The ‘W’ Is for Work in Progress

The Washington Nationals are starting out strong, but not strong enough.

They weren’t supposed to be good in 2026. They weren’t good last year, or the year before, or the year before, or the — they haven’t been good since they won the World Series in 2019. Our preseason positional power rankings had them 29th by overall projected WAR. Justin Klugh led the Nationals essay in the 2026 Baseball Prospectus annual with the story of an enema given to George Washington just before his death. And no, the parallel was not a particularly happy one.

Indeed, the Nationals have not been good. They’re 11-15 with a -18 run differential and a bottom-five WAR. They’re not yet last in the NL East because of whatever is going on in New York and Philadelphia. But our projections assume they’ll find their way there eventually.

Still, it’s the way they’ve gotten to “not good” that’s been frustrating, entertaining, and perhaps even a bit encouraging. Let’s start with a plot:

Through 26 games, the Nationals have scored 30 runs in the first inning. That’s the most in the majors by quite a bit. They’re drawing walks, hitting for power, and working deep counts early. It’s not just the first. The Nationals as a team have a 110 wRC+ and .334 xwOBA — fifth and sixth in the majors, respectively. The Braves are the only team to have scored more runs.

Of course, the Braves only leapt ahead because they the outscored the Nationals 28-23 this week. Yes, seven runs per game is what the Nationals allowed in their latest series, and that isn’t out of the ordinary. They’ve given up 162 runs so far this year, or 6.23 per game, or way more than any other team in baseball. Their pitchers are dead last in the majors with -1.9 WAR, with a bad rotation and a worse bullpen.

It’s a team of extremes. Let’s start with the happy ones.

The ‘W’ Is for Wood & Co.

How are the Nationals scoring all those runs in the first inning?

Their leadoff hitter is James Wood. He hit his 10th home run of the season Thursday in the first inning on the first pitch. (It also happened to be the first pitch of JR Ritchie’s career.)

Wood has a 170 wRC+, third best in the majors. This is simply the best he’s ever played in his young career, which is saying something. He’s doing it all: Swinging hard, squaring up the ball, and finding the barrel more than anybody else (29.5%). His .638 xwOBA on contact is second best in baseball behind… Luke Raley, apparently.

Where that contact goes is interesting, too.

Wood is, once again, running one of the lowest pull rates in the majors, opting to smack the ball up the middle or go the other way. But where he used to beat the ball into the ground too much, he’s now launching and running the third-best ISO in the majors (.353).

For some batters, hitting fly balls the other way is a bit of a red flag. Anything that doesn’t reach the fence is generally run down by a rangy, well-positioned outfielder. That’s one reason many sluggers these days try to get out in front and aim for the shallowest part of the park. But Wood is plenty strong to shoot the gap in left-center, or even muscle one over the fence straightaway. Most of his home runs this year have looked like this:

Crucially, Wood has elevated his contact without adding more popups. The tradeoff for all those grounders in the past was that he rarely made auto-outs in the air, allowing him to run impressively high BABIPs. In 2026, Wood is getting the launch necessary to unlock his power potential, while still missing low to be competitive on most balls in play. It’s essentially the same contact profile — it’s just better right now.

The same could be said for his approach. Wood remains one of the choosiest batters in baseball, with a minuscule swing rate and a strong eye. He still whiffs a ton, and he still has a giant hole on pitches low and away, as Davy Andrews outlined last year. But rather than improving on these weaknesses, Wood has simply made his strengths even stronger. Pitchers can only attack him in one tiny part of the zone, and if they miss, he’ll either punish them immediately or force them to throw it again under the same threat.

Wood’s nascent step forward isn’t the most surprising development for the Nationals. CJ Abrams is not far behind him, with a 168 wRC+ that ranks sixth in the majors.

Abrams is the polar opposite of Wood in many ways, despite each coming over in the Juan Soto trade. He swings at everything in or out of the zone, and he generally hits the ball in the air and to the pull side, not always with oomph. It’s an approach that’s returned a passing grade at the plate the last two seasons (106 and 107 wRC+), but he’s seemed to leave a bit on the table.

Ben Clemens wrote last year about Abrams’ lack of discipline, pointing out that he wasn’t displaying enough power to justify such a loose conception of the strike zone. And Abrams this year is chasing more than ever, with a 36.8% chase rate compared to 32.6% last year. He’s also whiffing on 29.3% of swings — a career high.

When he isn’t whiffing, though, he’s making much better contact:

The word on Abrams’ approach got out over the offseason. Pitchers this year are throwing him tons of pitches out of the zone, and he’s seeing way more breaking balls — another weakness from 2025. He seems to have anticipated this adjustment and beat them to the punch. Yes, he’s still chasing and whiffing at many of those breaking balls, but his hard-hit rate against them has jumped from 32.6% last year to 58.1% this season.

For instance, here’s a sweeper that he sat on and crushed to right for a home run:

Despite the extreme approach, Abrams has actually doubled his walk rate. No, he’s not working counts any better, and he’s actually found himself in fewer three-ball counts thus far. But when he does get to a three-ball count, he has nearly halved his chase rate. Last year, he chased 49.3% of the pitches he saw out of the zone with three balls. This year, he’s chased just 23.2% of them. It’s a compromise, of sorts.

The foundation is a bit wobbly, he’s done this before, and his defense is still suspect. But even so, this is good to see. Despite more than 2,000 plate appearances in the majors, Abrams is still only 25 years old.

The other encouraging sign for the Washington offense is Daylen Lile, who’s picked up right where he left off last year, as a sort of free-swinging, soft-contact, all-fields slasher, leveraging ideal launch angles to plop singles all over the field. It certainly helps that he’s one of the fastest players in the league. This is what Lile looks like at his best, scorching a one-hopper through the infield and hustling into second while a panicked outfield scrambles for the ball:

The rest of the Nats order has been just OK, and that’s been enough. Joey Wiemer began the year by reaching base in his first 10 plate appearances; his wRC+ is an even 100 since. Jorbit Vivas has been interesting, as a slower, slappier, fringier version of Lile. Curtis Mead, Jacob Young, and Brady House have each done a thing or two. I don’t expect the Nationals to ultimately lead the league in runs, but this start is an early win for the youngest lineup in baseball.

The ‘W’ Is for Whoa, That’s Bad

Then there’s the pitching. It’s simply been the worst. Their starters rank 30th with -0.2 WAR, and their relievers rank 30th with -1.7 WAR.

Now, I don’t really want to write about this. It’s not fun, and it’s not news. The Nationals pitching was supposed to be bad. This offseason, they traded their best starter, MacKenzie Gore, to the Rangers, and they traded their best reliever, Jose Ferrer, to the Mariners. It was never going to go well. We rated their starting pitchers 28th in the preseason, and we rated their bullpen not just the worst in the majors, but the worst group at any position.

Still, the extent of their badness has been unfortunate. As Matt Martell recently pointed out, Nationals pitchers posted the least WAR through a team’s first 12 games since at least 1974, which is as far back as our game-by-game team-WAR data goes. They’ve improved to merely bad since then, but having watched a lot of Nationals baseball this year, I can tell you that 6.23 runs per game feels correct.

Here’s where the “runs by inning” chart returns. If you scroll back to that plot, you’ll notice the Nationals are actually giving up an average number of runs in the first inning, as well as in the eighth and ninth. That relationship becomes somewhat obvious in this next group of splits:

Nationals starters have been fine on their first pass through the order. It’s in the middle innings when the lineup turns over that it all falls apart. This is where the problems begin. Nats starters are averaging fewer than five innings per game, meaning their low-leverage arms are being asked to cover several innings at a time. Not even the best bullpens can survive such a workload. It’s been a group effort, in other words.

There’s no way to spin Washington’s pitching to this point as anything other than a disaster. But I’ll try anyway. Cade Cavalli, for instance, struck out 10 against a strong Braves lineup Thursday and has a 2.82 FIP through six starts. His big knuckle-curve is missing tons of bats, and if he can ever find the strike zone more consistently, he could be a big deal for this team. I’m also intrigued by Foster Griffin’s kitchen-sink approach. He seems to keep opponents off balance and has turned in a few nice starts, even if the softer stuff makes him prone to ambush homers (especially on the second turn). And, if the Nationals can ever get the ball to Gus Varland in leverage, that top-rail fastball is a lot of fun to watch.

There’s also a few “good process” things going on here. I’m willing to buy the stuff bump we’re seeing from Jake Irvin and think he’ll improve. I’m encouraged by the swingman-rebirth of Mitchell Parker — the stuff looks much better. Plus, I’m curious to see DJ Herz, Jarlin Susana, and Josiah Gray whenever their health allows it. Now, was it “good process” to trade Gore and Ferrer? Eh, I don’t know. Those deals look poorly timed if Washington continues to feature a top-10 lineup. Then again, maybe that’s not realistic, and it certainly wasn’t at the time those trades were made.

So far in 2026, the Nationals have caught my interest in a way I wasn’t expecting. There seems to be real, positive momentum building at the major league level, even if their contention window is as far out as… however long it takes to build an entire pitching staff. They have a handful of young, team-controlled, potentially star-level batters. And they have an interesting collection of prospects and supplementary players. (For more on that, check out our 2026 Washington Nationals Top 41 Prospects list, which was published earlier today.) The Nationals are a work in progress. But hey, it’s progress, nonetheless.