00:00So the Nats took two of three from Arizona, the team that was red hot coming in.
00:06The Diamondbacks had won nine of 11 coming into this series in Washington over the weekend.
00:11They took the game Friday night, three to two.
00:15And then the Nats rallied on Saturday for a five to three win and then rallied yesterday to win 10
00:23to seven with C.J. Abrams and James Wood going nuts yesterday,
00:27both with two home runs in the game.
00:31James Wood now with 30 homers on the season, 72 RBIs.
00:37And C.J. Abrams, again, just on an insane tear.
00:41He's up to 27 home runs and he leads the major leagues in RBIs with 82 on the season.
00:50He's approaching 300 now, hitting 297, but literally his batting average to start the month was at 273.
01:00He's now at 297, hitting 397 during the month of July.
01:08The Nats climbed closer to that wild card spot.
01:12They did make a trade over the weekend.
01:15Again, they sent Curtis Mead to Boston for a left-handed starter in Connerly early, who's actually hurt right now,
01:24inflammation in his elbow.
01:27But the baseball people seem to really like the trade for the Nationals.
01:33The Nationals have so much offense.
01:35So the idea is, even though Mead was having a career year, they're going to be okay offensively without him.
01:43And they just added a legitimate starter to the rotation for later in the season when he is expected to
01:51be back.
01:52So we will see Connerly early is just 24 years old and added to a rotation with Foster Griffin, fingers
02:02crossed.
02:03He's still on the roster when we get to the latter portion of the season.
02:07And Cade Cavalli could make for, along with that offense, a dangerous postseason team.
02:14It's not nuts.
02:16By the way, Foster Griffin pitched on Saturday, pitched well, but his eight-game streak of allowing just one earned
02:24run or less came to an end.
02:27He gave up three earned runs on Saturday, but still went six and two-thirds, went deep into the seventh,
02:34allowed just those three earned runs on six hits.
02:37So a solid outing for Foster Griffin on Saturday.
02:41And he got the win.
02:43He's now 12-2 on the season, but a lot of talk about Foster Griffin and whether or not he
02:49will be dealt by the time we get to early next week.
02:54And the trade deadline, which is August 3rd, exactly a week from today.
03:00We'll see what the Nats do.
03:02I think this is a big week coming up.
03:03You know, if they continue to play really good baseball, they've got Toronto here for the next three at home
03:10starting tonight.
03:12Toronto's not played well recently.
03:14They've dropped something like eight out of their last 11.
03:18They're in last place in the American League East.
03:21This will offer up an opportunity for Cade Cavalli to start one of these games.
03:27You've got to come away with two of three against Toronto to win a fourth straight series out of the
03:32All-Star break.
03:33It would be great to get a sweep, obviously, but then a big stretch of four on the road in
03:40Atlanta, which will actually end the day before the trade deadline.
03:46And then they start a four-game set in Philadelphia after that.
03:51So, keeping the momentum, keeping a couple of games above .500, no worse than two, three games out of that
04:00wildcard race,
04:01hopefully will keep the powers that be from becoming major sellers.
04:06Any sort of tailspin over the next week where they drop to five, six games out of the wildcard spot
04:13and under .500 could be influential.
04:16I don't see that happening, but this is no longer, by the way, clearly no longer aberration.
04:22They've played 106 games.
04:25There are only 56 left, and the Nats are the highest-scoring team in baseball, and they've gotten solid starting
04:31pitching as well.
04:33The bullpen's been the major issue this year.
04:36The bullpen actually did a nice job on Saturday.
04:39Yesterday got a little bit close in the night.
04:44The Diamondbacks went into the ninth inning, trailing by five runs, 10-5, and they had two batters up, one
04:51swing away from taking the lead
04:54when the Nats walked the first three batters in the top of the ninth.
04:59But, wow, what a season this has been, and it would be great if it continues.
05:04I got this from P. Jones19.
05:08P. Jones19 listens to the radio show and the podcast because he wrote,
05:13Kevin, you and Tom, as in Levero, talking Nats all of a sudden after nothing for most of the season
05:21is laugh out loud.
05:23You made your bed with Brandon Iyuk, now lie in it.
05:28So I don't know if he's kidding or not.
05:30If he's not kidding, it's kind of a ridiculous position to take.
05:34You know, let me just mention this.
05:37I would prefer to talk about baseball during the spring, summer, and into the fall a lot more than is
05:49done.
05:49But when your team, for five consecutive years, averages 96-plus losses a season
05:58and has among the worst sort of response from fans in the market attendance-wise
06:07and every other metric that would measure fan response,
06:11it's not an easy ask to do it all the time.
06:15We do it, and I like to do it.
06:17I like to have Mark Zuckerman on the show.
06:19I like to have Jesse Docherty on the show.
06:22I like to have Grant Paulson on the show to talk baseball,
06:26Galdi on the show to talk baseball.
06:28I've got a Hall of Fame voter in Tommy Levero on my podcast twice a week,
06:32and we talk baseball.
06:34But when you're averaging, you know, P. Jones 19, no offense, 96-plus losses a year,
06:41and you're literally in a position where you're not just bad,
06:45you are one of, if not the worst teams in baseball.
06:50It's tough, especially in a sports town that has one dominant team.
06:57And his note to me just reminded me of kind of, you know,
07:04I think we all understand this.
07:05And we're not unique.
07:07We're not unique.
07:08You know, there are a couple of incredible sports cities like New York and Philly
07:14and certainly Boston and Chicago, you know, and Detroit to a certain degree.
07:19L.A. is an interesting sports town, but still the Lakers are the dominant team there,
07:24but they have a big fan base for the Dodgers as well.
07:29But we are a one-team-dominant sports town.
07:35There's just no debating that.
07:37And anybody that wants to debate you on that doesn't understand what the measurement of that would look like.
07:43I mean, there is mass appeal for our football team.
07:47There is bandwagon appeal for everything else.
07:52It's just the way our sports town has evolved.
07:57I think you could make the case that it hasn't always been that way, but it has to a certain
08:03degree.
08:04Look, the Capitals have a very passionate fan base, but it's not mass appeal like the football team.
08:12I think the Wizards could end up having something other than a bandwagon fan base
08:17if they actually became a contending team for the first time in a half century.
08:23But it's been a half century.
08:24Our baseball team has right now the third worst attendance numbers in the National League,
08:31even with a very unexpected, healthy, surprising season.
08:35It's the eighth worst in all of baseball, attendance-wise.
08:40And, you know, it's not...
08:42But if they are in contention and there's all of a sudden playoff games in October,
08:49people will jump on that bandwagon.
08:50It's really what we've become.
08:52You know, the two college basketball teams in town, Maryland basketball has had in the past
08:58a very consistent, passionate fan base, but even that has waned in recent years
09:06and is more bandwagon-y.
09:08Georgetown certainly is that.
09:10Maryland football, I don't even know what you would call that.
09:12There's literally, legitimately no current, you know, palpable, measurable fan base that exists
09:20for the football program.
09:22Now, in the past, when Maryland's had good teams, and you've got to go back a long way,
09:27even though Mike Loxley did a really nice job with three straight bowl teams,
09:31but these weren't teams that were contending for anything.
09:34They weren't, you know, necessarily ranked higher consistently.
09:37Unfortunately, I've seen the bandwagon jump on for that.
09:40Would it do it now in 2026 like it did it in the 2000s with some of Ralph Regents' teams?
09:46I don't know.
09:47Bandwagon-y.
09:48At best for them.
09:51But anyway, P. Jones19, appreciate the fact that you appreciate that we are talking some baseball,
09:59and I'm into it.
10:00I like baseball a lot.
10:01I love it this time of year going into the postseason, and this season, you know, for a while,
10:09like you go back to, you know, one point in the first half of the season
10:13when they first started to sort of approach 500, and we were 50 or 60 games in,
10:18and then all of a sudden they were like four or five games above 500,
10:23and then they had some real devastating, you know, defeats.
10:27You know, that Philly series, the San Francisco series where they were giving up, you know, late leads.
10:34There were certainly some of those moments,
10:37but this team is sitting here 106 games into the season at 54 and 52
10:45and a game behind the team they just took two of three from.
10:49They win the season series, so if we end up getting into any sort of tiebreakers late in the year,
10:55they own the tiebreaker over Arizona now with the season series win,
10:58but at 54 and 52, 106 games into the season with the offense they have,
11:03I don't think they're going away.
11:05Anyway, the only way they go away is if they trade away, you know, all of these important parts.
11:10I don't think that's going to happen, but it'll be a very interesting week this week.
11:17Toronto tonight and then for the next two days before a big eight-game stretch
11:24against the two top teams in the division.
11:27By the way, I keep talking about the wildcard race with them just a game behind Arizona
11:33for the third wildcard race.
11:34They're only three games behind Philly for the second wildcard spot,
11:38and right now most of the other teams are behind them.
11:42They and Pittsburgh are sitting a game out.
11:45This is going to be a really interesting race.
11:47The Nats just don't have many nights where they're not hitting.
11:53I mean, 15 more hits last night, 10 more runs.
11:58They had a game last week against Oakland, against the A's in Sacramento,
12:04where they only ended up with a run in the game on four hits.
12:09That is such an aberration these days.
12:13I mean, they are, you know, they have a very, very difficult lineup
12:19for opposing pitchers to face.
12:22the camera is going to be your mind.
12:22and I'm living in the game,
12:22the next one's or you're like,
12:22where it is 65 years old?
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