The Washington Nationals finished the month of May having gone 15-12 across 27 games. Yeah, they still allowed more runs than they scored, but wins are wins, and they currently lead the Atlanta Braves (who were projected by PECOTA to win the division) by 2 and a half games. FanGraphs still gives them 1.4% odds of making the Postseason (granted, that's less than half the 3% they had on Opening Day). So what, exactly, would it take for the Nationals to make it to the dance in 2025?
Let's assume, first of all, that the Nationals are not wholesale buying at the trade deadline, because I would like to keep this exercise at least slightly realistic. Throwing your prospects at rentals before the door is even realistically unlocked is a fool's errand, so these hypothetical Nationals are only going to be adding by making the occasional long-term addition and otherwise making simple one-for-ones.
Adding is exactly what the team needs to do in this scenario, though--the Nationals, currently, have three good players. Let's not mislead ourselves, those three good players are very good players. CJ Abrams, James Wood, and MacKenzie Gore are all cornerstones for this team to build up around. All of them could find themselves in the All-Star Game next month, and have been the main bright spots for the team this year. We see it in the top of the lineup: the 2025 Nationals, as of writing, are second in Major League Baseball in scoring runs in the first inning. The top of this lineup gets the job done, and with Luis García Jr. starting to heat up and Josh Bell deciding that he was going to go back to hitting the ever-loving good God of this baseball, however long it lasts, the Nationals are capable of scoring enough runs to get where they need to be (although they're bottom 10 in the league in both walk and strikeout rate).
The pitching's not in a great spot right now beyond Gore. Yes, the organization has reinforcements coming, but most of the top-end talent isn't going to surface until 2027 or later. The Nationals have the third-worst bullpen in baseball by xFIP (a fork of FIP that normalizes HR/FB rate to league averages), and as I wrote last week, all three of their new additions to the Major League bullpen on Opening Day are no longer with the organization due to performance. This is a bullpen that walks batters at a rate only exceeded by the Athletics' miserable relief core, and when runners get on base, the Nationals' bottom-five defense in baseball tends to produce chaos in the worst possible way.
Bullpens are volatile things, though. Even outright bad coaching staffs and development systems like the Nationals have can produce a strong reliever with the right adjustment, or pluck someone off the waiver wire before another team realizes what's out there like the Nats did with Robert Garcia a couple years ago. It's... unlikely but not impossible that the Nationals bullpen can turn a corner. Orlando Ribalta could become a dude, maybe Cole Henry and Andry Lara become shutdown guys, any team is always a couple arbitrary adjustments or a couple really lucky waiver claims away from piecing together a strong enough bullpen for just long enough to make up a bunch of ground.
The defense, man... the defense. I tuned into a postgame press conference from Davey Martinez on Thursday evening long enough to hear him wax poetic to the media, verbally penning the words "We gotta get ready to catch the ball." I'm not entirely sure the issue is being ready; Keibert Ruiz's entire job is to catch the ball upwards of 150 times every game, but he's still costing the team 5 runs total off his poor framing alone, according to Statcast.
The infield is the biggest issue plaguing the team; a defensive alignment of Luis García Jr., who's regressed massively in the field; CJ Abrams, who looks destined to play the corner outfield; and either Amed Rosario, who has lacked any true position for his entire career, or José Tena, a second baseman forced to play third, is not going to do a pitching staff any favors. The pitching staff doesn't need to get overwhelmingly better for the Nationals to have a shot, so long as things can get tightened up in the field.
With that, the Nationals face a conundrum: realistically, the team should probably start using the DH slot more as a way to get defensive liabilities off the field every so often to get a Nasim Nuñez or Paul DeJong type in the game, but having two 1Bs on the roster (and Andrés Chaparro waiting in the wings) makes that more difficult, especially when Lowe was a big trade acquisition that the team believes can get back to his past form and Bell is starting to heat up.
Maybe none of it matters, or maybe the Nationals are destined for a 90-loss season, just like the seasons before; but part of building a competitive team includes thinking about these things, and figuring out how best to position the club to find success. Maybe, just maybe, with the right things prioritized and a whole lot of luck, the Nationals can bust that locked door wide open come September.