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.

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.

NEW YORK – Daylen Lile continues to be away from the Nationals while dealing with an illness. The young outfielder will miss his third straight game and stay at the team hotel in New York after “throwing up a little bit and not feeling good” over the past couple of days, according to interim manager Miguel Cairo yesterday.

Cairo provided a non-update update on Lile before tonight’s second game at Yankee Stadium, saying the Nats want the rookie to feel 100 percent better before he returns to the field … and to the clubhouse as to not get anyone else on the team sick.

“He was feeling a little better. Still a little under the weather,” Cairo said during his pregame media session. “We just want to give him one more day. Until he feels that he can do something, we're (not) going to bring him over here. We didn't want to get the rest of the team sick. But hopefully he's better and he'll come back tomorrow.”

That leaves the Nationals short-handed once again in The Bronx with the other four young outfielders available and in the starting lineup tonight against reigning American League Rookie of the Year Luis Gil.

James Wood remains in left field, Jacob Young is in center and Robert Hassell III is in right, while Dylan Crews serves as the designated hitter for just the second time in his young career.

NEW YORK – Not all home runs are created equal.

They all count the same on the scoreboard, yes. But their meanings are different.

Consider Ryan Zimmerman’s walk-off home run to open Nationals Park in 2008. Or Jayson Werth’s walk-off homer in Game 4 of the 2012 National League Division Series. Or Howie Kendrick’s longball off the foul pole in Houston to clinch the Nationals’ first World Series championship.

Now consider Jacob Young’s first career grand slam.

Sure, it came with two outs in the ninth inning with his team trailing the Yankees 10-1, the Nats having just got on the scoreboard thanks to Robert Hassell III’s bases-loaded walk. But it still put four runs on the board at Yankee Stadium as the Nats cut their 10-run deficit entering the ninth in half. And it sure meant a whole lot to Young.

NEW YORK – Miguel Cairo knows the aura that surrounds Yankee Stadium well. He called the old Yankee Stadium home for parts of three seasons during his 17-year major league career.

His message to his young Nationals team ahead of tonight’s three-game series opener in The Bronx: Embrace it and play clean baseball.

“Just do the little things,” the interim manager said during his pregame media session. “You gotta do the little things better than anyone, and you might have a chance to win games.”

Although the Nats have been playing cleaner ball lately, they by no means did the little things better than the Yankees tonight, dooming them to a 10-5 loss that was more of a shellacking by one of the most dangerous offenses in baseball than the final score assumes.

“That's what we've been preaching. To beat teams like this, you cannot give outs away," Cairo said after the game. "But our team has been playing good. It's just one of those days. So far, I'm proud of how we've been doing. Playing hard, it's just one of those days.”

PHILADELPHIA – Three-fifths of the Nationals rotation is giving them a chance to win right now. The other two-fifths is not, and that has become a real problem.

While MacKenzie Gore, Brad Lord and Cade Cavalli have offered the organization legitimate reason for short-term and long-term encouragement with their pitching performances, Jake Irvin and Mitchell Parker haven’t come close to matching their teammates’ numbers. It would be one thing if those two were at least gutting out five or six innings and keeping the score close, but even that has become a challenge.

It happened to Parker during Saturday night’s loss to the Phillies. And it happened to Irvin this afternoon during a 3-2 loss to the National League East leaders.

It certainly didn’t help matters that the Nats lineup was rendered helpless by Philadelphia left-hander Ranger Suárez, who struck out a career-high 11 batters over seven scoreless innings. But Irvin’s inability to complete even three innings made it feel like this game was much more one-sided than it actually was.

This is the recurring theme for the Nationals at this stage of the season. Over the last 2 1/2 weeks, they’ve gone 7-2 in games started by Gore, Lord and Cavalli while going 1-7 in games started by Irvin and Parker.

Dylan Crews’ return tonight from the 60-day injured list is a major development for the Nationals, and his performance over the next six weeks is one of the team’s most important storylines down the stretch of what has been an incredibly depressing season.

But in some ways, there’s just as much intrigue today to the flip side of Crews’ return. Somebody has to be dropped from the Nats’ active roster, and that transaction may say a lot about the performance and future expectations for a bunch of players who will be impacted by the decision.

We’ve known for several years now the Nationals eventually were going to confront a dilemma in their outfield, with more promising young prospects than available positions. They managed to hold off making any major decisions there due to Crews’ oblique injury, which wound up sidelining him nearly three months.

But the time has come to decide which three young outfielders are going to get the bulk of the playing time the rest of the season. Or, perhaps, which four young outfielders are going to split time among three positions. Or, perhaps, if the Nats are going to try to find a way to keep all five in the majors at the same time.

This much we know: James Wood is going to keep playing every day. Aside from an occasional rest day, the 22-year-old slugger is going to be in the lineup as much as possible, whether in left field or maybe as designated hitter sometimes.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Though he has played the full nine innings on back-to-back days for Triple-A Rochester, Dylan Crews will remain on his minor league rehab assignment for now.

Crews is staying with the Red Wings, who are off today, the Nationals announced. He’s then scheduled to play the outfield again Tuesday and Wednesday in Rochester against Syracuse.

Those will be Crews’ 12th and 13th games played on this rehab assignment, a longer stint than most injured major league position players typically serve. The Nats, though, want to see the 23-year-old not only prove he’s healthy but that he’s consistently productive at the plate again before they intend to activate him off the 60-day injured list.

Out since he strained his left oblique muscle on a May 20 check-swing, Crews began his rehab assignment with Rochester on July 29. The plan was to slowly build up his workload until he was able to play nine innings in the field on back-to-back days. He did that for the first time this weekend, playing all nine innings in right field both Saturday and Sunday at Norfolk.

Crews’ offensive production has been decent – he’s 10-for-36 with a double, two homers, seven RBIs, one walk and six strikeouts in 11 games – but the Nats appear to want to see more still before they deem him big league-ready again.

SAN FRANCISCO – They tried a new look atop the lineup, flip-flopping James Wood and CJ Abrams and giving Brady House the first opportunity of his career to bat in a prominent position. Anything in an attempt to shake things up and bring some life back to a lifeless Nationals lineup.

Alas, the end result looked very much like the results of previous games when Abrams batted ahead of Wood and House batted down in the order.

At some point, it’s not about the order of the lineup, it’s about the production (or lack thereof) of the guys who are in the lineup. And there once again was very little production tonight during a 5-0 loss to the Giants.

Shut out for the second straight day, the Nationals brought their offensive woes with them from the East Coast to the West Coast. They couldn’t score off Athletics left-hander Jacob Lopez on Thursday afternoon at Nationals Park. And they couldn’t score off Giants opener Matt Gage or bulk reliever Kai-Wei Teng tonight at Oracle Park.

Even in victory Wednesday night, the Nats scored only twice (one of them Abrams’ walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth). Ergo, they’ve now totaled two runs on 11 hits over their last 27 innings of baseball. Perhaps even more jarring than that, they’ve drawn only two walks during that same prolonged time frame.

Jacob Young is no stranger to making incredible defensive plays in center field. Since becoming a full-time major leaguer last year, the 25-year-old has been one of the most electric outfielders in the sport.

So while it wasn’t a surprise Young made a miraculous catch to rob Will Benson of a home run yesterday, it was still a play that should draw plenty of praise. And a highlight that should be remembered from an otherwise forgettable 5-0 loss to the Reds.

With Cincinnati having already extended its lead to 3-0 in the eighth inning, it looked like Benson was going to add more with a two-run homer off Jackson Rutledge. He hit the right-hander's elevated first-pitch fastball 103.1 mph off the bat and it traveled 400 feet to straightaway center.

But he needed 401 feet to beat Young.

The 5-foot-11 center fielder ran back and climbed the wall with two literal steps to reach over and bring the ball back for the final out of the inning, sending a loud roar of approval from the crowd ringing across Nationals Park and putting a lot of astounded looks on players’ faces.

In order for the Nationals to accomplish something they hadn’t in two months, they would need to build on the offensive outputs they posted in each of the first two games against the Reds.

They claimed victories in those outings in very different ways, setting up an opportunity for their first three-game sweep since mid-May against the Orioles in Baltimore. On Monday, they jumped out to a big early lead and held on late. On Tuesday, they stayed patient against a tough starter, who they eventually got to the second time through the order, and relied on the bullpen.

Unfortunately, the Nats were victims of another feat, something that has happened to them more recently than their own sweep.

Neither version of the offense showed up this afternoon, as the Nats were shut out by Nick Lodolo in a 5-0 loss in front of 21,567 fans on camp day at Nationals Park.

Lodolo became the third pitcher to toss a complete-game shutout against the Nationals this season, joining Erick Fedde (who was coincidentally designated for assignment by the Cardinals today after going 3-10 with a 5.22 ERA) on May 9 and David Peterson with the Mets on June 11.

MILWAUKEE – If the Nationals were going to head into the All-Star break on a positive note, they had an uphill climb to battle.

Already having struggled this weekend against Brewers pitching, facing right-hander Freddy Peralta, who was selected for the upcoming All-Star Game but will not pitch in it, may have proved to be the Nats’ toughest challenge yet.

And they were shorthanded heading into the matchup, with their two best hitters sidelined before the game even started. For the first time in 174 games since he made his major league debut, James Wood was not in the starting lineup, the struggling All-Star slugger getting some extra rest before tomorrow’s Home Run Derby.

“He's going to be in the Home Run Derby, he's going to play in the All-Star Game. And he doesn't have time off, so I just wanted to give him the day today so that he can just chill out and relax," interim manager Miguel Cairo said after the game. "He's been playing every day. He's the big player on our team. And I just wanted to give him a day.”

Then 30 minutes before first pitch, CJ Abrams was scratched from the starting lineup, with Paul DeJong taking over at shortstop and batting fourth. The Nats announced during the game (a change from the team’s policy under the previous regime) that the young shortstop was scratched with minor right shoulder soreness, which he first experienced on Saturday.

James Wood could only chuckle when presented with the news he had just become the first major leaguer to be intentionally walked four times in the same game since Barry Bonds.

“That’s pretty cool,” the Nationals left fielder. “I mean, if you’re getting put in the same sentence as him, that’s pretty cool.”

Bonds, for the record, achieved his four-intentional-walk game in 2004, at age 40, during a season in which he hit 45 homers to go along with an insane slash line of .362/.609/.812. Of his all-time-record 232 walks that year, an astonishing 120 of them were intentional. He had long since established himself as the most feared hitter in baseball by then.

Wood, on the other hand, is 22 years old. Sunday was the 163rd game of his big league career. He is only beginning to establish his place in the sport, and yet the Angels’ actions over the weekend spoke volumes about the respect he already commands.

“It stinks, because I like to watch him hit. But it’s pretty crazy that they’re already taking those measures against him,” teammate Jacob Young said. “But it makes sense. He’s carried our offense for a lot of the year, and he’s special when he’s up there.”

ANAHEIM, Calif. – For eight innings, the Nationals did just enough to keep today's series finale against the Angels close, overcoming missed opportunities, missed calls and missed locations to at least put themselves in position to win.

It was, quite frankly, the kind of game they lost too many times over the last week and a half during a Southern California road trip that featured as many one-run losses as wins of any margin (three apiece).

And then when it really mattered, a Nats team wrapping up a miserable month found a way to deliver and head home finally feeling better about itself for the first time in a long time.

With a ninth-inning rally against future Hall of Fame closer Kenley Jansen, then a three-run rally keyed by several youngsters in the 11th and the first three-inning relief appearance of Kyle Finnegan's career, the Nationals pulled off a rousing, 7-4 victory at Angel Stadium that felt as significant as any other during this disappointing season.

"We haven't done as well as we'd like in the wins department this road trip," Finnegan said. "But I feel like we've played pretty good baseball. So to win a game like this - last game of a long road trip away from home, guys away from their families, grind one out in extra innings - I feel like it's good for our morale."

SAN DIEGO – MacKenzie Gore has pitched like an ace this season. He leads the National League in strikeouts. His ERA resides in the low-3.00s. Only five major leaguers have totaled more than his 11 quality starts.

So how come Gore now sports a 3-8 record? Because no matter how well he’s pitched, his teammates can’t seem to consistently provide him the kind of support the left-hander needs to emerge victorious.

That troubling trend reached a new low this afternoon at Petco Park, where Gore was good once again and once again got no help from the rest of the Nationals during a disheartening 1-0 loss to the Padres.

"That's on us. That's on the lineup," center fielder Jacob Young said. "He keeps us in almost every game, and we just haven't been able to score the runs, especially in games like this where it's one or two. We haven't been able to scrap them together and get him some more wins. But he's had our back on the mound. Hopefully in the second half of the year, we can have his."

Gore allowed only one run over six innings, rarely surrendering loud contact. But San Diego’s Nick Pivetta allowed zero runs over seven innings, and that was the difference in the game.

SAN DIEGO – Even as they put together a bunch of quality at-bats and jumped out to an early three-run lead tonight at Petco Park, the Nationals knew deep down they had squandered some opportunities to put the game away and had let the Padres keep it close enough to set up a potential comeback.

Sure enough, that early three-run lead evaporated over the course of the middle innings. And when they couldn’t mount any kind of late rally against one of the league’s best bullpens, the Nats found themselves on the wrong end of a 4-3 loss to San Diego.

The Padres scored all four runs from the fourth through the sixth innings, all of the runs charged to Trevor Williams even though the last of them crossed the plate after he departed. The Nationals, who totaled six hits through their first four innings at the plate, managed only one more the rest of the way.

With one last shot at rallying in the ninth, they went down quietly against All-Star closer Robert Suarez, who reportedly dropped his appeal of a three-game suspension - which Major League Baseball imposed on Friday after Suarez intentionally threw at the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani on Thursday - after it was reduced to two games. Suarez won’t be available for Wednesday afternoon’s series finale, but he was still allowed to take the mound tonight in a one-run game.

"They've got a really good bullpen," manager Davey Martinez said. "We knew that coming in. The objective for us is to try to score first and get on the board, beat the starters up a bit earlier. Once they get into that bullpen, it's tough."

LOS ANGELES – It’s easy to overlook now, because of the ultimately lopsided nature of Sunday’s game, but the Nationals and Dodgers were actually engaged in a tight, closely played contest into the seventh inning.

Even after Jose A. Ferrer served up Max Muncy’s grand slam in the bottom of the sixth, the Nats only trailed 4-3, with plenty of opportunity left to make up that slim deficit. And when Jacob Young drew a one-out walk in the top of the seventh, with the top of the lineup now due to bat, they looked like they might be in business.

What transpired next was unfortunately the latest in a growing list of baserunning gaffes by the Nationals. Young took off for second, hoping to steal the base and put himself in scoring position for CJ Abrams. And he beat Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing’s throw and shortstop Mookie Betts’ tag.

Except for one key point: Young overslid the bag, and because Betts held the tag throughout the entire process, Young was called out, killing the Nats’ positive momentum at a crucial point in the game.

The speedy center fielder (who scraped up his right hand but was able to finish the game) defended his decision to run against Los Angeles lefty Anthony Banda in that spot but conceded his mistake at the end of the play.

LOS ANGELES – Michael Soroka was cruising, - dominating, if we’re being honest - a Dodgers lineup that rarely finds itself in such a position. And thanks to Nathaniel Lowe’s latest clutch blast, the Nationals were in control at Chavez Ravine, looking to pull off what could only be considered an improbable weekend series victory over the defending World Series champs.

The sixth inning, though, has been Soroka’s personal nightmare most of the season. And today, it became not only Soroka’s nightmare, but Jose A. Ferrer’s as well. Only to be upstaged minutes later by the absolute disaster Ryan Loutos and Cole Henry made of the seventh inning.

Thus did the Nats somehow turn a three-run lead into an eight-run deficit in the span of about 25 minutes at Dodger Stadium, suffering one of their worst meltdowns of the year en route to a 13-7 loss that doesn’t begin to hint at how winnable this game actually was at one point.

Max Muncy’s grand slam off Ferrer flipped the affair from Washington's to Los Angeles' favor. Shohei Ohtani’s three-run triple off Loutos added to the misery. And Muncy’s three-run homer off Henry – giving the veteran infielder seven RBIs in two innings – felt downright embarrassing to the Nationals, who were in prime position to win not only this series but the season matchup with the Dodgers, only to go down in flames in the finale.

"I don't think you want to look at the score. A loss is a loss, whether you lose by one or you lose by six," said center fielder Jacob Young, whose team trailed by 10 before scoring four runs in the top of the ninth off position player Kiké Hernández. "I thought we actually played a pretty good game, and they had two big swings that blew it open and caused it to be uglier than it was. It was a chance to win a series, and that's what we wanted to do when we came here. We just didn't get it done."

Jacob Young is back playing center field for the Nationals, bumping Robert Hassell III to right field and Daylen Lile to the minors.

Young was officially activated off the 10-day injured list today, ready to return just shy of three weeks after spraining the AC joint in his left shoulder trying to make a leaping catch at the wall in Baltimore. The 25-year-old played three games on a rehab stint with Double-A Harrisburg, going 3-for-11 with a double, RBI, walk and stolen base while feeling confident about the state of his shoulder.

“We talked last night, sat down with the medical staff. He checked all the boxes,” manager Davey Martinez said. “They said he felt good. He got a bunch of at-bats fairly quick and said he felt fine. He’s ready to go, excited to be back.”

Young, who hadn’t played since the May 20 collision with the Camden Yards wall, said his body was admittedly out of game shape during Tuesday’s rehab debut. But he woke up Wednesday morning feeling good and had no issues the next two nights. He believes he’ll have no restrictions when he takes the field tonight against the Rangers.

“Full-go. Try to avoid the wall as best as I can out there,” he said with a laugh. “But everything else, full-go. Sliding, diving, all that stuff is good.”

The Nationals have welcomed plenty of former teammates back to D.C. in recent years, especially those who were part of the 2019 World Series championship roster. Tonight, though, offers maybe the most intriguing return yet: Patrick Corbin.

Corbin is by no means the best – or the most popular – former Nationals player to come back to town. But he was here much longer after the World Series than anyone else, and nobody had more mixed results over that length of time. The Nats do not win the title if not for Corbin’s performance all season and especially that October. But his performance the ensuing five years didn’t come close to matching the first.

Now the left-hander is a member of the Rangers rotation, with much better baseline stats (3.71 ERA, 1.256 WHIP) through 10 starts despite peripheral numbers that are remarkably similar to what he did here. What kind of reaction will he get from the D.C. crowd? How will he pitch tonight? Either way, it should be fascinating to watch.

The Nationals, who have Michael Soroka on the mound, made a roster move this afternoon. Jacob Young is officially back from the 10-day injured list and will be in tonight’s lineup, back in center field. Daylen Lile, who had his moments while up here over the last two weeks, was optioned back to Triple-A Rochester to clear the spot for Young (who will face some pressure now to be better offensively if he wants to retain his starting job long-term).

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs. TEXAS RANGERS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Chance of storms, 81 degrees, wind 6 mph out to left field