During the Washington Nationals’ day off on Thursday before the start of their first homestand of the 2026 season, they had to be feeling pretty good about themselves.<\/p>\n
Not only did they take two out of three against the Chicago Cubs to begin the year<\/a>, but they were competitive against the Philadelphia Phillies and should have won that series<\/a>, as well. However, things are in a much different place now following a three-game sweep at the hands of the Los Angeles Dodgers, as the flaws of the Nationals were on full display throughout the weekend.<\/p>\n Entering the season, everyone knew the pitching staff was a weak point of this roster. And while some upgrades were made, there were still questions if this unit could get Washington into the winner’s circle on a consistent basis. Well, after three games facing the Dodgers, that group was exposed.<\/p>\n Starting Pitching Got Ripped Apart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the Washington Nationals’ day off on Thursday before the start of their first homestand of the 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2398],"tags":[5,4,415,414,71,4222],"class_list":{"0":"post-665973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-nationals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-nationals","11":"tag-washington","12":"tag-washington-nationals","13":"tag-washingtonnationals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116356326676004127","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665973","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=665973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}