The Washington Nationals ended their first series of the 2025 season on a high note on Sunday as the club finally notched their first win of the season against the Philadelphia Phillies. The club will head north to Canada to face the Toronto Blue Jays, beginning a new series on Monday, and thankfully, the flight up there should be a happy one with the club salvaging the series against their division foe.
Unfortunately, while this one good performance was enough to not give Nationals fans everywhere an entire weekend of misery, it did at least end things on a positive note for now. Overall through the team's first 3 games, there was a lot to like, but a lot to dislike from the team as well. Quite honestly, there was probably a lot more to dislike, and I will jump into that a bit here.
With that being said, here are 2 overreactions and 1 truth following the Nationals Opening Weekend.
Overreaction: The bullpen might be the worst in team history
In case you live under a rock or have not been following Washington Nationals baseball for very long, let's just say that fielding a strong bullpen has never been something that the organization excels in. Outside of the days when "The Law Firm" was finishing ball games with Tyler Clippard and Drew Storen, who both had their share of lumps in the postseason, the team has struggled to complement above average and elite rotations with competency from their relievers.
Sadly, that might again be the case in 2025. On Thursday, we watched in horror as the bullpen squandered the best outing of MacKenzie Gore's professional career, and turned the game into a laughing stock that somehow made it to extra innings. Lucas Sims and Colin Poche have only made questions about their subpar spring training showings grow even more, and both were questionably the first two arms called upon out of the bullpen for Davey Martinez for both Thursday and Saturday's games.
Kyle Finnegan has managed to log a pair of 0's out of the bullpen, and Jorge López managed to do the same in his Nationals debut on Sunday. Outside of those 2, everyone else has not looked great. Brad Lord made his MLB debut on Sunday and failed to retire a single hitter, while Jose A. Ferrer bounced back on Sunday following a tough showing on Thursday.
Obviously, this is an overreaction, but if things don't turn around quickly, this Nationals bullpen could be the worst one ever assembled to begin a season by Mike Rizzo. Numbers like the ones below just simply will not cut it over the course of a 162-game regular season.
Nationals bullpen so far this season:
— Mark Zuckerman (@MarkZuckerman) March 29, 2025
6 IP, 11 H, 15 R, 14 ER, 11 BB, 9 K, 5 HR
Overreaction: Dylan Crews might not be ready
It's tough not to feel bad for Dylan Crews. While thankfully he has not had the complete worst start to the 2025 season, as that belongs to Rafael Devers currently, Crews is certainly giving him a run for his money through 3 games. The 2023 #2 overall pick is 0/11 with 8 strikeouts, and at one point had a streak of 5 consecutive at-bats where he struck out on 3 pitches.
What has really stuck out to me in watching him at the plate so far is how consistent the pitches he's seeing have been. The Phillies clearly had a plan to attack him on the inside part of the plate to get ahead 0-2 with fastballs that he could not catch up to, followed by a breaking ball below the zone that he would flail at helplessly.
Crews has not only looked overmatched at the plate so far, but he has not looked competitive at all during the at-bats. Nobody really wanted to talk about it, but he didn't exactly look fantastic during his small sample size in the big leagues in 2024 either. Since being drafted, he has gotten off to a slow start at basically every level of the minor leagues, before heating up and allowing his numbers to even out.
The young outfielder is obviously going to have his share of growing pains as he adapts to being an everyday big leaguer, but a 5 strikeout game and the quality of his at-bats to this point have certainly caused some very minor alarm bells to be triggered. I am not worried yet, as even the greats have struggled at times to begin their professional careers. A guy like Crews who is one of the greatest college baseball players of all time is going to figure it out at some point, and I am still confident that he will turn it around soon.
This is definitely an overreaction, as I am sure once he breaks the seal that the hits will start to fall for him, but I would be lying if I said that his performance in the first weekend of this season didn't have me at least a little bit concerned about his readiness to be an everyday big leaguer.
Truth: The Nationals rotation is shaping up to be the best part of the team by a mile
Finally for some good news to cap off this article, but the Washington Nationals should be absolutely elated about the performance of their top 3 starting pitchers. As we wrote about already, MacKenzie Gore was lights-out on Opening Day, making MLB history and joining the rare company of Hall-of-Famer Bob Gibson following a historic performance.
Jake Irvin on Saturday did his part as well, making it through 5.0 innings and allowing just 2 earned runs to a very potent Phillies lineup. While the strikeout numbers were not where we would like them to be, Irvin did a great job of getting out of trouble numerous times. Mitchell Parker did more than enough on Sunday to become the first Nationals pitcher to earn a win this season, throwing 6.1 innings of shutout ball while scattering 7 hits and 2 walks while striking out 5 Phillies hitters.
The starting rotation of the club was a unit that I was very excited about coming into this season, and while we will wait and see what free agent addition Michael Soroka can do on Monday in Toronto, and whether or not Trevor Williams can replicate his 2024 success on Tuesday, this was a very encouraging start to the season for the top 3 starters in the rotation.
Overall, the starting pitchers on this team are undoubtedly the big winners of the Opening Weekend, and it will be worth monitoring just how well this group can continue to perform to kick off the season.
What is 1 overreaction you had after Opening Weekend? As always, please let me know on X, @DCBerk.