It’s been a long season, and given what occurred in July, it would be understandable if any Nationals fans out there saw their interest in the team wane in the ensuing months.

But if you’ve lost track, or have just turned your attention to football, it’s worth noting that we have now officially reached the home stretch of the 2025 season. The Nats have only 16 games left to play, which equates to one-tenth of the season.

It’s pretty much too late for anyone to change the narrative of the season as a whole, or on any individual level. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still a few things at stake over these final two weeks. Here are several to keep an eye on (when you’re not watching football) …

* James Wood’s homers and strikeouts
It’s been an incredibly disappointing second half for the young star. Go back to July 3, and he was on pace for 43 homers, 125 RBIs and 190 strikeouts. Now, he finds himself needing to homer three more times just to finish with 30, to drive in 12 more runs just to get to 100. As for the strikeouts, well, that rate has skyrocketed. He’s already at 198, well ahead of his previous pace. That means he’s only one shy of Adam Dunn’s single-season club record from 2010. More concerning, he’s only 25 away from Mark Reynolds’ major-league record of 223 from 2009 with the Diamondbacks.

* CJ Abrams’ push for 20-30
Abrams is sitting on 17 homers, so he needs three more to match last season’s total of 20. He’s already got 30 stolen bases, so he just needs to hit for some power to join the 20-30 Club for the second straight year.

* Daylen Lile’s triples
The rookie outfielder has become a triples machine, with five of them in his last 10 games alone. That gives him nine for the season, which matches Bryce Harper’s single-season rookie club record. And he’s only two away from matching Denard Span’s single-season club record of 11 set in 2013. For what it’s worth, Lile has done this while taking only 294 plate appearances to date. Harper had 597 of them as a rookie in 2012, and Span had 662 of them when setting his record in 2013.

* MacKenzie Gore’s strikeouts
Like Wood, Gore has seen his pitching numbers plummet in the second half. He led the majors in strikeouts early on and had a shot at topping 250 for the season. But he’s only at 177 after Thursday night’s start against the Marlins. And with at most three more starts on his docket before season’s end, he’s going to need to post a whole lot of K’s just to get to 200, a number that seemed a shoo-in just a few months ago.

* Can Irvin or Parker get to 10 wins?
Quick: Who leads the Nationals’ pitching staff in wins this season? Bet you wouldn’t have guessed both Jake Irvin and Mitchell Parker are at the top of the list, considering their respective 5.70 and 5.69 ERAs. But it’s true, each has eight wins at the moment. While the pitcher win stat has lost much of its significance in recent decades, it’s still never a good thing when a team plays 162 games and doesn’t have at least one 10-game winner. So it would be nice if either Irvin or Parker could pull off two more curly W’s before season’s end.

* Could Gray make it back to the majors?
Josiah Gray is healthy again and pitching in competitive games again, which is great. The team’s 2024 Opening Day starter tossed 1 1/3 scoreless innings for Single-A Wilmington on Sunday in his first rehab start since undergoing Tommy John surgery last summer. Next up is a Saturday start for Double-A Harrisburg. And barring any setbacks, he should then make a start for Triple-A Rochester late next week. Will that be the end of the road for Gray in 2025? Or is there a chance the Nationals would activate him off the 60-day IL and give him one start in the big leagues during the season’s final weekend? Club officials aren’t making any declarations on that front yet. They are taking it start by start and seeing how Gray feels after each one. And they don’t feel any urgency to get him into a big league game now; they’d be perfectly content having him go into the offseason healthy and gear up for spring training. But if everything goes smoothly, it’s still within the realm of possibility we see him at Nationals Park before season’s end.