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PHOENIX – Remember when the Nationals scored six total runs over four games? It happened less than a week ago.
You’re forgiven if you can’t recall such historical facts, because over the last 72 hours this same lineup has managed to turn itself into a powerhouse.
They did it during back-to-back wins in Seattle, the first leg of this West Coast trip. And now they did it in the opener of their weekend series here at Chase Field, riding two more homers from James Wood and Josh Bell and two more clutch hits from Robert Hassell III to a 9-7 victory over the Diamondbacks.
That’s three straight games the Nationals have scored nine runs, a feat achieved only seven times in club history and not since Aug. 17-19, 2019.
"We talked about it in spring: We know we can be an offensive threat," Bell said. "And right now, it seems like it's a different person every night ... aside from Woody. It seems like it's every night for him. It's definitely fun to be a part of it."
The previous two wins over the Mariners turned into routs. This one was a nailbiter, with Arizona matching the Nats’ offensive output for most of the night, until a makeshift bullpen with several apparently unavailable arms found a way to close it out.
After Jake Irvin slogged his way through five innings, Davey Martinez turned to Andrew Chafin for the sixth and rookie Brad Lord for the seventh and eighth before Kyle Finnegan assumed his usual role in the ninth. That trio combined to allow one run over four innings to secure the team’s ninth win in 12 games.
"It's a huge (source of) pride," Lord said of a bullpen that has delivered a 3.32 ERA over the last 18 games after opening the season with 7.29 ERA in its first 39 games. "When the starter's done, our goal is to put up zeros for the rest of the game. You go and set up the next guy behind you for success."
The Nationals have long since established their offensive pattern in 2025: If they hit an opposing starter early, they usually keep hitting him throughout the night. If they don’t hit an opposing starter, they usually don’t ever figure him out. So when they busted out for two quick runs off Merrill Kelly tonight, it boded well not only for the top of the first but for the innings that followed.
The key at-bat in that opening frame came from Hassell, who with the bases loaded and two out fouled off four consecutive pitches from Kelly before finally lining a two-run single to center on the 10th pitch of the at-bat.
"I think I saw everything he was going to try to give me," Hassell said. "That specific AB, I jumped out of the way. He tried to front-hip a two-seam, which he got in there for strike one anyway. I figured it was coming again 3-2, and he had to come to me. With bases loaded, he didn't want to walk me, obviously. I was just trying to be one step ahead."
Alas, the Diamondbacks had an immediate answer in the bottom of the inning, and then some. Six of their first seven batters reached against Irvin with a combination of loud contact and well-placed ground balls. Just like that, the Nats’ 2-0 lead was a 4-2 deficit after a 30-minute first inning.
True to form, though, the Nationals carried over their early success against Kelly into much more as the night progressed, most dramatically during a four-run top of the third that featured two of the loudest cracks of the bat you’ll ever here.
Wood opened the inning as only he can, driving a high-and-away pitch to left-center for his third homer in four nights on this West Coast trip, his 16th overall this season.
Three batters later, it was Bell’s turn to continue what he started in Seattle and demolish another baseball. Reinvigorated by an altered swing that focuses more on making hard contact than lifting the ball in the air, the veteran DH managed to both make very hard contact and lift the ball very high in the air. When it finally landed some 430 feet away, it had cleared the famed Chase Field pool in right-center, reaching the concourse that overlooks it.
That’s now three homers in as many nights for Bell, who admits he finally feels like he’s figured things out after a miserable opening two months to his season.
"It feels like the game is slowing down a little bit," said Bell, who has raised his OPS from .544 to .638 in three days. "I'm swinging at better pitches. And the mistakes that I should hit, I am hitting, and hitting well. The first month of baseball, I was getting pitches in my zone, and I was just mishitting them. It's nice to see the change."
Alas, just as they did in the bottom of the first, the Diamondbacks stormed right back to re-tie the game in the bottom of the third with four straight hits off Irvin. The only saving grace? Hassell threw out Eugenio Suarez with a beautiful toss from center field to the plate for one out, then Daylen Lile robbed Gabriel Moreno of at least a double (maybe a homer) at the right field wall for the final out of the inning.
Irvin would muddle his way through the fifth without giving up anything else, his night ending with six runs and 10 hits to his name. Most alarming: He did not strike out a batter, and in fact induced only three whiffs off 43 total swings by Arizona’s batters.
"I'm not exactly sure," Irvin said when asked why he thought he struggled to get swings and misses. "I know this is a team that has given me a little bit of trouble in the past. Maybe they just see the ball really well. But I think a lot of that is probably getting into a lot of bad counts and not staying on the offensive like I like to."
And yet the right-hander found himself in line for the win because the Nationals reclaimed the lead in the top of the sixth on Nathaniel Lowe’s broken-bat, two-run single. And then they added an insurance run in the seventh on another RBI single by Hassell, giving him five over the last three nights and ensuring his team's third consecutive nine-run explosion.
"It was seesaw for a while, but they put some good at-bats together," manager Davey Martinez said. "We got the big hit from Nate again there, and Hassell drove in another run for us. The at-bats have been really good. Now, we've just got to sustain that and keep it going."
