The Washington Nationals are a collection of one of the cuter memes in recent memory. Daylen Lile. Jorbit Vivas. Keibert Ruiz. None of these words are in the Bible? Oh… what’s that? These are the names of some of the players? Hmm, that makes a lot more sense. Well, look, getting to know the Nationals doesn’t seem like a good use of time, given that they’re in a transition period following the installation of a new front office necessitated by six straight losing seasons after the franchise’s sole
world championship in 2019. And yet, right now, they’re better than the San Francisco Giants.
Sure, it’s only a two game difference, but they’ve also got the power of no expectations — and heaps of statistical data being infused with their coaching and scouting. The Giants have neither of that going for them, and this clash of organizational philosophies will be fascinating to watch here and going forward. In the offseason, the Nationals fumigated their front office to rid itself of the embalming fluids that had drenched every piece of furniture from the Mike Rizzo regime.
That group had managed to win a World Series and use the old method of tanking to get high draft picks in order to build up talent to great effect, leading to 6 years of misery begetting 8 years of contention. They’re since suffered 6 years of misery and figure to be bad again in 2026, a 7th street year of futility. But just to demonstrate the philosophical shift, two Spring Trainings ago, all the Nats did to prepare their pitchers better was hang signs in the bullpens: I don’t care how fast you throw ball four.
“In this league, you have to throw strikes,” general manager Mike Rizzo said. “I didn’t want to be a smart ass and put that up, but I think with one of the youngest teams in the league like we have and a young pitching staff, I wanted them to know that is important to the guy making the decisions on who’s making the team. Throw the ball over the plate. You have to get guys out.”
SF native, St. Ignatius & Cal alum Paul Toboni is now the President of Baseball Operations, and he’s brought aboard former McCovey Chronicles commenter prospect Anirudh Kilambi (garbanzo24) to be the GM. They’ve gone in the opposite direction of both the Nationals and the Giants (which proudly threw out the computers that had invaded their clubhouse) and the players have reacted positively. This Nats culture/vibes shift article for The Athletic by Spencer Nusbaum mentions several key details, but basically the coaching staff’s use of data in real time has helped the players more.
“Having the different resources that we have in the bullpen, cameras, TVs, TrackMan — like, we’ve had this stuff to an extent in the past,” [SP Jake] Irvin said. “But now we’re getting data in real time, and I think that that’s been a huge help.”
It’s led to their best start since 2019. Meanwhile, the Giants are 7-12 to start a season for just the second time this century and third time in 40 years. The last time this happened (2004), they had Barry Bonds on the team.
The Giants do have all or most of the same technology as the Nationals, but just given the results and the way the Giants have stumbled into those results, it’s worth wondering if said technology is being utilized in much the same way as the previous Nationals regime utilized their meager tech. If the Giants really are oversteering away from the Farhan Zaidi days to a more “traditional” and “old school” manner of what is today losing baseball, then that will be quite distressing to watch, and this series might provide us with a glimpse of what computers vs. gut is going to look like going forward. The Giants absolutely have the superior talent on both sides of the ball, but the Nationals might have the edge just by being willing to optimize what talent they do have.
Or do they? The easiest thing to optimize with modern baseball technology is pitching, and yet the Nationals have THE WORST pitching staff in the sport (-2.3 fWAR!!!) with a team ERA of 5.91 (5.95 FIP). The Giants are slightly better (+1.1 fWAR — 21st) with a 4.17 ERA (4.11 FIP). It’s on the hitting side where there’s a wide, wide gap in results in this 19-game sample size: Washington’s offense is ranked 5th heading into the series: +3.3 fWAR on a 112 wRC+ from a triple slash of .262/.338/.411. They’re tied with the Astros for most runs scored in the sport right now (107). Their 20 stolen bases is 6th in MLB, too. On paper, they’ve had a tough start to the season: @ Cubs (2-1), @ Phillies (1-2), Dodgers (0-3), Cardinals (1-2), @ Brewers (3-0), @ Pirates (2-2). Is it simply that the Cubs, Brewers, and Phillies are having a slow start to their seasons, too, or do the Nationals have a little magic?
Guess we’ll find out. If the Giants don’t win this series, they’ll be tied with the 2017, 2019, and 2020 teams starts OR be off to their worst start since the 100-loss 1985 season.
Series overview
Who: San Francisco Giants (7-12) at Washington Nationals (9-10)
Where: Nationals Park | Washington, D.C.
When: Friday at 3:45pm PT, Saturday at 1:05pm PT, Sunday at 10:35am PT
National broadcasts: None.
Projected starters
Friday: Logan Webb (1-2, 5.25 ERA) vs. Zack Littell (0-1, 4.20 ERA)
Saturday: Adrian Houser (0-2, 5.06 ERA) vs. Cade Cavalli (RHP 0-1, 4.60 ERA)
Sunday: Robbie Ray (2-2, 2.42 ERA) vs. Miles Mikolas (RHP 0-3, 11.49 ERA)
Players to watch
Nationals
CJ Abrams: The Giants tried to trade for the shortstop/second baseman in the offseason and maybe it’s because they saw in him what the new Nats front office does. The bloom had come off the rose for this player, with the industry being down on him for off the field matters plus perceived underperformance at the play. His prior three seasons have seen just a 101 wRC+ from the speedy lefty 25-year old. This year, he’s off to a white hot start: .371/.481/.710 in 77 PA (224 wRC+). Abrams is the best player on the Nats roster right now, even leading them in home runs (6). At the game level, he’s 6-for-8 on the first pitch this season with a home run and has been doing damage even later in the count, but it’s all such a small sample that the Giants can only hope he regresses to the mean during this series.
James Wood: The second-best player in the lineup right now whose .256/.376/.526 in 93 PA is only 50% better than the league average (150 wRC+) and has only hit 5 home runs (4 fewer than the Giants as a team). The outfielder went just 3-for-16 in the recently completed 4-game series in Pittsburgh, but in the prior homestand and 3 in Milwaukee, he was 14-for-35 with 4 homers. Is home cooking just what he needs?
Joey Wiemer: The Giants briefly had him this offseason and now with the Nats, he’s hitting .351/.442/.595 in a bench role (43 PA), which will almost certainly become a platoon role soon enough. Technically, the outfielder has had 1 more PA against RHP (19) than LHP (18), but the statistical separation is stark: .596 OPS vs. RHP and 1.490 against LHP.
Giants
Jerar Encarnacion: If he’s not designated for assignment before I post this article, then I would have to imagine his role on the roster is tenuous at best right now. He’s 6-for-24 in very limited action, but there’s also the matter of his poor baserunning — oh! and his bad defense (when he remembers to bring his mitt to the field). Sure, the guys who get the big bucks need to step up and produce, but on road trips, sometimes the role players need to play a winning role.
Logan Webb: He’ll probably wind up having a typical season, but it sure doesn’t feel like it right now. A great start against a team he’s done okay against for his career (4-1, 4.25 ERA) would go a long way towards calming down some negative perceptionof the team. The Nats might have different ideas, though. Webb has given up 10 runs in 3 starts (13.2 IP) at Nationals Park, though he pitched great there last time (2024: 5.2 IP 1 ER). In that game, he was called for the only balk of his career!
Ryan Walker & Erik Miller: Miller’s save in yesterday’s finale was fun to see as was Ryan Walker’s clean inning. If the 7th, 8th, and 9th are shaping into a Walker-Winn-Miller beast, that seems like one that most of us can get behind. Miller’s walk issues and Walker’s control issues are definitely things to keep an eye on, but this might be the best trio of options available to Tony Vitello for now. The Nationals’ batting average by inning so far makes the idea of the bullpen being “settled” very premature:
1st: .337
2nd: .167
3rd: .203
4th: .297
5th: .233
6th: .232
7th: .329
8th: .286
9th: .269
Tony Vitello watch
Why are the Giant struggling with their preparation? It’s not just the sloppy defense or lack of in-game substitutions, it’s also Jerar Encarnacion losing his glove and Tony Vitello arguing with an umpire against a clearly out Jerar Encarnacion or him not challenging an obvious dropped fly ball in yesterday’s game. Obviously, that’s on the players to an extent and the video room coaches — assuming the Giants still have one! They have taken great pride in de-technologizing the team! — but at the same time, every “rookie mistake” you’d expect of a guy who has never coached a major league game before March 2026 is being made.
It’d be an unacceptable spate of missteps so early in the season under any other sort of manager. That the Giants are generally playing poorly in addition to it only makes matters worse. Anyway, let’s see what happens when he manages against an actual computer.
Prediction time
The Giants will manage to win a game in this series, I think. Or… let’s hope.
