TLDR: Washington jumped Aaron Nola early and looked ready to spoil his day — then a gutted, seller-mode Nationals team watched the Phillies answer with six unanswered runs over the final two innings.
Andrew Alvarez (2-3, 3.94 ERA) got the ball for Washington, and Aaron Nola (3-9, 5.55 ERA) tried to stop the bleeding on a season that's gone sideways, with first pitch set for 6:40 PM ET.
Andrew Alvarez
(2-4)·3.72 ERA
Jul 20 @ Rockies
ND
4.1IP
3ER
2K
3BB
74P
08/03 Lineup
Aaron Nola
(4-9)·5.33 ERA
Jul 28 @ Marlins
L
5.2IP
1ER
4K
3BB
93P
08/03 Lineup
The Nationals showed up a day removed from shipping longtime infielder Luis Garcia Jr. to the Yankees, the clearest signal yet that a promising summer had curdled into a sell-off. Andres Chaparro was out of the lineup too, and Washington's bullpen depth chart has been gutted by injuries all year — Poulin, Parker and Lovelady are all done for the season on the 60-day IL. Philadelphia had its own attrition to manage, playing without Rafael Marchan behind the plate and long-term without Johan Rojas and Adolis Garcia in the outfield, but the Phillies came in with real momentum after blanking Baltimore in back-to-back shutouts.
None of that mattered much for the first six innings. Nola got roughed up early exactly like his season-long line suggested he might, and it took a big two-inning surge from the Phillies' bats to turn a deficit into a laugher.
Washington plated all three of its runs in the first two innings and then went quiet, managing nothing across the final seven frames. Philadelphia, meanwhile, sat scoreless into the seventh before erupting for 4 runs and adding 2 more in the eighth to turn a two-run hole into a three-run win. It's the kind of late-game finish that fits Washington's stretch of late — competitive for a while, then unable to finish.
