Right-hander Mason Denaburg has a shoulder strain, according to a Nationals source, and is not throwing at this time.
His last game for the Rookie-level Gulf Coast Nationals was Aug. 3. The 2018 first-round Nats selection will continue his rehab for the time being and the organization says it will continue to assess his recovery.
The GCL Nats only have four more games remaining on their schedule. Denaburg will likely continue his rehab workouts at the facility in West Palm Beach,...
Anthony Rendon has been named National League Player of the Week, honored for his impressive performance during the Nationals' 6-1 road trip.
Rendon hit .483 (14-for-29) with three doubles, two homers, seven RBIs, five walks, one stolen base and six runs. He capped off the week with a dominant showing in Sunday's 11-inning win over the Cubs, going 4-for-5 with a homer, two RBIs and a walk.
Rendon, who led the league in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS for the...
CHICAGO - If you're among those who remain skeptical about the 2019 Nationals, if you believe this bullpen is going to ruin the season, if you believe the manager still isn't making the right moves to win ballgames, perhaps it's time to listen to what others are now saying about this team.
Others, as in the team that just got swept this weekend by these Nationals.
"They're hot," Cole Hamels told reporters inside the Cubs clubhouse after Sunday's game. "Probably as hot as any team we'll...
The high Single-A Potomac Nationals beat the Winston-Salem Dash 4-0 on Sunday afternoon.
First baseman Ryan Zimmerman drove an RBI double to left-center, one of his two hits. He also had a walk. Zimmerman has played four games for the P-Nats and two games with Double-A Harrisburg as he rehabs the right foot planta fasciitis that landed him on the injured list. He has hit .375, going 6-for-16 with three RBIs and five walks.
The P-Nats continue their homestand tonight, beginning a four-game...
Following a week in which he hit .483 (14-for-29) with three doubles, two homers, seven RBI, five walks, one stolen base and six runs scored, Washington Nationals third baseman Anthony Rendon was named National League Player of the Week on Monday. Major League Baseball made the announcement on MLB Network.
Rendon led the National League in batting average (.483), on-base percentage (.543), slugging percentage (.793) and OPS (1.336) during the week. He hit safely in all seven games, including...
CHICAGO - The Nationals are playing their fourth straight game against a left-handed starter, an extremely rare occurrence during the course of a season. Howie Kendrick, who has battled hamstring issues all year, already started the first three games, including the day game in Chicago following a night game in Pittsburgh.
So Davey Martinez faced a dilemma when filling out his lineup card for the series finale against Cubs southpaw Cole Hamels: Start Kendrick a fourth straight day, start Matt...
CHICAGO - The first two games of a highly anticipated weekend series were lopsided affairs, the Nationals clearly outshining the Cubs on their home turf.
Today's finale? This was the ballgame everyone anticipated all along: a taut, well-played, evenly matched showdown between two National League postseason contenders.
And when it finally ended some 4 1/2 hours later and 40,518 filed out into the streets of Wrigleyville, it was the Nationals who were celebrating in the middle of the diamond,...
CHICAGO - Trea Turner legged out an infield single to open Saturday's game at Wrigley Field. In doing so, he extended his career-high streak of games reaching base to 31.
And then he went and reached base three more times, scored two runs and stole a base a help lead the Nationals to a 7-2 win over the Cubs.
"It's just fun scoring runs," he said. "It's fun winning, too."
Yes, it is. And Turner has done just as much to help the Nationals win a lot of games this summer as anyone else on...
CHICAGO - The Cubs have been lights-out at home this season. They entered the weekend a staggering 14-1-4 in home series, the lone loss coming in late May when they dropped two of three to the Reds. And then the Nationals came to town and blew that narrative out of the water.
With back-to-back lopsided wins the last two days, the Nats already have won this series. Now they have a chance to pull off an impressive three-game sweep with another win this afternoon.
The Nationals have Stephen...
CHICAGO - The combination of an explosive lineup and consistently dominant starting pitching has allowed the Nationals to weather the first week of Sean Doolittle's stint on the injured list without having to put too much weight on the shoulders of their reconfigured bullpen.
Because he's been getting seven (or more) innings out of his starters, and because his lineup has been averaging 10 runs a game, Davey Martinez hasn't really needed to worry about who's going to close out games in...
CHICAGO - The left-hander the Nationals went out of their way to acquire at the trade deadline is getting closer to rejoining the active roster.
Roenis ElÃas, who strained his hamstring in his team debut, threw off the bullpen mound at Wrigley Field this morning. If the session went well, he should be able to ramp up his rehab and potentially come off the injured list in short order.
"We'll have to evaluate how he does today," manager Davey Martinez said, "and then we'll go from...
CHICAGO - The way the Nationals are hitting as a whole right now, sometimes it feels like Juan Soto gets overlooked. It's hard to give everyone proper due when so many are contributing at the plate, especially a prominent free-agent-to-be like Anthony Rendon.
Make no mistake, though: Soto has played a significant role in the Nationals' offensive onslaught of the last week and a half. Over his last 13 games, the young slugger is batting a cool .346 with eight homers, 12 RBIs, 10 walks and a...
CHICAGO - It's another beautiful day at Wrigley Field, where the Nationals look not only to beat the Cubs again but continue a pretty remarkable run over a longer stretch of time. They've now played .667 ball (52-26) since May 24. Thanks to the Dodgers' loss last night, that's now the best record in baseball during that prolonged stretch. And they've won 13 of their last 17, with all four losses coming after they blew a lead in the eighth or ninth inning. So they've led in the eighth...
CHICAGO - They played (in the rain) in Pittsburgh last night, then flew to Chicago and put their heads on their hotel pillows around 3 a.m. Eastern time. Seven hours later, they began filing into Wrigley Field for the opener of a weekend series against one of the best home teams in the majors.
The Nationals had every right to complain about the disadvantageous scheduling. Their veterans had every right to sit out this afternoon's game. Nobody would have faulted them had they sleepwalked...
CHICAGO - Max Scherzer completed his typical day-after-start routine at Wrigley Field with no setbacks, so he's good to make his next scheduled start as planned. But the Nationals ace reiterated that he's not all the way to his pre-injury form and that he'll likely need to approach the rest of his season with far more caution than he has in the past.
"I'm not out of the woods," he said prior to the Nationals' series opener against the Cubs. "I've got to still take care of this, got to...
PITTSBURGH - Some news and notes for your reading pleasure while I race to Chicago in time for this afternoon's series opener at Wrigley Field ...
* If there was nothing else to take away from Max Scherzer's start Thursday night, it was this simple-but-important message both the right-hander and his manager stressed: They are going to continue to be cautious.
That applied to Thursday's game, when Davey Martinez pulled his ace after only four innings and 71 pitches. It also applies to the...
CHICAGO - The Nationals won't face a tougher turnaround this season than last night's game in Pittsburgh to this afternoon's game at Wrigley Field. We'll see how they look when they take the field in a few hours, but for what it's worth the entire lineup (sans pitcher) is the same as it was last night. Including Kurt Suzuki, who caught Max Scherzer last night and will catch AnÃbal Sánchez today.
This is an interesting stretch of games, because the Nationals will be facing four...
PITTSBURGH - Max Scherzer started for the first time in four weeks, the second time in seven weeks, and that's the most important thing that happened from the Nationals' perspective tonight at PNC Park.
"It was awesome," manager Davey Martinez said. "Just seeing him run out there and take the ball was great."
So was seeing Scherzer depart the game feeling physically well.
"Right now, I feel good," the right-hander said. "Hopefully I wake up tomorrow, I feel good."
And yet there still...
The Nationals sometimes see their prospects tip pitches in the minor leagues.
But the Nats prefer to let their young pitchers go for a while before they adjust anything. They do not like to mess with mechanics, approach or glove positioning early on. Instead, they let them get into a good rhythm, establish some confidence, build on success, then make the minor tweaks to prevent hitters from seeing patterns between the fastball and their off-speed pitches.
In the second part of our series, we...
PITTSBURGH - Though the Nationals haven't made any formal announcements yet, it appears Joe Ross is good to start Saturday afternoon in Chicago, his lower right leg having healed enough from the comebacker that struck him during Monday's game against the Pirates.
Ross threw a full bullpen session late this afternoon and did not appear to be limited or hindered in any significant way. Davey Martinez, who watched the session up close in the visitors' bullpen at PNC Park, said in his earlier...



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