(AP) – Yohandy Morales homered in his first major league game and Jared Simpson earned the win in relief in his own debut, helping the Washington Nationals beat the Atlanta Braves 9-5 on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
The Nationals called up Morales and Simpson before the game, with major league rosters expanding from 26 to 28. After striking out his first time up, Morales hit a solo shot in the third inning. Simpson (1-0) entered in the fifth with Washington up 5-2 and induced a double play and a flyout after inheriting a first-and-second, nobody-out situation.<\/p>\n
Then he worked two more perfect innings.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old Morales, who hit 25 homers for Triple-A Rochester this year, also singled and doubled in an impressive debut.<\/p>\n
AJ Smith-Shawver (0-1) allowed five runs and six hits in four innings. Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II homered for the Braves, whose lead over Philadelphia atop the NL East dropped to 3 1\/2 games, with the Phillies playing at Arizona later Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Albies homered for the Braves in the second, but Washington answered with four runs in the bottom half. CJ Abrams hit a two-run single with two outs, and Brady House added a two-run double.<\/p>\n
Drake Baldwin doubled home a run in the third for Atlanta. Morales went deep leading off the bottom half.<\/p>\n
Morales doubled to lead off the seventh, when the Nationals added two more runs. Reliever Brent Suter threw wildly to first on a pickoff attempt for an error, allowing a run to score from third. Then Jacob Young hit an RBI single to make it 8-2.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old Simpson had a 2.30 ERA in 58 2\/3 innings at Double-A and Triple-A this year. He faced eight batters and got nine outs, striking out three.<\/p>\n
The Braves called up veteran infielder Kyle Farmer and 25-year-old right-hander Blake Burkhalter. Burkhalter made his big league debut in the sixth, allowing one run.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Grant Holmes (9-5, 3.71 ERA) pitches for the Braves on Wednesday against the Nationals\u2019 Jackson Kent (1-2, 5.59).<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(AP) – Yohandy Morales homered in his first major league game and Jared Simpson earned the win in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2398],"tags":[13241,14002,13243,5,63306,97414,97415,97416,192,49281,52428,4,415,13242,414,71,4222],"class_list":["post-794459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-washington-nationals","tag-anf","tag-atlanta-news","tag-atlanta-news-first","tag-baseball","tag-blake-burkhalter","tag-blake-burkhalter-braves","tag-blake-burkhalter-mlb","tag-blake-burkhalter-mlb-debut","tag-braves","tag-braves-nationals","tag-braves-nats","tag-mlb","tag-nationals","tag-wanf","tag-washington","tag-washington-nationals","tag-washingtonnationals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117199157539874698","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794459","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=794459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}