Andrew Alvarez took the ball for the Washington Nationals on Sunday night in Game #145, a late-season start that put him on one of baseball’s biggest stages against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The first pitch was set for 10:10 PM EDT at UNIQLO Field at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
The start mattered because this was not just another September game. It came in the Sunday night finale, with the Nationals heading straight from Los Angeles to San Diego by bus afterward for a three-game series that begins Monday. For a club trying to finish stronger than it has in years, every outing now carries a little more weight, and Alvarez was the pitcher asked to open this one.
The timing also fit the bigger picture of Washington’s season. The Nationals had not won more than 71 games in a year since the World Series season of 2019, and they needed five more wins to reach 72, six more to get to 73 and avoid a 90-loss season, and 15-3 to finish above.500. Those targets were still alive because the club had scored 743 runs, an average of 5.17 per game, which sat alongside a plus-11 run differential.
That production, though, sat in sharp contrast with the rest of the run profile. Washington was giving up 4.70 earned runs per game, and the pitching staff was coming off a blown save on Saturday night, the kind of miss that leaves a cleaner box score than a clean feeling. The offense has kept the Nationals in the hunt for small milestones, but the gap between what they score and what they allow has left little margin when the game tightens late.
Alvarez’s assignment also fit the way the Nationals have tried to frame their season’s late push: one start, one night, one chance to carry something forward. If he gave them a solid turn against the Dodgers, it would send them to San Diego with momentum; if not, the questions about whether Washington can turn strong run production into a winning finish would only sharpen on the bus ride west.
