This story was excerpted from Jessica Camerato’s Nationals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
After the first month, the Nats are taking it day by day. The calendar has turned to May, with the first full month of the 2026 season behind us and a clean slate of 31 days ahead.
There are awards handed out for top performances, and an abundance of statistics, sortable by month, to identify league leaders (and, on the flip side, those at the bottom of the rankings).
But in a baseball schedule, the Nationals are taking 162 games one day at a time.
“It’s hard for me to look that far forward,” manager Blake Butera said of a month-by-month perspective. “It's just going off how we're playing, what the days are looking like, how late we got in last night, stuff like that.
“It's really hard to say, ‘Two weeks from now, we’re going to make sure we cover this, this and this.’ And then all of a sudden, the two weeks leading up to that, guys were crushed or whatever it might be, and then we're changing on the go.
“So a lot of it's more day-to-day, maybe series-to-series, but definitely not past that.”
The Nationals played eight complete series in April against the Dodgers, Cardinals, Brewers, Pirates, Giants, Braves, White Sox and Mets. They went 12-15 in the month after beginning the season 3-2 in March. They ranked fourth in the NL in runs scored (142), 10th in OPS (.704) and last in ERA (5.27).
To Butera’s point of how much can change in a month, the Nats entered Saturday having the lowest bullpen ERA since April 25 (3-0, 1.14).
Butera implemented 23 different lineups in 27 games in April. The most common lineup was used only three times, and the Nats used two lineups twice. The team also made a bevy of roster moves to keep the bullpen fresh amid a stretch of 17 consecutive games from April 13-26.
“It's just really hard to be looking too far ahead when there's just so much going on in the day-to-day,” said Butera. “I really try not to look past anything in the moment just because there's so many opportunities for our guys to get better, or for myself to get better. I think when you're planning so far ahead, sometimes you miss some things.”
CJ Abrams, who led the Nationals in April with a .308 batting average and .615 slugging percentage, prefers to view his production from a zoomed-in lens.
“I look mostly at what I need to get better at plate approach-wise, or how they're attacking me and what I need to do to adjust,” Abrams said. “You might have 17 [games] in a row. You’ve got to go day by day to make sure you do what you need to do to get ready. If the body's feeling a little sore, you’ve got to do a little extra to get it ready. Just day by day to get the task done.”
Butera can relate to Abrams’ approach from his playing days. He was an infielder in the Rays' system from 2015-16.
“I was just trying to make sure I still have a job the next day,” Butera recounted with a laugh. “Like, ‘Please get a hit today.’”
Entering his second full month as a Major League manager, Butera summed up what he hopes to see from the Nationals moving forward in the schedule.
“I think we're making progress,” Butera said. “I think the biggest thing we're going to need to see is consistency still, and that goes into our preparation every day. Like we all know, this is a young team; there's going to be mistakes. But are we learning from our mistakes? Are we continuing to get better and continuing to grow?
“The goal here is to be better in August than we were in April or May.”