BOSTON – Hello from historic (and chilly) Fenway Park! This weekend is my first time shipping up to Boston since I was a young lad, a trip I don’t necessarily remember. So I’m very excited to be your trusty beat reporter live from Bah-stan.

The Nats are nearing the end of a wicked 14-game stretch against American League teams. After these three games against the Red Sox, they’ll head to the south side of Chicago to face a different shade of sox and wrap up three weeks’ worth of interleague play. Entering tonight, the Nats are 7-7 against AL teams and 11-8 on the road.

Patrick Corbin makes his eighth start in the opener. He’s 0-3 with a 6.45 ERA and 1.8095 WHIP. Though he once again got roughed up early in his last outing, he actually turned in a quality start with three runs over six innings against the Blue Jays. The veteran lefty needs to get off to better starts, however: He’s given up 16 runs in innings 1-3 compared to nine in innings 4-6.

Corbin is 0-2 with an 8.22 ERA and 2.478 WHIP in two career starts at Fenway, the last one coming in 2016.

Tanner Houck makes his eighth start for the Red Sox, going 3-3 with a 1.99 ERA and 0.971 WHIP over his first seven with all but one coming in as a quality start. He pitched a complete-game shutout against the Guardians on April 17, while holding them to just three hits and striking out nine. He has pitched three scoreless outings on the year. He has a 9.1 strikeout-per-nine-innings rate and his 2.08 Fielding Independent Pitching leads the major leagues.

Kyle Finnegan had pitched in 241 big league games before taking the mound Tuesday night at Nationals Park. Appearance No. 242 carried more weight than usual.

“This one, for whatever reason, felt a little more meaningful,” the right-hander said afterward. “It’s been a while since we’ve been over .500. We’ve been putting in all the work behind the scenes, and to see it starting to come to fruition has been exciting. And to do it against Baltimore in this series is special.”

Finnegan’s 62nd career save was his first as a member of a Nationals team with a winning record. That fact wasn’t lost on the 32-year-old, who has become one of the organization’s longest-tenured pitchers but not long enough to have experienced the good old days when meaningful baseball was played on a nightly basis on South Capitol Street.

So Tuesday’s 3-0 victory over the Orioles, with Finnegan recording the final three outs and then receiving high-fives from teammates as pink LED lights glowed above and a crowd of nearly 30,000 roared with approval, was arguably the biggest game he’s ever pitched.

One night later, he found himself right back in the spotlight, posting another zero in the top of the 10th to give his teammates a chance to win in the bottom of the inning. They couldn’t pull that one off, ultimately losing 7-6 in the 12th, but it was through no fault of their closer.

It’s easy to draw comparisons between the Nationals and Orioles. The two teams are 35 miles apart, and over the past six years have each undergone their own organizational rebuilds, which are now at different stages.

Of course, the Nationals won the World Series in 2019. The Orioles began their rebuild that year after a 47-115 season in 2018, which led to the hiring of executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias and manager Brandon Hyde, and the drafting of Adley Rutschman with the No. 1 overall selection.

The Nats didn’t start their rebuild until halfway through the 2021 season by trading Max Scherzer and Trea Turner to the Dodgers. Then it really became a reality the following summer when they traded Juan Soto to the Padres for a package of five top prospects while the superstar outfielder was still two years away from free agency.

The time in between the respective rebuilds gave the Orioles a head start, and here they are six years later with one of the best records in baseball fresh off an American League East title and their first postseason appearance since 2016.

That’s where the Nationals hope to be in the coming years. But with the way the first edition of this year’s Beltway Series went – a two-game split with a wild back-and-forth finale last night – the similarities between the two teams are even more striking.

After a year where he tore it up at Double-A and Triple-A and finished the 2023 season with 29 homers and 99 RBIs – leading the O’s farm in both – Coby Mayo is raking again.

Heston Kjerstad played with him with last year and this season and said Mayo has basically been locked in all spring and all year.

“Especially after playing with Coby last year, there is room for improvement, but he was already a really good hitter. So, for him to improve this year is really impressive. Still really young and for me, he’s more mature at the plate. He’s using all parts of the field a little bit better. Not just trying to pull everything.

“He has realized if he just makes contact, he hits the ball hard. He doesn’t have to try to produce that," said Kjerstad. 

In a combined 140 games last year with 78 at Bowie and 62 at Norfolk, Mayo, 22, hit .290/.410/.563/.973.

They turned out in large numbers – 34,078 of them, to be precise – to watch the conclusion of this two-game rivalry series, wondering if the Nationals would be able to duplicate their performance from Tuesday night’s opener and emerge with a sweep over the Orioles.

They didn't duplicate the performance. But they did put on a show that thrilled everyone in attendance, twice producing last-ditch rallies to tie the game before ultimately falling 7-6 in 12 innings.

With a furious rally in the bottom of the ninth, the Nats tied the game and sent it to extras. With another furious rally in the bottom of the 11th, they tied the game again and continued the proceedings deeper into the night. 

The magic ended there. The Orioles scored twice off a wild Jordan Weems in the top of the 12th, and the lineup could only score once in the bottom of the inning.

It was a thrilling ending to a highly captivating series between interleague rivals, who offered the large bipartisan crowd plenty of reason to want to see more of these matchups down the road.

It’s no longer a question of if. It’s a question of when James Wood will get the call to make his major league debut with the Nationals.

The way he’s been performing with Triple-A Rochester is starting to force the issue. In 31 games with the Red Wings, the big lefty bat is slashing .339/.444/.529 with a .973 OPS, 11 doubles, 14 RBIs, 23 walks to 30 strikeouts, eight stolen bases and four home runs, including two Wednesday afternoon.

How much longer can the Nats, who are sorely lacking power at the big league level, justify keeping him in the minors?

Well, they have a plan for their top prospect. And despite the numbers, they’re sticking to it.

“Look, I know he hit two home runs. And that's great. He's doing well,” manager Davey Martinez said before the second game of the Beltway Series against the Orioles. “But there is a plan. And we're gonna do everything we can to stick to that plan. We really are.”

Keibert Ruiz is in the Nationals lineup tonight, the 11th time he’s been in the lineup over the team’s last 13 games. He’s in there despite the career-worst 3-for-51 slump he’s stuck in. It’s quite possible he’s in there because of that slump, most of which has occurred since the 25-year-old catcher returned from a stint on the injured list with a bad case of influenza.

“When you get sick like that and miss 15 days, your timing is going to be off. And he lost a lot of weight,” manager Davey Martinez said. “He’s really working his way back. The only way he’s going to get his timing is by going out there and playing. He’s got to play.”

Ruiz has been playing a lot. Already a workhorse when healthy and productive, he’s getting just as much playing time now, perhaps even more. Last week he started on four consecutive days, though he was designated hitter for one of them.

The results have been tough to watch. Ruiz has one homer, two singles and one walk since coming off the IL. And there hasn’t been a lot of hard contact, with weak grounders and popups far more common.

Martinez believes the slump has to have a direct connection to his illness and recovery. He’s not worried about how Ruiz is holding up physically during this stretch.

The Nationals have finally gotten over the .500 hump. Let us never speak of that again. Of course, it would help if they gave themselves a little cushion, so one loss wouldn’t leave them right back where they started.

A win tonight would give the Nats a two-game sweep over the Orioles. It’s May, and it’s only a two-game series, but that would have to qualify as some sort of statement made by a rebuilding club against the club with the American League’s best record.

At this point, we know what the plan for success is. The Nationals need to get quality pitching, and they’ll hope Mitchell Parker can pick up right where Trevor Williams and the bullpen left off Tuesday night. Parker has started to show a few little cracks his last couple times out, not that anyone could expect him to consistently be as good as he was in his first two starts. But he needs to be willing to throw the ball over the plate to Baltimore’s hitters, keeping the fastball up and the curveball and splitter down. Can’t afford to give that lineup any free passes.

At the plate, the Nats will have to manufacture runs again, this time against Kyle Bradish, who makes his second start of the season. Bradish, who opened the year on the injured list with an elbow issue, held the Yankees to one run over 4 2/3 innings in his debut. Look for the Nationals to again try to run on him if they can get on base.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs. BALTIMORE ORIOLES
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 88.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Partly cloudy, 85 degrees, wind 10 mph left field to right field

He may have stumbled during the 2023 playoffs, but in 41 regular season games since the club acquired him last Aug. 7 heading into last night, right-handed reliever Jacob Webb has a 2.70 ERA, 1.036 WHIP and 10.1 K rate.

This year, in 17 games counting last night, he has an ERA of 1.76 with five walks to 19 strikeouts over 15 1/3 innings. Opponent batters have hit just .176 off him and lefty batters are just 1-for-19.

In the Yankees series, he fanned Aaron Judge in big spots in two separate games and fanned six in two games over just 2 2/3 innings. He was dominant at times.

While Webb said his changeup has been really good this year, another factor in his success is pitching with a lot of emotion. The fire burns within and the pitches move more, find their spots more and get more swings and misses it seems when passion is also part of his outings.

“Every time I go out to pitch, I try to create that emotion and that feeling,” Webb told me recently. “But I feel like some (games) are bigger than others, certain situations. I would just say I try to lock in like that every time and get myself pumped up as much as I can.

Trevor Williams is scheduled to take the mound again Monday evening in Chicago, facing one of the majors’ worst teams in the White Sox. When he does, he’ll do so as the proud owner of a 1.96 ERA.

Which won’t show up on the major-league leaderboard, because by then Williams won’t qualify for the MLB leaderboard due to throwing fewer innings (36 2/3) than games his team will have played (39).

It’s an unusual place for someone pitching so well to reside, but at this point it should be clear this is where the Nationals want him to reside. And Tuesday night’s game provided the latest example of it.

Williams absolutely cruised against the Orioles, allowing just two singles over five innings, walking nobody and striking out eight to match his career-high. He threw only 77 pitches and looked very much like he could keep going deeper into the game.

But when his veteran right-hander returned to the dugout following the top of the fifth, Davey Martinez gave him a handshake and informed him his night was over. And there wasn’t really any doubt in the manager’s mind.

WASHINGTON - Dean Kremer was following the rotation’s lead of hanging up zeros, being extra stingy Sunday afternoon with only one hit allowed, and the bats broke out to remove any potential drama. A sweep in Cincinnati was a certainty, with only the final score pending.

Anthony Santander provided the game’s first run with his RBI single in the first inning, but he had one more damaging swing in him. It didn’t influence the outcome, but he needed it.

Facing right-hander Emilio Pagán in the ninth, Santander laid into a four-seam fastball and drove it 402 feet to right-center field for his third career grand slam.

Santander had five hits since April 21 before going 3-for-4 to raise his average from .200 to .218 and his OPS from .668 to .722. He was slashing .179/.225/.381 against right-handers before last night, increasing the important of the blow against Pagán.

The only other five-RBI game in Santander’s career was May 5, 2023, against the Braves and he also hit a grand slam.

Three times in the last week, the Nationals put themselves in a position to get over a hump that for three years now had felt more daunting than the October hurdle they waited years to clear. They kept getting themselves to the .500 mark. They could not get themselves over it.

And then on attempt No. 4 tonight, they finally did it. The Nationals, for the first time since July 1, 2021, are a winning baseball team.

All it took? A 3-0 shutout victory over the Orioles, with Trevor Williams outdueling Corbin Burnes, the lineup manufacturing a few runs and the bullpen continuing its lights-out ways.

Yes, the Nats are 18-17, over the .500 hump at last. And happy not to have to talk about that longstanding negative fact anymore.

"I think it's the mentality that nobody sees us coming," closer Kyle Finnegan said. "We're kind of lurking in the shadows. And we know how good we are. Maybe the league will start to take notice." 

The Nationals made an expected roster move in the bullpen this morning, returning left-hander Robert Garcia from his rehab assignment and reinstating him from the injured list after a bout with influenza.

Garcia, 27, returns after missing 14 games. In one rehab appearance with Single-A Fredericksburg over the weekend, he struck out four without allowing a baserunner in two innings. Before landing on the IL, Garcia was tied for ninth among National League relievers with 13 strikeouts, achieving that mark in just 8 ⅓ innings. He also stranded all five runners he inherited this season.

He has been the only left-handed reliever manager Davey Martinez has used this season, having allowed just three extra base hits to lefty hitters in 68 career plate appearances.

The surprising part of the move was the decision to designate Matt Barnes for assignment to clear a spot on both the active and 40-man rosters.

“We needed to get Robert back. It was tough, but we definitely need a lefty,” Martinez said ahead of the Beltway Series opener against the Orioles. “I'd like to have more than one, but one right now will be good enough. But it was a tough call. Matty was such a professional. He's done it for a long time now. His velo just wasn't coming back like we thought it would. So we had to make a tough decision. I wished him all the best. We'll see where he ends up.”

Victor Robles is back on the Nationals roster, but not back in their lineup yet.

The Nats activated Robles off the 10-day injured list this afternoon, the outfielder having proven he has fully recovered from the left hamstring strain he suffered during the season’s first week. The club optioned Alex Call to Triple-A Rochester to clear a roster spot.

Robles played in only four games before suffering his injury running the bases. He was off to a solid start, reaching base in three of his five plate appearances and stealing two bases, on the heels of a strong spring in which he hit .368 with a .455 on-base percentage.

All that progress, though, was disrupted by his injury, which knocked him out a full month. He went on a rehab assignment in Rochester last week and over the course of six games went 7-for-20 with a double, a triple, three RBIs and three walks, convincing club officials and himself he was ready to return.

“I feel great,” he said, via interpreter Octavio Martinez. “My legs feel great. I have no discomfort when I’m running around.”

OK, who’s ready for Round 1 of the 2024 Beltway Series? The Nationals host the Orioles the next two nights and, in a new twist, both teams will be wearing their City Connect uniforms. (I believe this is the first time any visiting team has ever worn those uniforms, but please correct me if I’m wrong about that.)

The Nats are once again sitting exactly at .500, having now alternated between wins and losses over their last eight games. They’re still trying to get over that daunting hump for the first time since July 1, 2021. If they’re going to do it tonight, they’re going to have to find a way to score some runs off Corbin Burnes.

The former Cy Young Award winner with the Brewers has continued his dominant ways in Baltimore, going 3-1 with a 2.61 ERA and 0.919 WHIP through his first seven starts of the season. He has yet to allow more than three runs in any outing.

Then again, Trevor Williams hasn’t given up more than three runs in a start yet, either, making him the Nationals’ most effective starter to date. This is a tough lineup he’s got to face tonight, and you would imagine Davey Martinez’s leash will again be short, with a well rested bullpen (that also now includes Robert Garcia) good to go whenever needed.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS vs. BALTIMORE ORIOLES
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 88.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Chance of rain, 76 degrees, wind 6 mph out to left field

The Washington Nationals made the following roster moves on Tuesday. Nationals President of Baseball Operations and General Manager Mike Rizzo made the announcements.

  *   Returned left-handed pitcher Robert Garcia from rehab assignment and reinstated him from the Injured List
  *   Returned outfielder Victor Robles from rehab assignment and reinstated him from the Injured List
  *   Optioned outfielder Alex Call to Triple-A Rochester
  *   Designated right-handed pitcher Matt Barnes for assignment.

Garcia, 27, returns after missing 14 games with Influenza. In one rehab game with Single-A Fredericksburg, he struck out four without allowing a baserunner in 2.0 innings. Before his IL stint, Garcia was tied for ninth among National League relievers with 13 strikeouts, doing so in just 8.1 innings. He also stranded all five runners he inherited this season. In his career, Garcia has allowed just three extra base hits to left-handed hitters in 68 plate appearances.

Robles, 26, returns after missing 29 games with a left hamstring strain. In six rehab games with Triple-A Rochester, he hit .350 (7-for-20) with a double, a triple, three RBI, three walks, a stolen base and four runs scored. Robles played in four games before his injury, going 0-for-2 with three walks, two stolen bases and two runs scored. Robles hit .299 with five doubles, a triple, eight RBI, 11 walks, eight stolen bases and 15 runs scored in 36 games in 2023.

Call, 29, hit .313 with a double, an RBI, three walks, a stolen base and six runs scored in seven games.

Barnes, 33, recorded a 6.75 ERA (10 ER/13.1 IP) with 10 strikeouts and four walks in 14 games.

The rotation received a roundhouse shot in the arm with the Feb. 1 trade for ace Corbin Burnes. It absorbed a couple of blows with the spring training news that Kyle Bradish, the Orioles’ Game 1 starter in the Division series, and former All-Star John Means would begin the season on the injured list, and then lost Tyler Wells last month to elbow inflammation. The unit grew stronger with the returns of Bradish and Means but also lost Grayson Rodriguez to shoulder inflammation.

The calm keeps clashing with the storms, but the Orioles headed into their off-day with the fifth-lowest team ERA in the majors at 3.31. The starters’ ERA fell to 3.18, sixth in the majors and fourth in the American League. The staff’s 1.08 WHIP ranked fourth in the majors and third in the AL.

The Orioles have allowed two runs or fewer in seven consecutive games, their longest single-season streak since Aug. 1-8, 1980, when they reached eight. The ERA is 1.14 during this stretch.

Starters plowed through the Reds’ order over the weekend, failing to surrender a run in 19 1/3 innings. And they did it without Burnes and Bradish, who are on deck in D.C. and trying to extend the starters' streak of six-plus shutout innings to five and tie the club record from Sept. 2-6, 1974 and Sept. 26-Oct. 1, 1995.

How’s that for pitching depth? Wait for Wells and Rodriguez and keep hanging zeros.

The Nationals have a lefty in their bullpen again. They had to cut ties with a veteran right-hander to make it possible.

Robert Garcia was activated off the 15-day injured list, the club announced. The corresponding move: Matt Barnes was designated for assignment, likely ending his brief tenure with the organization.

Garcia was eligible to return after spending the last two weeks on the IL with the same influenza bug that previously sidelined catcher Keibert Ruiz. The left-hander initially tried to pitch through it but labored through four consecutive rough appearances before the Nats finally placed him on the IL and gave him time to fully recover.

Once healthy again, Garcia went on a rehab assignment to Single-A Fredericksburg over the weekend and pitched two scoreless innings in relief, striking out four. He’ll be available to pitch tonight in the Nats’ series opener against the Orioles.

When Garcia was shut down two weeks ago, the Nationals called up Jacob Barnes from Triple-A Rochester. The right-hander has performed well since, going 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA and 0.857 WHIP in seven games, earning the right to stay in the big leagues.

The Nationals enjoyed a day off Monday, a sorely needed day off. They just played 13 games in 13 days, a stretch that included series against the defending World Series champions, the most star-studded roster in baseball and a four-game wraparound series that concluded with a getaway night game and then a 3-hour flight to the next city.

How’d they handle that grueling stretch? Quite well.

The Nats went 7-6 over the last two weeks, reaching the .500 mark on four separate occasions (though never clearing that magical hurdle when presented the opportunity).

They did this despite what at times has been a listless lineup, hurt by a combination of severely slumping regulars and injured veterans. Davey Martinez had to enlist the likes of Ildemaro Vargas and Alex Call to serve as his No. 5 and No. 6 hitters at times, hardly the names he envisioned when scribbling out potential lineups during spring training.

The Nationals managed to survive – even thrive, some might say – this stretch thanks to mostly quality pitching (3.48 team ERA over the last 10 games), solid defense (until a rough two-game stretch over the weekend) and a grittiness that has allowed them to pull off 12 come-from-behind wins this season (most in the majors).

OK, let's give this another try. If you attempted to join us Friday morning and wondered why I never bothered to answer any questions, the flight I was on at the time had no WiFi. It was quite a frustrating experience, as you might imagine. I couldn't even post a message on here letting everyone know I couldn't actually conduct the Q&A as planned.

Fortunately, I've got two feet on the ground today and a strong WiFi signal coming out of my own basement. So we should be good to go. And in a way, maybe it's better we had to postpone three days. Because there was plenty that took place this weekend worthy of further discussion.

The Nationals are 17-17 and officially in a wild card position as the day begins. It's of course way too early to consider such possibilities, but it's fun to dream for just a second, right?

If you've got something you'd like to ask, please submit your questions in the comments section below. Then check back throughout the morning for my responses. Which will actually be published this time, I promise! ...