate. Alfaro, 32, has 496 games of big league experience, mostly with the Marlins and Phillies, though he hasn’t played at this level since brief stints with the Rockies and Red Sox in 2023.

Alfaro had spent the entire season with the Brewers’ Triple-A affiliate in Nashville, batting .244 with 15 homers, 49 RBIs and a .715 OPS in 82 games. He was released on Monday, and the Nationals immediately jumped in and offered him a chance to return to the majors.

“It’s emotional, getting back to the big leagues,” he said. “Being able to spend the last couple of months in Nashville, playing in Triple-A, it’s like a blessing from god to get this opportunity with the Nationals.”

With Riley Adams having ascended to the No. 1 catching job since Keibert Ruiz’s placement on the 7-day concussion injured list in early July, Alfaro now becomes the new No. 2 catcher. That role has changed hands several times in the last week alone.

SAN DIEGO - Before the Orioles could hand Tyler Wells the ball tonight, they had to reinstate him from the 60-day injured list and do some roster maneuvering.

They also returned infielder/outfielder Jorge Mateo from his rehab assignment and reinstated him from the 60-day IL, a little earlier than they indicated yesterday. He’s also back.

Catcher Maverick Handley was optioned to Triple-A Norfolk after spending one day with the team. Pitchers Corbin Martin and Elvin Rodríguez were designated for assignment. Martin was with the Orioles, and his exit frees up another spot on the 28-man roster.

The 40-man roster is full.

Mateo hasn’t played in the majors since June 6 due to elbow and hamstring injuries. He’s batting .180/.231/.279 with 14 steals in 15 attempts over 31 games.

The Nationals enjoyed a much-needed, feel-good Labor Day thanks to Andrew Alvarez, who tossed five scoreless innings in his major league debut and set the stage for his team to beat the Marlins 2-0 and snap an eight-game losing streak. So what does tonight have in store?

There won’t be another big league debut, but there will be another young pitcher on the mound for the Nats in Cade Cavalli. This is Cavalli’s sixth start of the season (seventh of his career) and he’s looking to bounce back from his first truly rough one, in which the Yankees scored seven runs in only 2 1/3 innings, blasting four homers in the process. The Marlins, on paper, look like a much more favorable matchup for the right-hander. And as things stand, he’s scheduled to face them again next week in Miami.

The Marlins send rookie Adam Mazur to the mound tonight for what will be only his 11th career start. (He’s 1-4 with a 7.06 ERA to date.) The Nats faced him last year, when he was with the Padres, and scored four runs in five innings.

MIAMI MARLINS at WASHINGTON NATIONALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Partly cloudy, 75 degrees, wind 6 mph in from right field

MARLINS
2B Xavier Edwards
CF Jakob Marsee
DH Agustín Ramírez
C Liam Hicks
SS Otto Lopez
3B Connor Norby
1B Troy Johnston
LF Heriberto Hernández
RF Victor Mesa Jr.

The Washington Nationals agreed to terms with catcher Jorge Alfaro on a one-year contract and optioned catcher C.J. Stubbs to Triple-A Rochester on Tuesday. To make room on the 40-man roster, catcher Drew Millas was transferred to the 60-day Injured List. Nationals Interim General Manager Mike DeBartolo made the announcement. 

Alfaro, 32, comes to the Nationals after playing 82 games for Triple-A Nashville in the Milwaukee organization this season. He hit .244 with 10 doubles, a triple, 15 home runs, 49 RBI, 11 walks, 12 stolen bases and 49 runs scored. His 15 home runs this season ranked third among International League catchers, while his 12 stolen bases ranked second among all Triple-A backstops this season. Alfaro was also one of only two catchers in all of Minor League baseball to steal at least 10 bases and not be caught a single time.

Defensively this season, Alfaro has caught 23 of 64 prospective base-stealers (.641 stolen base percentage). His 23 caught stealings rank tied for fourth in all of Triple-A.

A native of Sincelejo, Colombia, Alfaro is a veteran of eight Major League seasons with the Phillies (2016-18), Marlins (2019-21), Padres (2022), Rockies (2023) and Red Sox (2023). He has hit .253 with 71 doubles, four triples, 48 home runs, 198 RBI, 18 stolen bases, 72 walks and 152 runs scored in 496 career Major League games.

Stubbs, 28, made his Major League debut yesterday and became the first Nationals catcher and first Major League catcher since 2019 to catch a shutout in his first Major League game.