Home confinement re-watch: 2019 World Series Game 3

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 World Series Game 3
Has there ever been more excitement and anticipation for a Nationals game than there was on the evening of Oct. 25, 2019, when the World Series came to D.C. for the first time since 1933? This was an event some weren't entirely sure would ever take place. Then throw in the not-insignificant fact the Nats went into Game 3 up two games to none on the supposedly superior Astros, and you had the perfect convergence of joy, intensity, nostalgia and celebration on South Capitol Street. The whole...

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 World Series Game 2

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 World Series Game 2
Honest opinion: What was your reasonable, best-case scenario for the Nationals in the first two games of the World Series? Maybe you had a pie-in-the-sky dream of snatching both games from the Astros and returning to D.C. flying high, but realistically you just wanted to see them win one of two on the road. Especially when those two games were started by Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander. Right? Well, after beating Cole in Game 1, the Nats returned to Minute Maid Park the next night for Game 2...

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 World Series Game 1

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 World Series Game 1
The Nationals and their fans waited a long time to reach the World Series for the first time. So, really, who was going to complain about the extra six days they had to wait after sweeping the National League Championship Series before finally taking the field in Houston for their first appearance in the Fall Classic? The long layoff may have been a dominant storyline entering the World Series, but it sure didn't hold up for long. By the end of their tense Game 1 victory - 5-4 over the...

What matters to you: More games or fewer changes?

What matters to you: More games or fewer changes?
I feel like I've already said this countless times over the last three weeks, but let's state it again for the record: As much as we all want to project when the baseball season (or any other sport's season) will begin, it's pointless right now. There's simply no way to know with any certainty when the world will be safe enough for sporting events and the mass gatherings they draw. That hasn't stopped a lot of folks from trying to figure this out. Some insist it can happen by June. Some...

Union creates fund for non-roster players in big league camps

Union creates fund for non-roster players in big league camps
The agreement struck last week between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association ensured all players on 40-man rosters would be paid a partial salary even if there's no 2020 season. But what about longtime big league players who aren't currently on 40-man rosters? That group was taken care of Friday when the union voted to establish an assistance fund for players with major league experience who were in spring training as non-roster invitees. The fund will pay anywhere from $5,000...

Friday morning Nats Q&A

Friday morning Nats Q&A
First things first: Yes, we will start up the World Series re-watch soon. Just taking a little break after the National League Championship Series (but not as long as the six-day break the Nationals actually took). In the meantime, this feels like a good opportunity to chat with all of you. Obviously, these are not normal circumstances for baseball - but more importantly, for the world. We're trying to stick to baseball around here, but it's impossible not to acknowledge the larger...

Lamenting what should have been a glorious home opener

Lamenting what should have been a glorious home opener
When opening day came and went last week with no baseball, we all shed a tear and wondered when we'll finally get a chance to celebrate the most glorious unofficial holiday on the North American calendar. In the week since, we've mostly turned our attention back to the far more important matter affecting the entire globe right now, the ramifications of which are just now really setting in for many here. We know instinctively that the Major League Baseball season should be a week old now, and...

Nationals trivia quiz: Postseason

Nationals trivia quiz: Postseason
After clinching their first National League pennant in October, the Nationals had to wait six days before taking the field again for Game 1 of the World Series. Our break between re-watches of the NL Championship Series and World Series won't be that long, but we are going to take a couple of days off before diving back into the epic, seven-game showdown with the Astros. In the meantime, here's the second installment of Nats Trivia. (If you missed the first one last week, on the history of...

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLCS Game 4

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLCS Game 4
They packed themselves into Nationals Park, nearly 44,000 strong, for a party 86 years in the making. They came to watch a major league team from Washington win a pennant for the first time since 1933. And when the home ballclub stormed out to a 7-0 lead after one inning, all that was left for everyone to do was count down the outs until it was official. Game 4 of the National League Championship Series was not a simple, by-the-book, three-hour party, though. It wound up including a couple of...

Florida complex closed to Nats while serving as testing site

Florida complex closed to Nats while serving as testing site
The few Nationals players and staffers who remain in West Palm Beach, Fla., are no longer allowed to use the club's spring training complex. FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches has become a testing site for the coronavirus, according to Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo, which has forced the 13 players and handful of staffers who had been utilizing the facility to stay in their respective homes and proceed with individual workouts and training on their own. A clause in the working contract...

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLCS Game 3

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLCS Game 3
Postseason games at Nationals Park, generally speaking, have not been celebratory events. They're usually loaded with tension, usually involve contests that go right down to the ninth inning (or more), and usually see the home team desperate to win and keep its season alive. That was the typical scene for the first 14 postseason games played on South Capitol Street, beginning with Game 3 of the 2012 National League Division Series and running straight through Game 4 of the 2019 NLDS. The...

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLCS Game 2

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLCS Game 2
Remember that time a Nationals starting pitcher flirted with a no-hitter in the National League Championship Series in St. Louis? No, not the first time it happened. The second time it happened. The very next day. Of all the remarkable things the Nats did during their postseason run last October, the back-to-back no-hit bids by Aníbal Sánchez and Max Scherzer certainly deserve to sit high on the list. Making it all the more remarkable: That same duo did the exact same thing in Games 1 and...

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLCS Game 1

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLCS Game 1
Because the wild card game, the National League Division Series and the World Series were so dramatic, with the Nationals fighting off elimination five times along the way, the NL Championship Series kind of gets lost in the shuffle when you think back to the 2019 postseason. We know the Nats swept the Cardinals in four straight. They never even trailed at any point in any of the four games. It was as one-sided a postseason series as you're likely to see. But let's give the NLCS more credit...

Reports: MLB, union agree to salary, service time, draft changes

Reports: MLB, union agree to salary, service time, draft changes
For those wondering about the postseason re-watch articles, we'll get back to that tomorrow, with four straight days of the National League Championship Series. But first, there was some baseball news late last night, with Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association agreeing to a bunch of new provisions to account for the disrupted 2020 season. Multiple outlets reported that player representatives from all 30 clubs agreed to a deal that will become official today once owners sign off...

MASN to rebroadcast every Nationals win from 2019 postseason

MASN to rebroadcast every Nationals win from 2019 postseason
If you want to re-watch the Nationals' dramatic run to their first World Series title on television, here's your chance. MASN will be broadcasting all 12 of the Nats' postseason victories, plus the championship parade, during the first two weeks of April. It all begins Thursday at 1 p.m., exactly when the Nationals were supposed to raise their banner before facing the Mets in their 2020 home opener. Instead, MASN will be showing the entire National League wild card game, capped by Juan...

Nationals option two players to Fresno, four more to Harrisburg

Nationals option two players to Fresno, four more to Harrisburg
They didn't have to submit an official 26-man roster for opening day this morning, but the Nationals did make a series of transactions, procedural moves that involved the optioning of six players off the major league spring training roster. Right-hander Erick Fedde and catcher Tres Barrera were both optioned to Triple-A Fresno, the club announced. Four more players were optioned to Double-A Harrisburg: right-handers James Bourque and Kyle Finnegan, plus infielder Adrián Sanchez and...

Lack of opening day brings a whole new appreciation for it

Lack of opening day brings a whole new appreciation for it
What will you be doing today at 1:10 p.m.? Will you turn on your television, hoping beyond hope to see Trea Turner stepping to the plate to face Jacob deGrom at sold-out Citi Field? Maybe this has all been a bad dream, a two-week-long nightmare that we'll all wake up from just in time to watch the 2020 Major League Baseball season begin as scheduled. Sadly, no. This is all too real. And it's only going to start feeling more real with each passing day as the pandemic numbers skyrocket and the...

Nationals trivia quiz: Opening day

Nationals trivia quiz: Opening day
The re-watch of the 2019 postseason has been a blast - thank you to everyone who has reached out to say how much they've enjoyed it - but it's also pretty time consuming. I mean, you really want me to watch an entire baseball game and then write a full article about it 17 times? What do you think I am, a baseball beat writer? (Wait, don't answer that question.) Rest assured, the postseason re-watch will continue later this week with the National League Championship Series. Then after another...

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLDS Game 5

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLDS Game 5
As the final countdown to first pitch proceeded Oct. 9, two thoughts came to mind: * This felt awfully familiar for the Nationals, yet another winner-take-all Game 5 of the National League Division Series. * This felt strikingly different from those previous Game 5 fiascos, because this time the Nats were on the road and underdogs to their opponents. In the end, of course, the 2019 NLDS was completely different from the other ones because the Nationals actually emerged victorious for the first...

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLDS Game 4

Home confinement re-watch: 2019 NLDS Game 4
The vibe inside Nationals Park early on during Game 4 of last fall's National League Division Series did not suggest the assembled masses were optimistic there would be a Game 5. An odd 6:40 p.m. first pitch on a Monday night with rain in the forecast and the home team facing elimination led to the first non-sellout in the ballpark's postseason history. Game 3 the previous night was witnessed by a crowd of 43,423. Game 4 was played before a gathering of only 36,847, with large swaths of empty...