Trade Season Kicks Ass Until They Sell Your Beautiful Son

Who is ruining baseball? For me, for today, it’s the Washington Nationals. Games played by my home team make up a solid 90 percent of the baseball I watch in a given regular season. Like a lot of baseball fans I was hoping Tarik Skubal would go to the Milwaukee Brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays instead of to the Dodgers, but in a distant, uncommitted sort of way, the way that I might hope that my friends have favorable weather while they are taking a trip someplace. Skubal’s trade destination is firmly not my problem. While the Nationals are playing competitive baseball, I really do not give a rip what the Dodgers are up to. While the Nationals are anywhere near the hunt, I might watch as many as two Dodgers games a month, and the chances are very good that Skubal will not happen to be pitching in any of them. Also, sorry to Detroiters but the Tigers can burn in hell for all I care.

The Nationals have had a good season. They were supposed to be bozos in 2026, but instead they have been frisky and fun. They’ve had the best offense in the majors, and not even in a dreary, optimized, true-outcomes sort of way. Yes, they hit lots of home runs—they are presently first in all the majors in dingers—but they also collect lots of all kinds of knocks (third in total hits) because they put the ball in play a lot (9th best team strikeout percentage). They also lead all of the majors in stolen bases, which just objectively kicks ass. They’ve had good vibes, and though their pitching has been broadly horrendous, more often than not it has been a good idea to tune in for one of their games. You are likely to see a dinger or two, you’re likely to see some action on the bases, you’re likely to get some early offense and some late offense. Guys are smiling and bat-flipping and having a great time.

The Nationals made it to the second half still right there in the mix for the final National League wild card. New general manager Paul Toboni made comments suggesting that he was going to lean into this unexpected success and try to give the team its best shot at playing into October. When the Nationals traded Curtis Mead to the Boston Red Sox, it was possible to accept this as a kind of fortification: Mead was extremely productive for the Nationals, but they’ve got plenty of offense and have a desperate need for starting pitching. Connelly Early, the player they received in return, is a perfectly solid starting pitcher who is expected to join the big-league rotation later this month, after completing a rehab stint. Then the Nationals dropped a series to the Blue Jays and lost the first three of a four-game set in Atlanta. For Sunday’s finale, against a rookie right-hander, Luis García was suddenly scratched. When Andrés Chaparro took a ball to the noggin and had to come off for a concussion test, and the team needed a healthy first baseman, they turned not to García but to Brady House, who has never played first base in his life. Everyone understood.