While the sample size may be small, we take a look at three early standouts through the start of spring training as the Washington Nationals, standing at 4-0-1, remain undefeated to open the unofficial start of the Blake Butera era.<\/p>\n
Brady House, third base<\/p>\n
Brady House showed out in his first Spring Training appearance of the year against the Miami Marlins, where he would end 2-of-4 from the plate with both hits going deep center field for home runs.<\/p>\n
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The 22-year-old has appeared in two of the Nationals’ first five Spring Training bouts and leads the team with two home runs and four runs batted in while doing so.<\/p>\n
House finished the 2025 MLB season with the Nationals’ starting lineup after a successful triple-A showing in Rochester that saw him batting above .300. In the 73 games in the Major Leagues, he finished with a .234 BA, a .252 OBP, 29 RBIs and 4 HRs.<\/p>\n
He finished 0-of-2 in his second appearance against the St. Louis Cardinals and holds a .333 batting average through his first two games.<\/p>\n
Trey Lipscomb, third base<\/p>\n
Trey Lipscomb has put together two great appearances to start Spring Training. He leads the Nationals in hits and OPS through the first stretch of games.<\/p>\n
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The 25-year-old first appeared as part of the Nationals’ split squad against the Cardinals, where he was a perfect 2-of-2 from the plate with a double, as well as being walked.<\/p>\n
Lipscomb was the third baseman for the Nationals Triple-A team, the Rochester Red Wings, in the 2025 season. He played in 122 games and hit .249 with a .305 OBP while adding 11 HRs and 65 RBIs.<\/p>\n
In his second game, he was 1-of-2 from the plate with a double in a tie against the Philadelphia Phillies. Lipscomb finishes his first two games with a .750 average, .800 OBP and a 2.050 OPS through his first two games.<\/p>\n
Matt Mervis, first base<\/p>\n
Matt Mervis was an offseason addition for the Nationals when he signed a minor league deal in December. The newcomer has already shown great poise at the plate and has started his Nationals career strongly in his two Spring Training appearances.<\/p>\n
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Mervis appeared as a first baseman\u2014a position the Nationals still don\u2019t have a definitive answer for going into the season\u2014in his appearances against the Phillies and the Cardinals. He would finish with a hit and a walk in both appearances, while only getting out once.<\/p>\n
His one hit against the Phillies would come up huge as he hit a two-RBI ground rule double in the eighth inning to tie the game at five apiece, which would also be the final score.<\/p>\n
Mervis played in 65 Triple-A games across the Marlins and the Arizona Diamondbacks\u2019 organization, where he batted .248 with a .315 OBP and .570 SLG. He would also struggle as he saw 42 games in the Major Leagues with the Marlins, where he batted .175 with a .254 OBP, but did hit 7 HRs.<\/p>\n
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But he has started Spring Training differently for the Nationals, as Mervis is hitting a great .667 with an .800 OBP through the Nationals\u2019 first five games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the sample size may be small, we take a look at three early standouts through the start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2398],"tags":[22,5,20666,12343,2603,9060,58,4,415,804,25,151,67,1873,414,71,4222],"class_list":["post-592706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-washington-nationals","tag-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-baseball","tag-brady-house","tag-harry-ford","tag-joey-wiemer","tag-matt-mervis","tag-miami-marlins","tag-mlb","tag-nationals","tag-obp","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-spring-training","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-trey-lipscomb","tag-washington","tag-washington-nationals","tag-washingtonnationals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116132984000257635","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}