Tuesday night is open mic night at Walter Sports Bar. Got talent? Bring it to the stage. Come show off your skills or just sit back and enjoy the show while indulging in delicious food and ice cold drinks. Open mic begins at 7 p.m., located just across the street from the ballpark. (upbeat music) - No walls, two strikes to rumble, two outs bases empty. Here it is. Check swing, pitch up and outside, strike three on the appeal and the ending is over. Foster Griffin has tossed seven two hit shot out innings here at Rapefield against the White Sox. What a performance by Foster Griffin. - Yeah, I really had a good sweeper today. Really good change into Rides in my color to both sides. - I'm trying to put the nationals on the board and in the lead. Here's the set, the kick and the pitch. Swing a line drive left field, chasing over the left field or Murray into a dive. He makes a spectacular catch, but Laya will tag and he'll score. - Nationals take a one-nothing lead here in the 10th. Three-one on the way. Swing a high drive, deep right field for Tana. He'll going back to the track and there it goes. It's a pinch hit home run for Jose Tana and the Nationals with a two-nothing lead here in the 10th. - And welcome to Natschat. I'm Al Goli, host of the Al Goli podcast. I'm joined by Washington Nationals inside our Mark Sturker, made of NatschJournal.com. He is at Rapefield where the Nats have done what we discussed for the end of the last installment of the podcast. The Nats have gotten nine and eight over a stretch of 17 consecutive days with no off day. A 2-1-10 inning win at the Chicago White Sox on Sunday afternoon to win two out of three games in the series. The Nats in MLB's 2026 regular season improved to 13 and 16, including three and three in extra inning games. 10 and six on the road versus three and 10 at home. This installment of Natschat brought to us by Mason Calfes. He is the top legal recruiter in Washington, DC. Mason has been with us since our first season. You can reach him at 2024863535. Good to have you with us. You can always email us
[email protected]. We got this email from Jay Galispe shortly after the win on Sunday afternoon, right Jay. This team is so much more fun and interesting to watch than the team was the last couple of seasons. I always feel like this team has a chance, had forgotten what that felt like. Amazing what something approaching a vision and a plan can do. Well, thank you very much for the email Jay. Sunday marked one month since opening day. Sunday was April 26th, opening day was March 26th. It is amazing how many of the Natsch games have been dramatic in some way. So few simple, low-stress games, so many close, back and forth battles, six extra inning games already. The Nats have got to be drained from this run of 17 consecutive days with no off day considering the nature of so many of these games, but very nice for the Nats to end this stretch with a win. I know how drained you and I and Tim are. Well, I can only imagine how drained the players are after going through this stretch. You're right, there were very few simple games along the way. Good or bad, a couple of blowouts, but not really much in that department. Most every game was coming down to the wire. As you said, all these extra inning games, mostly tight games. They're not scoring runs the way they had been for a while, but they found a way in this game and on Saturday as well to do it and to go nine and eight. I don't care who you're playing for this team to go nine and eight over this particular stretch. I think that's a real achievement for them. And again, to win the games the way that they did, it's not always the prettiest thing. There are things you'd like to clean up for sure, but as Jay and the email they're mentioned, I think the reason that everyone's kind of into this a little bit more and is finding more excitement in this is that the bar has been raised. And when they do lose one of these games, it feels worse because it feels like they had a good chance or maybe even should have won the game. So when they do win it, I think there's a little extra feeling of satisfaction to it. This team is 13 and 16, 29 games in. And as we've discussed, they probably should be at least 500 or over right now. And take away a couple of bullpen meltdowns and that's where they are. And I don't think it's a fluke-ish record. They're getting the contributions from their lineup from all the key guys. The pitchers who are contributing this for the most part of guys who may have a future here. So I think it's a meaningful 13 and 16. I don't think this is a 13 and 16 that you say, well, what does it really matter when it's, say Josh Bell, who's the one carrying the load or trying to think who a pitcher would have been that would have fit that description. But somebody who, you knew wasn't going to be around here for a long time. So I do think it's somewhat meaningful. And I think there's something to be, I think there's reason for them to appreciate what they've done over this stretch. Well, and to the point about this not being a fluke, so the Nats are 13 and 16 with a run differential of minus 15. If you go by espn.com's expected one loss record based on the run differential, the Nats expected one loss record is 13 and 16. The Nats are exactly what they should be given what the team has done. So it's not like the team is winning a bunch of one run games. It's not like the team is winning a bunch of extra inning games, three and three and extra inning games. So this team has earned these 13 victories. And so much of this, of course, is perspective because expectations going into opening day were so low, maybe the lowest that they have ever been in terms of the Nats time in Washington, DC. But the team has been a pleasure to watch and no doubt, nine and eight over this grueling 17 day stretch says a lot. And maybe the most encouraging thing in recent days is the Nats starting pitching some really nice outings. We had Kate Cavali in the seven two loss to the Atlanta Braves at Nationals Park. This past Thursday afternoon, allowing two runs in five innings with 10 strikeouts versus no walks. We had Jake Irvin in the six three, 10 inning win at the White Sox on Saturday tossing five and two third shutout innings with nine strikeouts versus no walks. And we on Sunday afternoon got the latest impressive outing from Foster Griffin. He was great. He tossed seven scoreless innings with eight strikeouts. He gave up two hits, both of which were singles. He has to two walks, a hit by pitch, a wild pitch, and a block. But he threw plenty of strikes, 95 pitches, 61 strikes, 34 balls. He perstat cast again through seven different types of pitches. We've become accustomed to this. But what we also are growing accustomed to is Foster Griffin being the Nats best starting pitch or six games all starts, ERA of 2.67 whip of 1.07. I know the White Sox aren't great, but Foster Griffin looked terrific in this game and he overall has been terrific for the Nats. Yeah, I think we've seen parts of this throughout his first, what it was, a five starts prior to this point. And I think in this game you saw everything come together in the best version of him throwing strikes, working fast. My God, some of the half innings in this game were so fast. And that went in both ways. You know, Griffin would have a real quick like three minute bottom half of the inning. He'd go into the dugout and literally two, three minutes later, he's back on the mound because his teammates had made three outs that quickly. And that didn't throw him off at all. He stayed in that rhythm, worked fast, kept throwing strikes. The strikeouts came on five different types of pitches. So again, he has the ability to do all those different things. And I think what we can pretty clearly say right now, one month into the season, he has earned the trust of Blake butterra more than anybody else in their rotation. He is the guy who is going to be allowed to go deeper in games. And he has rewarded his manager for that faith in him so far. I know he doesn't have a lot of big league experience, but the way he's pitching and the way they are managing him, he's more like you would expect from a veteran established big league pitcher. And that's a great sign for somebody who has, we know, did it in Japan, but hadn't proven it this level yet. It feels like if you just watch this guy, you would think this guy's been in the big leagues five, six years and is a very well established solid big league pitcher. Well, he is in his age 30 season. So he has a lot of baseball experience, not a lot of M.O.B. experience. He was well regarded enough to be a first round pick. I don't know how many people pick up on this with Griffin. He was taken with the number 28 overall pick in the 2014 M.O.B. first year player draft was taken by the Kansas City Royals. You know, something else I thought about with Foster Griffin too. So he pitched well over three seasons in Japan and now is pitching well here. The gap between the NPB and M.O.B has gotten smaller, I believe over the last, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years or so. There was a time, I mean, I remember when I was a kid, people would talk about Japanese baseball as being so inferior to M.O.B. And the notion of someone coming from Japan and doing well here was like, get out of here, that can't happen. And then you started to see things change, right? Like Hideo No-Mo came over and we saw Hedecki Matsui have success and of course, Hichiro in a lot of ways changed the conversation. And now we see this kind of thing a good bit with Shouhei Otoni being the most prominent example. But a guy like Foster Griffin, I think is really instructive where you go to Japan and you do well, it's not just some fluky thing based on inferior competition. Like there's at least decent chance that you can be good over here. You can do well in M.O.B. And this is part of the frustration of the NADS having nothing to do with Japanese baseball for so long now. I guess up until recently you'd say, but like, doing well in Japan can be indicative of someone being able to do well in M.O.B. And I think what we're seeing now is that
with foster Griffin is part of that. Yeah, you know, for me, even since being in this profession, now 25 years, I'd say the first decade of that at least, the thought was always Japanese baseball is kind of the equivalent of AAA over here. Like there are guys who are going to make it up here, but for the most part it is a real level down from it. And I agree, I think that gap has closed. Maybe not to the point that they're exactly equal, but certainly success there does seem to translate over here. Did you notice, you know, for the first time this year, Griffin faced a hitter who actually has a history against him, Munitaka Murakami from their three years in Japan. And foster was telling me that they were in the same division. They faced each other a lot over the years. Griffin had tremendous success against him and he carried it right over here. If you combine the two now, head to head matchups. Murakami is four for 31, got him for one homer, two walks and now 18 strikeouts, including two of them in this game. And I asked Griffin, did you take that same approach or did you try something different? He said, nope, I just went after him the same way I always have. So clearly he has a planning against him. And it worked. Murakami did not look comfortable facing Griffin at all. And he says we've discussed one of the most feared power hitters at least in the game right now in his first season in the majors. And we talked about how the familiarity between the two, if it existed, which it turned out it did, might favor Murakami. No, it favored Griffin. Griffin has this great history against Murakami and Griffin on Sunday afternoon did more good work against Murakami. Again, I like so much of his success. We've wondered is this just the fact that the hitters have never seen him before? Is he taken advantage of that? And maybe there's something to it. But the fact that he could go up against the guy who had plenty of history and retire him three times twice on strikeouts, I think is a great sign. You know, eventually we're going to get to a point that you say, hey, Griffin is just like anybody else in the majors. They've got the book on him. Everybody's, even if they haven't seen him in person before, they've watched enough scouting video of him. Maybe they've faced him on the traject machine that other teams also have. And for now, he's getting the job done. It's just, it's really been enjoyable to watch this play out the way that it has. I know some of the acquisitions, this team, this new front office made this winner have not necessarily worked out so far. This one has been by far their best acquisition and credit to them for identifying a guy who they knew could be a quality big league pitcher and getting him for $5 million because if you try to acquire a comparable pitcher in the free agent market who's been in the major leagues for the last few years, it's going to cost you way more than that and leave yourself to the potential of it blowing up in your face. And in this case, what a great find and what a great steal a bargain for them at $5 million. He is pitching his way into being quite the trade ship, my friend. The foster Griffin trade sweepstakes a few months from now are going to be rather juicy looking forward to that because that'll mean that he keeps pitching well, which is good. Are you a law firm partner or associate stuck on an underperforming team or your competitors are passing you by? Is your law firm still living in 2019 and pretending everything is okay? Meanwhile, the whole firm is having the same bad luck as Josiah Gray is having. Unlike James Wood, you've got options and you don't have to stay on a 60 win roster. Long time that's chat sponsor Mason Calfys is the best legal recruiter in the DC market. Mason and his team at Zenith Legal Specialize in placing partners, associates and senior government lawyers at top firms in Washington DC and across the country, Mason and his team have placed attorneys at more than half of the Amblau 100. And while you might be reading doom and gloom in the legal press, the reality is that many practices are red hot, antitrust, private equity and real estate among others. Plus Zenith Legal has something that no other legal recruiting firm offers a proprietary app that lets you track exactly where you've been submitted and helps Mason's team match you with the right opportunity faster and more precisely. Even in slow markets, Mason has helped attorneys dramatically increase their compensation. Make a call to the bullpen. Mason Calfys will hope you find and negotiate a better deal for your career and future call. Mason today, 202-486-3535. That's 202-486-3535. Mason ball 2 strikes to Vargas, shouts to the belt. He kicks, he goes, the runner goes, swinging to miss, he struck him out. The Nationals win the ball game, they win the series. First major league say for Paxton Shultz, just up today from AAA Rockchester and he closes it down, striking up Miguel Vargas to get the Nationals the 2-1 victory, second consecutive win in ten innings as they take the series here on the south side of Chicago. The National League pitching in this win at the White Sox on Sunday afternoon also was good. Three Nats relievers combined to allow one run, unearned in three innings. Gus Vorland, a perfect bottom of the A. How about Richard Love, ladies? Scoreless bottom of the ninth. Despite giving up a win out single and despite committing a win out throwing year on a pickoff throw, but he generated two big strikeouts and Paxton Shultz, fresh off having just been recalled from AAA Rockchester in a move that was announced on Sunday morning. He in the bottom of the tenth allowed an unearned run in giving up a win out RBI single, but he generated two strikeouts and got the save. Now, we had a lot going on with Nats relievers in terms of transactions on Sunday morning. The Nats also announced having recalled reliever André Grinillo from AAA Rockchester and announced having put reliever Clayton Beater on the 15-day interdless, retroactive, April 23rd due to right forearm soreness. But Vorland, Love Lady and Shultz getting the job done, it feels like it is someone new and different every win now in terms of getting a save for the Nats. In this game, it was Paxton Shultz. Well, get used to it because with Beater out for at least a couple of weeks and it doesn't sound like it's anything terribly serious forearm soreness. He went for an MRI this morning. They did not have the results of that when the game ended when I asked them about it when we got back in there. But I think the feeling was they were just doing that to make sure and that this isn't anything that dramatic, you know, you never know. So we'll find out. But he was for better or worse kind of their closer, at least the right-handed, high leverage guy for the most part. And now with him out of the picture with Cole Henry still coming back from his own relatively minor injury, it's going to be Mix and Match with matchups. You may see Gus Vorland. He came in earlier in this game. You may see CNL Perez against lefties, although in this case, Richard Love Lady was the top lefty pitching late in the game. And then you have Schultz and props to him for coming in. He woke up this morning having just flown in from Scranton where the Rochester Red Wings were playing. He came here ready to do whatever they needed of him. He did not think he'd necessarily be out there to record the first save of his career. It's been too you to get in with me like any role I can go long, one in in whatever, but I'd probably not see him going into this one getting the save. So if he really got anything, I think he just helped me just stay in the moment and be present. He did a job by him, you know, he gave up a single, but I understand the run score, but he didn't put the runner on base. It's the automatic runner. You can live with that. The back to back strikeouts to end the game really big. And what you're going to see, I think from this bullpen is we know what the issues are, of course, but they've kind of bonded together throughout this weird process where there's constantly guys moving in and out. Some of them having success, some of them not having success, some of them going on the IEL, some of them coming off the IEL. They're just basically saying we're all in this thing together. It's given whatever we've gotten. Let's try to get the job done for each other. And I know it hasn't always worked out, but they're muddling it together. And when they do get the job done like they did in this game, it's a nice thing to see. It is the ultimate like misfit bullpen, like we get the deal. We know how these guys are viewed. We know how these guys are performed. But if they can use that to their advantage, more power to them. Like if that can bring them together and create some cohesion and maybe better performance, absolutely go ahead and go that way. So the fact that Peter is injured is that why Brad Lord got the bottom of the 10th on Saturday. We were wondering about that. Or was that still the idea of Lord potentially pitching multiple innings and he's better at multiple innings than say, Peter? I think there was definitely something to the fact that the beater wasn't available. So he had not pitched in five days as it turns out, but he did warm up on Friday night when there was a chance if the Nats had rallied that there would have been a bottom of the night. So they knew that something wasn't 100% with him, but it wasn't so bad that they were going to hold him out of that game if needed. And from what I gather, he didn't feel right after that bullpen session. They obviously did not use him on Saturday. And so they decided to just go ahead and put him on the IL and give him the MRI just to be sure. I think, you know, I didn't get a chance to talk to him because he was off, you know, in the testing done, but Blake, you chair kind of alluded to this pregame as well that when you look back on it, you wonder, okay, was he trying to fight through something maybe for the last few weeks? And I know his command was off at times. He had some success. I mean, compared to the others, the bullpeners doing pretty well. A lot of walks though. Is it possible that he wasn't 100% at some point and tried to pitch through it and then finally got to a point and said, "Someone's not right here. I need to speak up about it." And so hopefully it's nothing serious and that's a good sign on his part that he did speak up. But yeah, it does seem like if he's fully available, he probably pitches in that safe situation on Saturday. And then maybe you hold Lord for one more inning in case He does need to be the long
man if the game keeps going further in the extra ratings. The Nats now have three relievers on injured lists. A beater and Cole Henry are on the 15 day injured list and Ken Waldenchuk is on the 60 day injured list and he's done for the season. It's a remarkable thing and I say this while knocking on wood, zero position players are on injured list for the Nats. The only guys on injured lists are pitchers. We do have, of course, starting pitcher Josiah Gray on the 60 day I.L. but with the bullpen, we want to get banged up here a little bit with beater and Henry out and Waldenchuk done for the season and we've kind of wondered about this of, okay, the bullpen has had its problems. If these guys start getting hurt, do things get even worse? Do they maybe get better? Maybe some of the new arms are better. Maybe you do get the improvement from within. But beater, Henry, Waldenchuk, those are the three guys who just a few weeks ago were keep parts of this bullpen. Yeah, I think especially in the cases of beater and Henry, we kind of went into the season thinking they might be your top two right-handed arms at the back end and now you're without either them. Henry is down in West Palm Beach getting ready to throw again or he has been throwing again. So that's good. He may not be that far off. Obviously beater is going to miss at least two weeks but perhaps that's all it will take and he'll be able to resume throwing soon. I think they're going to miss him. Even if you get somebody else or multiple people filling in in that closer role, I think he was just like one of the few that you kind of felt good about. It certainly has ability to get swings and misses. I think as good as anybody they have down there. So I do think they're going to miss him. I don't know that anybody else that they currently have out there really profiles as a closer. Brad Lord has been affected but he's more of a pitch to contact guy. Gus Varland, Perez, I guess has some closing experience. But beater is the one and Henry if he's on. They're the two guys that you kind of just look at from a pure stuff standpoint and say, these guys could be bigly closer if they can grow into the role, if they can throw strikes, all those other things. I'm not sure they really have somebody at the moment who fits that description even if they're forced into that role. Here's the delivery. So we have a long drive left center field, young going back to the warning track at the wall. He leaps. He caught it. He slams into the wall and he holds on. And then he's got a two-one-ten winning win at the White Sox on Sunday afternoon. Despite the offense having a rough game, just two runs, just four hits, which were a home run at double and two singles, just one walk. Oh, for five with runners in scoring position. The White Sox went with an opener in relief pitcher Brian Hudson. He tossed a perfect top of the first. And then the White Sox went with starting pitcher Sean Burke as the bulk man, a Burke guy who was taken by the White Sox in the third round of the 2021 draft out of the University of Maryland and Burke in this game did really well. Seven and a third scoreless innings. There was not a lot to this game from a Washington, Nashville's offensive standpoint, but the Nads did break the scoreless tie with two runs in the top of the 10th. The first run came via a one-out RBI sack fly by shortstop C.J. Abrams. And then Jose Tenna delivered a pinch two out solo homer to right field for a two-nothing Nads lead. So more pinch hitting magic for the Nads manager, Blake butter has been so good and how and when he is deployed, pinch hitters, so you're updated pinch hitting stats for the Nads. Now pinch hitting OPS of seven ninety one. And that is over an MLB high 41 pinch hitting played appearances. So the good OPS is not over some like tiny sample size in comparison to the rest of MLB, but what I thought was so interesting about this and you asked Blake butter about this during his post game session. Butter a pinch hit Tenna for centerfielder Jacob Young, who we know is so good defensively. This is a close game. You're taking Young out of the game. Butter was playing this in an aggressive manner, wanted the beginning or at least a bigger inning. Didn't exactly plan for Tana at home run, but thought he'd give us a good at bat there. And man did the decision work out with Tana homering. Look, I'm probably not the only one who was thinking this in the moment, but I kind of thought like is this necessary? They had just taken the lead. One nothing. If you're if it's still tied, you're still trailing. If there's runners on base and you're trying to get him home, I could understand it. But you're already up one nothing. Do you really want to take out your gold glove caliber centerfielder, a guy who made a leaping catch at the wall a little bit earlier in this game? Do you want to take him out for a pinch hit appearance by Jose Tana with two outs and nobody on in the 10th inning? And Beatera said, look, I wanted more. We're playing for more than one there, which is why we didn't buy it. Davis to start the inning. I think he'd probably deep down knew one nothing might not be enough and he liked the lefty righty matchup. Now, he didn't know that Tana was going to hit a home run, but he thought he might at least extend the inning and give a chance for somebody else to drive him in. That was Tana's first major league home run since 2024. He's only got four of them in the major leagues overall. This is the guy remember that when they acquired Jorbit, Bebos shortly before opening day, we all just assumed that was the end of the line for Jose Tana because they have the same profile as left handed hitting back up infielders and Bebos was known as a far better defensive player. Well, Tana is still here a month later. He's barely played the field at all. It's been one appearance in left field. Otherwise, he has only been a DH and a pinch hitter. He's actually done pretty well for them. So I'm going to give them credit. I'm going to give him credit for making the most of the situation. It felt like an extraneous guy to have on your team, but he has contributed to them. And this was by far his biggest contribution to date. Yeah, here for this month of April now has an on base percentage of 333. I mean, he doesn't hit for a ton of power. Yes, he did have the home run on Sunday afternoon, but not a lot of power. Like you said, he's not doing much for you in the field, but as a batter in terms of getting on base, he's doing a good job in that regard. And we seem to be making the most of this role where it's part time play. It's coming off the bench, not easy to do as we know, but he's doing well here. And the Nats ended up doing well in this series. And so they get to the off day on Monday. Now the schedule does breathe a little bit. And that's having off day on Monday here, April 27th and having off day of the following Monday, May 4th. Next up for the Nats is a three game series at the New York Mets. You're probable net starting pictures and we emphasize that word probable because we know how things can change via the opener strategy, but game one, Tuesday night at 710 Zach Lettel, game two Wednesday night at 710 Kade Cavali game three Thursday afternoon at one 10 miles. That's Michael is so we probably should assume an opener for Michael is we should assume no opener for Cavali. What about Lettel? Do you think we'll get an opener in game one at the Mets? Yeah, I was just thinking myself the fact that PJ Poole and did not appear in Sunday's game. Obviously they have Monday off. So he's fully rested for that. You know the Mets have guys like one sodo Francisco Lendor some some lefty hitters at the top of their lineup that you might want to match up with. And we know that Lettel has had all kinds of trouble giving up the home run so far this year. So I could absolutely see that one happening. You could have pool and open two out of the three games in theory having him open on Tuesday for Lettel. Then you sit him out Wednesday's game. You have other lefties. You have love lady. You have Perez. If you need to die, you have Mitchell Parker is a third, you know, other lefty out there. We avoid using pool in game two and then have him open for a Michaelis on Thursday. They would make sense. We'll see if they do that as we know they kind of fly by the sea of her pants. They cup of the plan for one day and then figure out the next day after that. But I could see some logic behind doing it. Certainly in Lettel's case, whether it's pitching the first inning, the second inning, the third inning, whatever it is, he is in desperate need of a better outing. And I know the Mets lineup is full of big names, but they're not hitting right now. That team is still struggling big time. Lettel needs to come out and throw quality strikes against them and keep the ball in the yard to salvage what has really been a disappointing first month for him. By the way, I'd to laugh at this. So the biggest story in baseball on Saturday was the Boston Red Sox off a 17 one win at the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday afternoon, hours later, firing manager Alex Quora and five coaches off a blowout win. Quora and five coaches get ousted. Now the Red Sox overall not having a good season, but if you are a Nats fan, how does that not take you back to last July 6th? The Nats were facing the Red Sox and it was on that day, later that day, that we had the pretty surprising firing of Mike Rizzo was president of baseball operations and general manager and manager, Davey Martinez. But these surprising firings are something and I know in the case of the Nats, we've talked about this. That was kind of like a pre-plan thing, like regardless of what happened that day, the firings were going to happen and clearly in the case of the Red Sox, this was a pre-plan thing because the team won 17 one and still fired Quora and five coaches. But I couldn't see that on Saturday and not think back to last July 6th. Maybe this is the new trend. If you don't have spur the moment firings, you have pre-planned well-thought out firings that happen regardless of outcomes of games. Well, I think the key is George Steinbrunner is no longer a round to make those rash decisions and the other owners are maybe a little more sophisticated in their handling, everything that the book.
Red Sox. I mean, the firing was one thing that everything has happened since then and they're handling of it has not come across well at all, but it sounds like in that case the owners are putting the decision squarely on the shoulders of Craig Breslow, their President of baseball operations. I think it has a different kind of unique title, but essentially they're GM, the guy in charge. But yeah, I had the same thought because, as we've discussed, the nationals had decided they were going to fire Mike Rizzo and David Martinez that day. I think it had probably been the works for several days, if not even a week. And there were a handful of people, there weren't many, but there were a handful of people in the organization who were told that morning what was going to happen and had to wait it out through the game knowing that this was coming. And this one is over. Red Sox come to the nation's capital and wind up with a sweep of this three game series. And there was some real fear among them of what would have happened if they had rallied. They had a little bit of the boys were battling one last time in the ninth inning. And they still would have had to do it. There's nothing you can do about that, but it would have made for a very different scene inside that clubhouse when they made the announcement that it did when they had lost to be swept in that series. You know, I do think it's a reminder as much as we want to think that these are always impulsive decisions, there's usually a lot more going into it. It's usually not something just decided that day, but it has been in the works for a while and they're going to get all their ducks in a row before they make the official announcement. But even so, you can say what you want about how the nationals handled it last year. I think the Red Sox are putting on a clink on how not to handle a managerial firing and coaches fired with the way they did this one. But that is the all time record. It has to be for margin of victory for a manager who later that day gets fired. I mean, a 16 run win and you get fired later that day. That's just unbelievable that that's how that ended up going down. All right. We offer shout outs on the Natschat podcast that we have this shout out from Bob and Julia to Mike Druckman on his birthday. And they thank you to Mike and his wife, Andrew for their friendship and their shared devotion to the Nats, Mike and Andrea or such big Nats fans that they have the nationals park seating chart on the wall in their basement. Wow. That is dedication. And I'm sure nationals business operations are a very appreciative of that. I hope they know you walk in and say, Hey, show me section 317 row C seat four. They can just immediately point to it on the on the map and tell you whether it's a good seat or an obstructed view seat or whatever it might be. That's pretty hardcore, but that's impressive and a very happy birthday to you guys. Yeah. The learner, Tannen Baalman, Cohen families are appreciative of that for sure. This installment of Natschat brought to us by Mason Califist, the top legal recruiter in Washington, DC. You can reach them at 2024863535. All nationals radio highlights on Natschat or courtesy of 1067 the fan. You can hit us up on X if you so choose at Nats underscore chat. You can find us on blue sky as well at Natschat podcast from Mark, Sir, I'm Al Goli. We thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on the Natschat podcast. It would become the first nationals picture to finish six innings twice. O to the count. The hesitation like kick of the pitch, driven in the air to center field deep but playable. Jacob Young drifting back, shy of the warning track he'll make the catch. Foster Griffin has tossed six scoreless innings so far.