​At last we have reached the final installment of the first half. In the Aaron Boone era, we’ve generally welcomed the All-Star break, and 2026 has followed that same pattern. The Yankees managed a split in their recent four-game set with the Rays, still sitting atop the American League East, at least for now. Yet the last month has brought a flood of injuries, uneven performances, and a lot of rather dull baseball overall. It’s hard to imagine this weekend series against the Washington Nationals will be dull. The young Nats, guided by 34-year-old manager Blake Butler, exude pure entertainment value. Their games are, for a hockey fan’s frame of reference, “high-event”: they haul in plenty of runs and allow a comparable amount to cross the plate. Their record entering this series sits at 48-46—a substantial leap forward from the Dave Martinez era’s lull. Speaking frankly as someone born in D.C., it warms my heart to see the team buzzing with positive energy again. Now, let’s dive into the pitching matchups.
I came across a melodramatic post on social media—not that I spent time on it myself, but it reached me somehow—that drew parallels between the recent performances of the Yankees and the Mets. The post branded Ryan Weathers as a “failed pitching acquisition,” which prompted a weary eye-roll and a quick move on with my day. It’s true: Weathers has shown inconsistency in his first 17 starts, yet his volatile ERA masks the fact that he’s had several dominant outings when he’s locked in. When he gets touched, however, the hits tend to come in bunches. A stat called xwOBAcon, which measures how hard batters are hitting the ball on contact, highlights this reality: Weathers’ current .425 xwOBAcon sits in the bottom tier of the league. At the same time, he has seldom enjoyed strong run support from his offense—the Yankees haven’t plated more than five runs in any start of his since May 18.
What makes that first concern even more pressing is that the Nationals sport a 116 team wRC+ against left-handed pitching, ranking second-best in baseball behind the Cubs (117). Weathers will really have to thread a needle in Washington tonight. Carson Palmquist, a former Rockies draftee who joined Washington after Colorado designated him for assignment in late May, has appeared in four games, two as the nominal starter, totaling just 6.1 innings and yielding five earned on eight hits. In his most recent outing, he started as an opener for Zack Littell, permitting four early runs in an eventual loss to the Pirates. That seems likely to be the Nationals’ plan again on this occasion.
Littell has endured a tough season in Washington, with an ERA just over five. Early-season struggles in April and a rough patch in June have overshadowed what was, in May, a strong run in which he went 5-0 with a 2.35 ERA. Yet his mop-up duty for Palmquist looked solid enough—six quality innings against Pittsburgh in that relief role. The Nationals are likely to lean on that kind of approach again tonight, with Palmquist serving as a possible opener and Littell stepping in for the longer look if needed.