Comeback Win
May 24 vs. Miami Marlins
The great Sparky Anderson was famously quoted as saying that every team wins 54 games and every team loses 54 games, so it's what you do with the other 54 that count. Of course, Anderson meant that every team wins 54 games out of 162, which is what makes the Nats run in the middle of the 2019 season so impressive.
Entering play on May 24, the Nats had played to a 19-31 record their first 50 games. Hosting the Marlins in D.C. to start a homestand, they found themselves trailing 8-4 in the middle of the fifth inning against the only team in the NL that had a worse record through that point in the season. But as we've come to learn about this team, you can never count them out.
The bats began to chip away at the lead and, when the home team came to bat in the bottom half of the inning, the deficit had been trimmed to just one run. With two on and one out, Juan Soto stepped to the plate and belted a go-ahead three-run home run. Sean Doolittle put the #CurlyW in the books with his ninth save of the year, and the Nats were off and running.
The team put a #CurlyW in the books the next day. And the day after that. They won three straight games for the first time in 2019. Three straight became five out of six. Then nine out of 11. Then 18 of 25, 26 of 36, 30 of 41 and, eventually, 54 of 80, thanks to the club's first sweep of the Cubs at Wrigley Field in 14 years. The run of 54-26 marked the best 80-game stretch in franchise history, and catapulted the Nats back into the thick of the Postseason conversation.
