Photo by Marline Koenig for TalkNats

The Washington Nationals ended their long losing streak with a win to remember as Andrew Alvarez had one of the best statistical debuts in Nats history. We will see what he does this weekend in Wrigley Field. Baseball is all about, “What have you done for me lately.” And that is exactly how the fans feel about Cade Cavalli who starts today after he got shelled last week in Yankee Stadium in 2⅓ innings with 7 earned runs surrendered.

With today’s game, there are just 25-games remaining in this season. The Nats only have 54-wins at this point in the season, and now must go 9-16 or better to avoid 100-losses. A winning month of September should be the goal with less than four weeks remaining on this 2025 season. How close can the Nats get to the 72 wins that Vegas set for their Over/Under.

Several moves were made today as the Nats signed catcher Jorge Alfaro for the remainder of the 2025 season. He hasn’t played in MLB since 2023 when he struggled both offensively (.118 BA/.368 OPS with Boston) and defensively. To make room for Alfaro, the Nats optioned catcher CJ Stubbs to Triple-A Rochester. Alfaro is set to be a free agent after the season which made this an odd move, especially considering how well Stubbs handled the pitching staff yesterday with a 2-0 shutout win. As TalkNats reported as a comment in the previous article, Drew Millas was indeed transferred to the 60-day Injured List. The 40-man roster is full at 40-players.

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It’s nice to see that we’ve got [Alvarez] coming from Triple-A, and he did the job that he did. That will tell you about player development. The players that come from there, they’re ready to be here. They’re ready to be in the big leagues. As he showed today, that’s a really good job they’ve been doing there.
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— Interim manager Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game

The bullpen usage looks like this:

Here are your Nats’ WAR leaders with CJ Abrams at +3.3, James Wood at +3.1, MacKenzie Gore at +2.8. Add those up, and you get a total of +9.2 WAR. The issue is the large gap between those players and the next tier, and of course the negative tier after them of which many of those players are off the roster.

On defense, the OAA stats showed some improvement with a good defensive game yesterday. Jacob Young leads the team at +13, and CJ Abrams is on the opposite end at -8. That is actually quite the improvement over last year’s -18 for Abrams who is on pace to finish at -10.

These are your stats leaders on BBRef. There are certainly some surprises on there — good and not so good. The issue is the consistency on this team.

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I was having chills. Because that was the first time [Alvarez and Stubbs] played in the big leagues. One was catching, the other was pitching. … It was awesome to see them perform the way they did.
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— Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game

The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.26 and that places the starters at 2nd from last in MLB. The reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.44 and now the worst in baseball in ERA.

Here is how the starters rank by ERA:

No. 5 Starter: Cade Cavalli 5.11
No. 4 Starter: Mitchell Parker 5.94
No. 3 Starter: Brad Lord 4.34 (starting/relieving)
No. 2 Starter: Jake Irvin 5.42
No. 1 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 4.15

Miami Marlins vs. Washington Nationals

Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 6:45 PM EDT
TV: MASN
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app; In Spanish on DC 87.7 FM and La Pantera 100.7 FM/1220 AM. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 179 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.

Line-up subject to change (without notice):

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