Nationals Show Signs of Life but Still at Bottom of Baseball's Power Rankings
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Insider for MLB, Will Leitch, just released this week's power ranking and the Washington Nationals still find themselves at No. 28 despite being .500 in their last 10. They are ahead of only the Chicago White Sox and the Colorado Rockies, but the team has found some success lately. In their latest series they split a four-game stretch with the No. 4 Philadelphia Phillies.
The Nationals have struggled this season to say the least, and the organization sold off a lot of the team at the trade deadline, but they have found a way to win some games regardless, and a recent win has come at the arm of Cade Cavalli. Cavalli is someone the organization is really excited about, as he has spent years recovering from Tommy John surgery.
One of the biggest struggles for the team has been with their defense this year, so any positive management can get off of the mound they will take.
New Faces of the Pitching Staff
Cavalli is not necessarily a new face to the Nationals starting rotation, but it has been a long time since he has made it to a major league mound. He made his debut back in 2022 and it wasn't until August 6 of this year that he found his way back.
Three years after his debut, he found his first MLB win as a starter against the Phillies, no less. The 27-year-old went seven scoreless innings with five strikeouts as the cherry on top to a 2-0 shutout.
Since the trade deadline, there have been a few different players trying their hand at a heavier workload, and that includes Brad Lord. The 25-year-old made his debut this season back in March and has been primarily coming out of the bullpen until recently. In his last seven outings, five were as a starter. He has gone 1-1 with a 2.45 ERA and struck out 19 after 29 innings of work.
Cade Cavalli went 7 innings strong picking up his 1st MLB win yesterday. 7 hits, 0 ER, 0 BB’s, 5 K’s. pic.twitter.com/ooAfuuo9ux
— Nationals Advisory (@nats_advisory) August 17, 2025
The Nationals sit second-to-last in nearly every pitching category this year, trailing only the Rockies and their pitching staff, which has become a laughing stock of the internet this season. Management is looking to address this issue aggressively the rest of the season and into the offseason.
They need to complement the offense that C.J. Abrams and James Wood have been able to produce. If they can do that they will rank much better than 28th come this time next year.
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Maddy Dickens resides in Loveland, Colorado. She grew up with two older brothers, where their lives revolved around sports. She earned a master's degree in business management from Tarleton State University while simultaneously playing basketball and competing in rodeo at the collegiate level. She successfully parlayed a reserve national championship into a professional rodeo career and now stays involved in upper-level athletics by writing for On SI on several different MLB teams' pages, along with some NCAA sites.