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As he contemplated Monday night’s game roughly 30 minutes after it ended, Nationals manager Davey Martinez kept pointing out the positive developments he saw from a number of his players, especially young players.
Brady House looked comfortable in his major league debut. Daylen Lile looked great in his second big league stint, launching his first career homer. CJ Abrams made one of the best defensive plays of his career. James Wood had another big night, doubling, homering and drawing a walk. Jake Irvin overcame another first-inning mistake to deliver a quality start. Brad Lord was lights out in two innings of relief.
“We played really well,” Martinez said to open his postgame press conference.
The end result, of course, was a loss. Maybe the biggest gut-punch loss of the season after Kyle Finnegan gave up two home runs in the top of the ninth to turn a 4-3 lead over the Rockies into a 6-4 loss to far and away the worst team in baseball.
That’s nine straight losses, by the way, matching the second-longest streak in club history. Every other one of this length, including the club-record 12-game losing streak from August 2008, has come from a team that ultimately lost 100-plus games.
How then, Martinez was asked, does this team strike a balance between the legitimately positive developments on display from players who make up the young core this franchise has been trying to build with the reality of the actual game result?
“We’ve got to keep on making them understand the good things they do will definitely uplift this team,” he answered. “For me, it’s just focus on the good. Don’t focus on the negative. Stay positive, and good things will happen. I’ve seen it before. As you know, we’ve been through stretches like this. And then we’ve been through stretches where we won five, six games in a row, seven out of 10, 12 out of 15.
“Those days will come, but we’ve got to stay positive. We start dwelling on the negatives, that’s what’s going to happen every day.”
Martinez is perpetually upbeat. It’s been his hallmark throughout his eight seasons managing the Nationals. And it has mostly served him well, never more so than during the dark days of early 2019 when a team that expected to win big found itself 12 games under .500 but stuck together and flipped the switch to ultimately win the World Series.
The 2025 Nationals, it just so happens, are now 12 games under .500 following Monday’s loss. At 30-33, they were one good week away from a winning record and real positive momentum for the first time in a long time. At 30-42, they’re suddenly back near the bottom of the standings, losing not just to superior teams but now to the cellar dwellers they were supposed to feast upon.
This losing streak has been defined by a lack of offense, now 35 runs scored in 14 games this month. But it’s about more than that. It’s about a team that believes it should be better than this not delivering in the moments that decide a game’s outcome.
It’s worth noting that seven of these nine losses have come by one or two runs. Every single one has been winnable. And in every single case, one or more players have faltered when presented an opportunity to do something to secure victory.
“I don’t think it’s a secret what’s been going on with our team,” Finnegan said after his nightmare top of the ninth. “Just really wanting to get a win, get back in the win column.”
How do you not let those moments become too big?
“I think that’s maybe a little bit of what we’ve been struggling with,” he said. “Guys trying to make a big moment for our team, trying to snap us out of it, whatever. But we’ve just got to focus on the things that are in our control, and not let the moments get away from us, or get too big.”
It’s easy to say. It’s much harder to do. Especially when everyone is also dealing with a rare situation around these parts: off-the-field noise as a result of Martinez’s poorly articulated postgame comments Saturday, in which he insisted a team’s struggles are “never on the coaches” and that “it’s always been about the players, always.”
At a time when fractures may be starting to show, a clubhouse comprised mostly of young players who have little experience (good or bad) to lean on is trying to navigate its way through uncharted waters.
“We believe in each other. We believe in the guys in this room,” Irvin said. “At the end of the day, the skid looks tough, and it has been tough. But we’re pulling for each other. We believe in each other. And we know we’re going to get through this.”
A team with one of the most exciting young sluggers in the sport, an All-Star-worthy shortstop, the majors’ leading strikeout pitcher who also sports a sub-3.00 ERA and a host of 20-something building blocks with strong pedigrees should be better than this.
The challenge now is actually turning all of that into victories on the field.
“We know we can win,” Finnegan said. “We’ve done it. We’ve been on winning streaks this year. We just have to grind through this … whatever it is we’re in. We’re going to win again. We’re going to win a lot more games this year. This is just a small piece of the season, and we can’t let it define us.”
