Mikolas & Lineup Blowout the Twins

Walters is open until 2 a.m. making it a great spot to watch the NBA playoffs. Walters Sports Bar and Restaurant is located just across the street from Nationals Park. Their basement gray is even with a bag in case of a bump. The pitch is hit in the air to deep right center field. Chasing back boxed in to the warning track near the wall looking up and there it goes. It's into the seats of the second row for Drew Melis, home run number one for the Nationals catcher and the answer at front for the first time three to two. Cyberleast a lot of hard work went into it with four or something with the hitting coaches and yeah I just got some amount of reply that I can handle and I put a good swing on it. Thank you. Now the pitch. House swings and it's in high in the air to center field and deep going way back is boxed into the warning track to the wall and it is gone. Goodbye. A majestic, sorry high fly home run over the center field wall for Brady House. Bang zoom goes Brady House with his fifth home run of the year three RBI's for the night giving him 18. The two one. So we had a high drive right center field. This one is crushed way back and goes. It's a grand slam for CJ Abrams. He tosses the bad away. He'll take a slow try around the bases and the Nationals lead 14 to two. And welcome to Natschat. I'm Al Goldie host of the Al Goldie podcast. I'm joined by Washington Nationals insider Mark Sookerman of Natsjournal.com. Mark is at Nationals Park where each of the first two games of a three game series for the Nats against the Minnesota twins has been a blowout. We had the Nats 11 three loss to the twins on Tuesday evening. But we now have had the Nats 15 to win over the twins on Wednesday evening. The Nats in MLB's 2026 regular season get to 17 and 25 and 13 at home versus 12 and seven on the road. And this game on Wednesday evening was a feel good game in so many ways. First of all, yet the Nats busting out of a four game homerlister out by scoring 15 runs on 14 hits and five walks 10 of the 14 hits were extra base hits including four homers. Also the likes of Brady House and Drew Millis homerd that was good to see. And starting picture Miles Michaelis was legitimately good. There was so much to like from this game. But Mark, I have to say the first of the four homers, the Drew Millis homer we have been talking about how much he has been struggling to see him homer was so good and then to see Brady House do as he did off our recent conversation about House. That was good to see. Like I said, really a few good night at Nationals Park. Yeah, you couldn't have drawn a lot of this stuff up any better. Although here's the one caveat. This I think the most amazing part of it for three innings. They had put up zero literally zero because Bailey Ober retired the first nine batters he faced on 35 pitches. They had nothing going at the plate. And then starting from the fourth inning on they scored every inning and kept adding more and more after each of those. And just a feel good night, as you said, for a lot of guys, I think Millis has got to be high on that list. When he came to bat in the fifth inning, his OPS I happen to look at the scoreboard, which updates it in that moment. It said three ninety nine. It had fallen underneath 400 by the time he crossed the plate a few seconds later after the home run. It had shot up to 480. That was an 81 point home run for the OPS for Drew Millis and boy did he need that one. One of many in this game that you can just say boy, they needed that one. Yeah, the Nats in this game scoreless through three and then a run in the bottom of the fourth two runs in the bottom of the fifth three runs in the bottom of the six two runs in the bottom of the seventh and seven runs in the bottom of the eighth inning. A second consecutive Wednesday evening blowout win for the Nats. We had the 14 to win at the New York Mets of the previous Wednesday night, April 29th. And then we have this 15 to win over the twins at Nashville's park on Wednesday evening. So yeah, the offense, which as we have discussed had cooled off was back to being outstanding in this game. 15 runs, 14 hits, which were four home runs, a triple five doubles in four singles, five walks, seven for 15 with runners in scoring position. Bailey Ober as Mark mentioned got off to good start, but he ultimately allowed five runs in five innings. Nats manager Blake Buterra during his post game press conference talked about some of the adjustments that Nats made in facing Ober. We knew he'd go a lot with the off speed, but he went haters in and then to set himself up for off speed and the rest of the events against our lefties. I think just that first time through didn't expect that and then made our adjustment. Second time through and did much better, but he's a good pitcher. He makes his speeds to something angled, but he else happy that we kept at it. So many Nats players ended up doing well, but in a lot of ways, the guy who leads the way is CJ Abrams, who really is starting to have a special season here in terms of just consistently producing. He has been by far than that's best hitter. James Wood has done well too, but Abrams numbers are appreciably better. And Abrams had a big night in this game on Wednesday night. He is in that starting shortstop in number four batter three for five with a grand slam and RBI double and another double. So eight total bases for Abrams. He in the Nats one run fourth had a one out RBI double to right center field on a one two pitch to tie the game at one and Abrams in the Nats seven run eighth. A one out grand slam to right center field to put the Nats up 14 to the grand slam came off twins reliever and former Nats reliever Louise Garcia, but Abrams now has an OPS of nine sixty and he is playing like the shortstop who he is supposed to be hitting the ball with authority. Like we said, and we've mentioned this. It's you can usually tell what kind of a game it's going to be for them offensively based on what either James Wood or CJ Abrams done it often when both of them are doing it or not doing it. It really tells the whole story and not that there weren't plenty of other contributors in this game, but those two guys got it started. As I said, first nine batters go down in order. Then James Wood rips a single to right in the fourth steel second and a couple batters later Abrams drives him in with the double. So gets the ball rolling gets them finally going. You mentioned that they had picked up on some things that over was doing to them. The first time through tried to make some adjustments clearly that worked for them. And by the time it comes up in the eighth, it's already a blowout at this point. He gets the bat with the bases loaded. Derek Shelton makes a pitching change one of way too many pitching changes in this game. He brings in Garcia and Abrams admitted to us afterwards that he decided I'm going for the Grand Slam. I kind of did until I'm ready. Well, what does he have to lose at this point? You're going to bring in another reliever. I know this guy. Well, I saw him last year. He throws hard. I'm swinging from my shoe tops on this one and boy, did he connect on that? And so it's a nice feeling to be able to do that and really just turn this into a complete game for them offensively and a big night for him personally. Yeah. And you know, you look at where we are. We're 37 games into the 162. We're nearing being a quarter of the way into the regular season here. And you could not have written this any better for C.J. Abrams like he's producing at a consistently high level. The defense, you know, I still think there's work to be done there. But I don't notice him defensively. And said to myself boy, he's having a wretched defensive season. We commented recently about Blake butera talking about Abrams being a leader. Butera said that he's happy to have Abrams here. You know, there still is the potential of him being traded looming over all of this. But like, I think we should appreciate this. Like he's doing exactly what you would want him to do. You could not have written this any better in terms of C.J. Abrams, how he performed for the Nats. He was a bit of a question mark coming into the season off the up and down nature of his last two seasons. He's been terrific so far this year. Yeah. Look, we have seen this from him in the first half before. So that's not new. Now, maybe the consistency. He was a little streaky or I feel like in the past where one month was great and then cool off after that and then get hot. Again, he's pretty much a little bit of a slump in there. But for the most part has sustained this. And what you mentioned about the defense as well. Maybe he's not doing a lot that makes you like say, wow, defensively, but he's also not doing very much that makes you shake your head at him and think back to last year and the second half when it really started to go downhill for him. It felt like every night there was at least one play. He might make the play. He might botch the play. But whatever the case would be, you would be like holding your breath, cringing when the ball was hit to him thinking, is he going to be able to pull this one off or not? We haven't had those kind of moments for the most part this year. So I think there's a consistency there defensively and attention to detail that has definitely stood out. And you know, we got a long way to go, but it will be interesting to see both how the gnats view him come July. But also how the rest of the league views him come July. Does the rest of the league see him as a short stop? Do they see? No, we think we know deep down what he is. He's probably a second basement. Does the rest of the league see a guy who's just good in the first half? Or do they see? This is somebody who could sustain this and be a great player for a full season. I think that more than anything is going to determine what Paul to Boney does. He doesn't have to make a move there. If he gets an offer, he likes he may make it, but he hasn't have to. He's got Abrams for two more years. He can wait till the off season again to look at it. So I'm really curious how he does Does sustaining this or not sustaining it, but also how does that maybe change the gnats of view of him or other teams views of him? Yeah, I mean, I've brought this up. Him doing so well. Does that increase the likelihood of him being traded? Does that decrease the likelihood of him being traded? Is that increasing the possibility of the gnats? There I even say extending CJ Abrams. So a lot of ways that this could go, but he is doing quite well. Three to Tena. Swing a high drive, right center field, deep, Buckston going back to the warning track, looking up and it is gone. Jose Tena puts one into the seats. Five rows deep in right center field for his second of the season. And the nationals just can't stop scoring. They lead 15 to two. The other three gnats homers in this game coming from Brady House, Jose Tena and yes, Drew Millis. So House, he is the gnats starting third baseman and number five batter two for five with a two run homer. And in RBI double, he in the gnats three run six had an RBI double to left field for a four to gnats lead. He in the gnats two run seven, headed two out to run homer to center field for an eight to gnats lead. 425 feet per stat cast. Brady House, of course, had been struggling since his hot start. His OPS now at 691. Jose Tena continues to be effective when he plays. So he is an at starting DH and number six batter two for five with a solo homer and an RBI double. He in the gnats three run six had a first pitch opposite field RBI double to the left center field gap to put the gnats up five to and Tena had the exclamation mark on the gnats offense in this game. He kept the seven run eight with a two out full count solo homer to right center for a 15 to gnats lead. 10, 69 played appearances OPS of eight 32. And yes, Drew Millis getting in on the act. He is an at starting catcher and number eight batter two for four to run homer and a double. He in the two run fifth for the gnats had a first pitch to run homer to right center to give the gnats a three to lead ending what had been a four game homerless drought for the gnats. We had not talked about that. Them hitting homers had dried up. And when we, you know, discussed the cooling off of the offense, that had been a big part of this. The homers which had been coming in bunches had like evaporated and then lo and behold, you get four homers in this game. Will you for gnats journal dot com be writing another glowing piece about Brady House potentially sending him into another tail spin or are you going to be a bit kinder to our friend Brady this time? Yeah, he was getting a mention in my article, but I'm not going to go overboard with him. Partly because there's a lot of other stuff to go into on this one, which is good. You know, hopefully I won't curse anybody else whether it's Abrams or Millis or whoever with with too many kind words for them. You mentioned the homerless streak. The last homer the nationals had hit was CJA Brams go ahead homer in the eighth inning in New York. That was Thursday as we talk right now. It's late Wednesday night. It was six days four games without a homer. This was the fifth game, but six days that they went without hitting a home run. And of course, who would you expect to break that slump but none other than Drew Millis? It's crazy how baseball can work. But that is how baseball can work. And you know, there's even more to the offensive production here. James would got it on the act. He is an at starting right fielder and number one batter two for four with a two run single, another single and a walk. He went two for two on stolen bases. The Nats triple was by Nassim Nunez. He is an at starting second baseman and number nine batter one for four. RBI triple. He and the Nats three run six had a two out RBI triple to right field on a one two pitch for a six two Nats lead. So what an offensive showing by the Nats. And you know, you look at the overall numbers here. Even with the recent dip, you're looking at 198 runs over 37 games, 5.35 runs per game. So you know, a little less than a quarter of the way into the regular season. The Nats are still averaging well above five runs per game. And it's just great to see. It's still very surprising to see this. And the thing about Wednesday evening by far, the extra base hits. I mean, it was incredible. The Nats at one point, it was like one double after another. And that's where all over twins pitching in this game. Yeah, especially their bullpen. Once they got to the twins bullpen, it was like game over from that point on. I think that's the biggest thing. They have hit at times, but not really showing that kind of power here lately. So to get that and power doesn't have to mean home runs. It means gap shots means balls down the line. It means a guy like Nassim Nunez, you get a ball in the gap. That's three bases for him. They had been, I feel like, through most of this homestand, a lot of ground balls, a lot of pop-ups, just not that kind of like solid contact. And even some of the hits had been kind of cheapies. So to hit the ball with authority the way they did and to sustain that over the course of the game, you know, piling on there at the end. You hope it's a good sign. I mean, as we know, nothing's guaranteed. And for all we know Thursday afternoon, they could get shut out in the series finale. But you hope that they picked up some things from this game that are sustainable. And, you know, they're one of the top five teams in baseball and run scored. In spite of the fact that as we've talked about, there are a lot of black holes it feels like in this lineup. They haven't hit with runners in scoring position. At last check, there were 25th in the majors with runners in scoring position, despite being fifth in the league and run scored. So there is potential there for maybe even more. They just have to show they can sustain this stuff, get production. You get production from all parts of your lineup. What a difference it makes. They got up and down the lineup in this game. It's totally different than most nights where as we said, it feels like you're just relying on wood and Abrams to provide most of it. Yeah, there was a relentlessness to the offensive performance in this game. I mean, that three runs, six for the NADS. They begin that half inning with three consecutive doubles. Abrams lead off double house, RBI double, tenor, RBI double. And then you get the two out RBI triple by Nasi Nunez. So just in that half inning, four extra bass hits in the NADS scoring three runs. So the NADS offense in this game was outstanding. But how about our NADS starting pitcher in this 15-2 victory over the twins on Wednesday evening? Miles Michaelis. The NADS for a second consecutive Miles Michaelis turn in the rotation did not use an opener. Michaelis as a starting pitcher actually started the game. We know the deal with Michaelis. He had not been doing well, had been better lately, but still had not had what you would call like a legitimately good outing so far here. Well, there I say he on Wednesday evening was legit good. Two runs, five and a third. And he gave up three hits, which were a home run, a double and a single, three strikeouts, no walks, issued a wild pitch through a lot of strikes, 74 pitches, 52 strikes, 22 balls. So Michaelis in the top of the third, a letter run on an odd double, a check swing opposite field, double by Luke Keishol to no man's land in a right field and a full count RBI single by Matt Walner into right center for a one nothing twins lead, despite Walner having been down at 1.02 and then Michaelis in the top of the fifth, a letter run as he gave up a two out opposite field solo, Homer by Walner to left center on an 0-2 pitch for a two one twins lead. But Miles, Michaelis overall did well. So nice job. Miles, Michaelis, what'd you think about Blake butera bringing Michaelis out to begin the top of the six inning? Were you surprised by that? I wasn't. I figured it was going to be for one batter because it was Byron Buston, the right handed hitter and then with the left. He's coming up. I thought he'd go to Mitchell Parker and that's exactly what he did. Now that said, there's some danger in letting Michaelis face anybody a third time, let alone somebody as good as Byron Buston. So that was a show of confidence in what at that time was still a tight, close game. This was not a blowout at that point. So I did think that was a real show of confidence in Michaelis from the manager and he got him to ground out that capped off a really good game for him. As you said, only three batters reached against him. One of them is that Fluk checks wing double. So it's really only Matt Walner that got him at all. The top six hitters in the lineup did zero against Michaelis. And I feel like he had been building up to something like this. Maybe this was a bit extreme, but his last few starts were better. Last few appearances. Some of them were bulk relief. They were better and he felt better about it. He felt like he had worked on some things mechanically that set him up better. And what he said, he did in this one. I think this was just like the next logical progression in where he'd been going the last few times out there. He decided, you know what, I'm overthinking this. I'm sometimes game planning toward the other hitters weaknesses. I'm just going to try to focus on my strengths. What are my strengths? Keep the ball down in the zone. Try to get him to hit ground balls. And so he went into this with a real concrete game plan of that. Did that and then occasionally surprised him with a fastball up that looked a lot tougher a lot harder than they maybe would have because you're not seeing that much at that level. He's had everything at the knees and down below. And it absolutely worked for him. So this is a confidence booster for him. Does this mean it's season has turned around? I'm not going to go that far yet. Not at all. I do think it's nice to see that I don't think this came out of nowhere. And then he had been building towards it. And it does seem like there have been some real tangible adjustments made both physically and then also a mental approach to say, I'm just going to go back to what I know works for me. Don't worry whether the hitter is good at that or not. I'm going to stick to my strengths. And at least on this night that work beautifully for him. Very much so. And he's moving in the right direction. And of course you like seeing that. Here's the set. The 1-0. Bell swings and grounds went up the middle abyss to the other side of second. He has. He throws on to first. the match. The national's win at 15 to 2. Miles Michael is gets his first win in the national rotation. He induced 12 ground ball outs pitch five and a third to Rific Ennings. Mitchell Parker and Zach can't take it from there but an offensive explosion. Sees the national score. The final 14 runs of the game as they win this game going away to even the series. 15 to 2 the final. The national league pitching in this 15 to win over the twins at the league. The final 14 runs of the league. Richard is turning 75 and instead of a big party, Richard wanted a trip to Canada. He is confident though. He still will make time to listen to Nat's chat every morning on the trip. Well, thank you very much for that, Mary Beth. Happy birthday to you, Richard. I don't know if listening to Nat's chat might give Richard some problems when it comes to getting across the border. But we appreciate Richard being a loyal listener here. Well, we know that we are listened to around the entire globe. I know we have several listeners from Canada on a regular basis. We'll add one more here with Richard. I cannot promise you though that there's going to be an accurate translation to French. I don't know what part of Canada they're going to. Hopefully it's the part where they speak English primarily and so you'll still be able to understand us. But happy birthday to Richard. Absolutely. Appreciate you listening very much. Thank you to everyone for listening to this podcast. We always appreciate that and we also appreciate if you can give the podcast a five-star rating. You can do that on Apple podcasts and on Spotify. The ratings help us out a lot. If you've already rated the podcast, thank you. If you haven't yet done that, please take like the, you know, 10 seconds it takes to do that. Again, that helps us out a good deal. All nationals radio highlights on Nat's chat tour to see of 1067 The Fan for Mark's Secret on Algolini. We thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on the Nat's chat podcast. And the Pitch 2 House. Swagon and Lyon Tours left its down. Fable on, we'll go all the way to the left field corner. Rounding third is Abrams with another run and in the second is Brady House. House with his fifth double and his sixteenth run batted in. A line drive doubled down the line into the left field corner. Back to back two base hits for the nationals to start the battle with his sixth inning. The nationals now have a two-run cushion that's Washington 4 Minnesota 2.