Bullpen Steps up & Hangs on

Nats Chat

Mark Zuckerman & Al Galdi

Baseball, Sports

4.9 • 573 Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Nats bullpen inherited a lead and held on for good in Tuesday night's 5-4 win over the Pirates. Mark (From Pittsburgh) & Al begin with CJ Abrams, who continued his recent surge with a solo homer and two other hits. (08:00) James Wood drew pair of walks out of the leadoff spot, but did strike out three times. Brady House came through with a single and a double in the victory. (12:45) The offense is averaging 5.8 runs per game through 17 games. (14:30) Miles Mikolas took over for the Opener PJ Poulin and lasted for three plus innings. Mikolas' ERA thus far is an astounding 11.49 in four appearances. (19:00) Mitchell Parker had an excellent outing just hours after being activated to the Washington roster. Parker tossed two shutout innings and struck out five Pirates in the process. (26:30) The Nationals are 8-9 and will try and get to .500 on Wednesday evening. Jake Irvin will take the mound in Pittsburgh.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Walter's Sports Bar is a great place for the family to grab a bite to eat before going into the ballpark.
0:06.0	$5 kids meals from 4 to 7 p.m. with the purchase of an adult meal.
0:10.7	Walters is located across the street from Nationals Park.
0:16.8	Here's Keller's pitch.
0:18.0	So we had a line drive into center field.
0:20.4	That'll fall for a hit in front of Cruz and the Nationals lead at 3-0. House will score. Up to second and holding his Lion. C.J. Abrams now second in the major leagues by himself with 18 RBIs. The Nationals have jumped on Keller. Five batters in to lead at 3-0. Now to set the pitch. Slider got him swinging. Three
0:39.2	sliders in a row and down goes Lau. Nice work by Parker back-to-back strikeouts out of
0:44.8	the bullpen. Ready for a one-two pitch to York. Here it comes. Swinging a fly ball
0:49.7	right side into foul ground is Curtis Mead. He's under it. He's got room. He makes the catch.
0:55.0	The ball game is over. And the nationals of even this series with a 5-4 win over the Pirates.
0:59.9	Bullpen was huge. I mean, you look at what was the last four innings, five innings were
1:03.4	scoreless. Just couldn't be happier with every guy come out of the bullpen ready to go.
1:08.6	They came out of the bullpen ready to roll. Like, they're just a different look in those guys' eyes. And welcome to Natch Chan, along with Washington National National National Journal.com. I'm Al-Galdi host of the Al-Galdi podcast. Mark is at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. One-run games and MLB are a funny thing, right? A team's record in one-run games tends to fluctuate
1:28.3	from season to season so much of how a team does. And one-run games, especially with the current
1:33.0	automatic runner rule and extra inning games, it can be based on luck. But we know that a good
1:37.3	bullpen certainly can help in how a team does and one-run games. And while the Nats do not
1:42.5	have a good bullpen, they on Tuesday evening did get some good
1:46.2	bullpen work, a 5-4 win at the Pittsburgh Pirates on Tuesday evening in game two of a four-game
1:52.2	series.
1:52.7	So this was a game for which the start was delayed for 18 minutes due to rain.
1:56.7	But the Nats have not to their first one-run win in MLB's 2026 regular season, in which the Nats now are 8 and 9, including 1 and 3 in one-run games.
2:07.7	More good offense by the Nats, but some clutch relief pitching to Mark, this was a nice win by the Nats on Tuesday evening.
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