The Mariners finish their long East Coast road trip with a three-game series against the Nationals in Washington, and they arrive looking far less sharp than they did a week ago. Seattle split its series in Baltimore after two lackluster games on Wednesday and Thursday, a stretch that has cooled a club that had built an eight-game win streak and improved its place in the standings.
That is why this series is drawing attention now. James Wood, who has already piled up 3.0 fWAR and 18 home runs, is at the center of a Nationals offense that has scored the second most runs in baseball this season. CJ Abrams has pushed his wRC+ to 150, while Curtis Mead, Keibert Ruiz, Luis García Jr. and Jacob Young have each shown new success, giving Washington more than one way to pressure a pitching staff over three games.
The Nationals have spent years trying to move past the drift that followed their World Series title in 2019, and this season has given them one of the clearest signs yet that the rebuild is taking hold. Last fall, they hired Paul Toboni as their new president of baseball operations, making him the youngest top executive in baseball, and the results have followed on the field. A lineup that can score in bunches has given Washington a different look than the club that spent much of the post-title period searching for direction.
There is still a catch, though. The same Nationals team that can punish mistakes is also carrying some pitching uncertainty, and that matters against a Mariners club that looked energized early in the trip before slipping back into listless play. Seattle’s recent wobble does not erase the eight-game win streak that lifted it a week ago, but it does leave open a simple question: whether the grind of the East Coast trip is catching up with them at the worst possible time.
Washington also brings more than one promising arm into the series. Zack Littell opened the year with a 7.85 ERA and a 9.03 FIP through his first six starts, then turned things around as soon as May began, posting a 2.27 ERA and a 3.47 FIP over his last seven appearances. Cade Cavalli, a first-round pick in 2020 who made his big league debut in August 2022 after missing all of 2023 and most of 2024 with injuries, has also been excellent this year. The next few games will show whether Seattle can steady itself before the trip is over or whether Washington’s offense keeps making this series feel bigger than a stopover.
