September 21, 2026
September 21, 2026
Washington Nationals’ 2025 Season: A Rebuild Derailed
The Washington Nationals’ 2025 season promised progress. It delivered rupture instead. Dave Martinez and Mike Rizzo had steered the organization since its championship run in 2019. Both were fired on the same July afternoon. Washington finished 66-96, dead last in the National League East and 30 games behind the division-winning Philadelphia Phillies. Home losses piled up nearly as fast as road ones, a 32-49 mark at Nationals Park that never let a hopeful crowd settle in. The Nationals’ 2025 season had flashes worth remembering, particularly from a young core still finding its footing. But the year will be defined by the day ownership decided the rebuild needed new hands at the wheel.
Two firings in one day reshaped the organization’s direction for years to come. Washington entered July with a 37-53 record. Ownership decided the losing had gone on long enough to spare the men who had built the roster.
Eight years earlier, Martinez had guided Washington to the highest moment in franchise history. He closed out the 2019 World Series with a championship parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. That memory had worn thin after a decade of losing seasons. He lost his job on July 6, 2025. The Nationals had not posted a winning record since that title, and patience for another rebuilding summer had run out at the ownership level. Miguel Cairo took over on an interim basis. He steadied a clubhouse that had grown weary of losing without much sense of when it would end.
Rizzo had shaped nearly every era of the Nationals since 2006. He built the early rebuilding drafts, then the championship core, then the rebuild that followed it. His dismissal alongside Martinez sent a clear signal. Ownership viewed the entire front-office philosophy, not just the dugout, as due for an overhaul. Mike DeBartolo, promoted from assistant general manager, stepped into the interim role. He immediately faced a trade deadline that would test his read on which pieces belonged in Washington’s future.
Washington shopped the margins of free agency rather than chasing a headline name. The moves reflected a front office still unsure how fast the rebuild could move. Josh Bell returned on a one-year deal, three years after his first stint in Washington ended in a trade. Michael Soroka signed for one year and nine million dollars, a bet on a pitcher rebuilding his career after a serious injury. Amed Rosario and Jorge López filled out the roster on modest one-year contracts. Trevor Williams signed a two-year extension to anchor the middle of the rotation. The biggest swing came in a trade with the Texas Rangers. Washington sent reliever Robert Garcia away and got back first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, adding a proven bat to a lineup that badly needed one. The franchise also made history by signing Shinnosuke Ogasawara out of Nippon Professional Baseball, its first player ever acquired through the NPB posting system. None of it was enough to escape one more last-place finish. But each piece would matter to how the season, and the trade deadline that followed, actually played out.
James Wood emerged as the one constant a beaten-down roster could point to with real conviction. He played all 157 games, hit .256, launched 31 home runs and drove in 94 runs. Those numbers put him among the more productive young hitters in the league, regardless of his team’s record. CJ Abrams matched him blow for blow. He batted .257 with 19 home runs and 31 stolen bases, playing shortstop with the instincts that made him the closest thing Washington had to a homegrown star. Rookie outfielder Daylen Lile forced his way into the conversation with a .299 average that hinted at more to come. MacKenzie Gore opened the year by striking out 13 Phillies hitters on Opening Day, a franchise record for a season opener, even in a 7-3 loss. Dylan Crews endured a difficult stretch at the plate for long portions of the year. It was a reminder that this era of Nationals baseball is still being built player by player, not arriving all at once.
MacKenzie Gore’s numbers, a 5-15 record paired with a 4.17 ERA and 185 strikeouts, told the story of a staff that missed bats but bled runs. Soroka never found the form Washington had hoped to reclaim. Relievers Colin Poché and Lucas Sims struggled to hold leads the offense had scraped together. Kyle Finnegan worked the ninth inning before his midseason trade and converted 20 saves, giving the bullpen its one dependable closing act. Every rotation needs its pillars to stay upright. This one spent the season absorbing shocks it never fully recovered from.
Late July confirmed what the record already made obvious. Washington was selling, not buying. Finnegan, the closer who had anchored the bullpen for years, was dealt to the Detroit Tigers for future help. Soroka went to the Chicago Cubs just months after signing, a quick reversal on a bet that never paid off. Outfielder Alex Call was sent to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Amed Rosario was flipped to the New York Yankees for pitching prospect Clayton Beeter. DeBartolo’s first deadline as the man in charge leaned entirely toward the future. He cleared out veterans on expiring contracts in favor of young arms and lower-level depth, pieces that would not help in 2025 but might shape whichever era comes next.
Nothing about the summer’s front-office shake-up happened in isolation. It grew directly out of a stretch of baseball bad enough to end two careers in Washington on the same day.
Washington’s low point arrived in late April. A 19-5 home defeat to the New York Mets lingered as a symbol of how lopsided the losing had become. The Nationals won barely more than four of every ten games through the season’s first half. Ownership concluded that neither the dugout nor the front office had a plan capable of reversing course. That conclusion cost Martinez and Rizzo their jobs within hours of each other.
Cairo and DeBartolo did not turn Washington into a contender, and nobody expected them to. What they did manage was a clubhouse that kept competing once the roster had been stripped for parts at the deadline. The team finished 66-96 rather than sliding into total collapse. That stability, modest as it was, gave ownership something to evaluate before deciding who runs the organization going forward.
Six years removed from a championship parade, the Nationals’ 2025 season leaves Washington further from contention than at any point since that title. The organization now holds the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 MLB Draft. It used that pick on 17-year-old shortstop Eli Willits, a bet on upside that will take years to resolve. James Wood and CJ Abrams give the next front office a foundation worth building around. Whoever inherits DeBartolo’s chair, on a permanent basis or otherwise, takes over a roster with more talent than its record suggested. This season was not defined by contention. It was defined by the day the organization decided its championship era had officially ended, and a new one, however uncertain, had to begin. Full season data lives at Baseball-Reference, while MLB.com tracked the standings throughout the year. Coverage of the managerial and front-office firings detailed how the decision came together. The Nathaniel Lowe trade reshaped the infield before the season began, and the No. 1 pick in the 2025 MLB Draft gave the franchise its next building block.
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