Two things that appear to simultaneously be true about the 2025 Nationals: 1) Their bullpen has the potential to turn any late lead into a late deficit, and 2) Their lineup has the potential to make up for it on any given day.
The Nats never should’ve needed to come from behind to beat the Guardians, 10-9 today in the opener of a single-admission doubleheader. They held a seemingly comfortable, four-run lead heading to the seventh inning. Alas, with this bullpen, no lead is safe, and so they found themselves trailing by two runs by the time the bottom of the seventh arrived.
At which point they proceeded to get four runs back, retake the lead and this time hold on for another wild win in a season that has already featured too many of these for everyone’s blood pressure.
Leading 6-2 at the end of six innings thanks to some clutch hits and a gutsy pitching performance from Jake Irvin despite another shaky top of the first, the Nationals watched as Jose A. Ferrer and Jorge López give up six runs via six singles (two of which never left the infield), a double and a walk.
It was the latest meltdown by a bullpen that thought it was getting back on track with four straight strong games to begin May but fell right back into the same old traps that defined the month of April.
But as they’ve shown multiple times already this season, the rest of the Nats brushed off those relief woes and took control of the game for themselves. A four-run rally in the bottom of the seventh included clutch hits by Keibert Ruiz, Dylan Crews and the go-ahead, two-run, hustle double by José Tena against the organization that traded him to D.C. last summer for Lane Thomas.
Reinvigorated by that offensive support, López came back out to pitch a 1-2-3 top of the eighth against the top of the Cleveland lineup. And Kyle Finnegan then finished it off in the top of the ninth for his 12th save in 14 attempts, giving up one run but not two to give the Nationals (17-19) a shot at a doubleheader sweep this evening.
How striking have Irvin’s first-inning struggles been? Well, entering the day, eight of the 19 runs he had allowed all season crossed the plate in the opening frame, leaving him to face an uphill climb most every time he takes the mound. And it was no different today when Irvin began his outing in nightmare fashion. Four batters in, he had issued three walks and a run-scoring wild pitch, leaving the sparse crowd that arrived early to witness both games muttering in disbelief.
Perhaps Irvin’s biggest pitches of the game, then, came to Carlos Santana and Bo Naylor, pitches that induced a foul popup and a fly ball to center to get out of the inning with only the one run on the board for Cleveland despite 29 pitches thrown.
Irvin would surrender a solo homer to Nolan Jones in the top of the second, putting his team in a hole once again. But that would be the final blemish on an outing that proved far more successful than most would’ve expected given the manner in which it began.
Irvin went on to retire 12 of the last 14 batters he faced, keeping his pitch count respectable enough to give him a shot at taking the mound for the top of the sixth. And when he handed the ball to Davey Martinez two batters later, he had done it again, departing with only the two early runs allowed over 5 1/3 strong innings in the latest example of a gutsy-if-not-dominant performance by a member of the Nationals rotation.
All of which left Irvin with the following lopsided ERAs by inning: 10.13 in the first, 2.70 after that.
Irvin departed with a lead in hand, thanks to one big blast and several clutch singles.
The big blast came – no surprise – from James Wood, who proved he can actually turn on an inside pitch and destroy it to the pull side, his two-run homer to right leaving his bat at a whopping 114.6 mph. Wood’s 10th homer in 36 games this season surpassed his total of nine from 79 games played as a rookie in 2024.
The clutch hits came from Nathaniel Lowe, Alex Call and Jacob Young, all in similar fashion. Lowe singled up the middle to score CJ Abrams in the bottom of the first, his already his 28th RBI of the season. Call singled up the middle in the bottom of the fifth, scoring Young from second. And then Young (one pitch after fouling off a squeeze bunt attempt) sent a two-out, two-run single to center in the bottom of the sixth, in the process doubling his season RBI total from two to four.
That should’ve held up as the game-winning rally for the Nationals. Alas, with this bullpen, it was not. But thanks to a relentless lineup, there still was a game-winning rally a bit later.