July 27, 2026 [LINK / comment]
The Washington Nationals wasted multiple run-scoring opportunities versus the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday night, thus allowing the visiting team to eke out a 3-2 win. On Saturday, Foster Griffin was pitching, and for the first time since June he allowed more than one run to score. Nats 5, D-Backs 3. And on Sunday, both C.J. Abrams and James Wood hit two home runs, adding four to the Nationals' MLB-best team total. (After Andres Chaparro homered in tonight's game with Toronto, it's now 157 home runs, five more than the second-place New York Yankees.) The bullpen buckled a little bit, as Matt Krook (who has been sent back down to the minors) gave up 2 runs in the top of the 9th, but Clayton Beeter got the job done as the Nats held on to the precious 10-7 victory. It was a series win (at home!) against a potential wild card rival.
Tonight in Our Nation's Capital, future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer took the mound for the Toronto Blue Jays, getting a warm nostalgic welcome from the fans in D.C. He gave up singles to the first two batters in the first inning, and then walked the bases loaded with one out, but managed to escape unharmed. The Nats scored one in the second, but it easily could have been more. Even though Scherzer didn't even last three innings, it's fair to say that keeping his cool is what ended up making the difference in the game. Blue Jays 3, Nats 2. (The same score as the Friday night game!)
Meanwhile, the Miami Marlins had lost 12 games straight through Sunday, thus allowing the Nats to climb back into third place. It's as if they and the suddenly red-hot Boston Red Sox were mirror images of each other! But tonight the Marlins finally won, scoring 3 runs against the Phillies in the bottom of the 9th inning, so now only one game separates them from the Nationals.
C.J. Abrams and James Wood are setting all sorts of records, and folks are making comparisons with the Oakland A's "Bash Brothers" of the late 80s and early 90s, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. (Hopefully the PED issue will not recur.) With 27 so far, Abrams has now hit more home runs in a season than any other shortstop in Nationals history. He leads the National League in RBIs, with 82. For his part, Wood is the first National to reach 30 home runs in a season since since Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto in 2019 (34), and he stands a very good chance of breaking Alfonso Soriano's record of 46 home runs with the Nationals in 2006. (See the Washington Nationals page; scroll down a bit.)
Speaking of the Red Sox, the Nationals traded their blossoming 3rd-baseman slugger Curtis Mead for left-hand pitcher Connelly Early, who is currently on the Injured List. It's a very logical move, since the Nationals are so overloaded with sluggers as it is. They desperately need reliable pitchers, both starters and relievers. Curtis Mead had been DFA'd by the Chicago White Sox in late March, and since the Nats picked him up Mead has done everything possible to prove his value as a major league player. He was a popular player, one of the few Australians in the major leagues, and he'll be remembered fondly in Washington. Best wishes in Bean Town, Curtis!
[This is the new general manager Paul Taboni's first big transaction during a baseball season, and most analysts are impressed with what he has done thus far. As the trade deadline approaches, 2026 postseason dreams will clash with the cold, hard front-office reality of building a team that can contend for a world championship for years to come.]
I was watching the early phase of the 2026 MLB Draft two Saturdays ago, and just missed seeing the Nationals announce their pick for the #11 slot: Chris Hacopian, a second baseman who was born in Montgomery County, Maryland. (Just like James Wood!?) Hacopian went to Texas A & M, used to go to see games in Nationals Park, and is very enthusiastic about his future team.
I devoted the weekend and part of today to bringing the stadium pages for the northwestern and Rocky Mountain states up to date. That means making the data tables consistent in content and format, and including composite photos of stadiums where available, as well as composite photos of cities in the case of stadiums that are either in MLB use or are still standing (such as Oakland and Montreal). I also included Cashman Field in Las Vegas, which will become a full-fledged MLB city less than two years hence.
Of the cities shown on the U.S. map that I posted last week, I have not yet visited four of them: Sacramento, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Tampa-St. Petersburg. I passed through Sacramento on an Amtrak train at night, but didn't really see anything. And of the 26 cities that I have visited (including four "twin" metropolitan areas), I didn't take any downtown photos in either Atlanta or Phoenix.
As mentioned on Friday, I am trying various techniques in scanning old photos and slides, and sometimes a second or third effort yields much better results. A good example would be this photo of the Kingdome, which I took while a friend and I were exploring the Olympic National Park and the city of Seattle in 1987. The image from the first scanner I used had very poor color balance and intensity, and no amount of digital tweaking could improve it much. But this image has decent color balance as well as details in the stadium and nearby buildings. Success!
The Kingdome in Seattle, July 1987. Roll your mouse over the image to see a panorama that includes the downtown skyline. Somehow I tweaked the red, green, and blue light settings just right to get a rich, nicely balanced image, but for the life of me, I haven't been able to do it again. The tiny image below, probably derived from a scan of a printed photo rather than the original slide, was formerly shown on the Kingdome page. Pathetic, huh?
