Currently playing for the Washington Nationals: James Wood, Dylan Crews, Mitchell Parker, Jake Irvin, D.J. Herz, Andres Chaparro, Jose Tena, Jacob Young and ultimately C.J. Abrams and MacKenzie Gore. This is supposedly going to be the core of the Nats team that will someday compete, and they're all up in the majors...and the majority of them are playing really well. Crews already has 2 homers, Wood has fully warmed up to the majors, Chaparro and Tena will routinely do something crazy, and Parker and Herz can strike people out.
So if you're wondering how the Yankees dropped two games to these guys, that's how. This is a team that is moving forward right in front of us, is calling up organizational gems now and seeing them work almost immediately, and is already gearing up for a much better 2025. Now, how we couldn't put anything up against Patrick Corbin, that I'm still not entirely sure of. But the Nats, while being decidedly a lower tier team with no 2024 playoff aspirations, can get you when you're not looking.
I think about how far the Nationals' rotation has come this year and I'm really hopeful. Like, last year had perennial guys, Josiah Gray and MacKenzie Gore, but a lot of these guys were pure innings eaters with no perks. That's honestly how I'd classify Trevor Williams, who was very much a placeholder starter this year til he got hurt. Once Parker and Herz came up, and you started seeing the rotation emphasize them, Gore and Irvin, then it shifted from simply eating innings to actually outdoing lineups. Parker, despite some recent struggles, has been a very nice rookie hurler for the Nats this year, with 109 strikeouts in 24 starts. D.J. Herz, meanwhile, is already looking like a deadly little late rotation guy, with an 11.4 K/9 rate, a 3.84 ERA and 83 Ks in 14 starts.
You hope that the Nats can string together a rotation of Gray, Gore, Irvin, Parker and Herz, because that could be a winning combo going forward. All young, all controllable, all in their prime, all fully capable. It sucks, cause Cade Cavalli is still in the organization and was supposed to be incredible but kept getting injured, and I don't know if there's room for him in this picture anymore. Then again, there honestly isn't room for Patrick Corbin either and he's sticking around indefinitely.
The Nats don't have much to accomplish this year aside from finishing above Miami and not losing 100 games. But they're putting the pieces together to eventually rely less on rentals and replacement pieces and more on a working, thriving core to challenge their divisional rivals. It may not be immediately next year, but it looks like it'll be soon.
Coming Tomorrow- Unsurprisingly, the second he came off the IL he started power hitting again.
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