WASHINGTON -- Almost 10 years ago, Lucas Giolito walked to the Nationals Park mound on a rainy Tuesday, hope and intrigue trailing him.
Giolito was 21 years old. Most prognosticators regarded him as baseball’s top prospect, a large right-hander who threw in the mid-90s with high-impact offspeed pitches. On June 28, 2016, Giolito made his big league debut for Washington in place of an injured Stephen Strasburg. He pitched four clean innings before the second rain storm of the night shut down his evening.
Friday, Giolito wore yellow cleats in his third start for the Padres since being a late free-agent signing at the end of April. He was among a slew of former Nationals players or coaches back in Nationals Park with new roles and altered lives trying to steer San Diego to atop the National League.
Jackson Merrill’s two-run, tie-breaking homer in the seventh inning of San Diego’s 7-5 win over the Nationals helped make the group’s return a happy one.
“It’s been so long since I hit a ball that hard,” Merrill said.
San Diego manager Craig Stammen spent the first seven seasons of his Major League career in Washington. He went from a flailing starting pitcher to a high-value reliever in that time.
Stammen joked Friday that he would have liked to stick around for the Nationals’ 2019 World Series championship (a torn flexor tendon in 2015 ended his time in Washington). But his work was more foundational.
When Stammen arrived in 2009, Washington lost 103 games. They finished last in the National League East. By the time he left, the Nationals had twice won the division and graduated to annual contenders thanks to a bevy of homegrown talent.
“Watching them win that World Series in 2019 was definitely satisfying knowing that we were part of that process getting them to that point,” Stammen said.
Current Padres third base coach Bob Henley held the same position at one point in Washington. He colloquially became known as Bob “Sendley” for his promotion of aggressive baserunning. Henley also had several other positions in the Majors and Minors in the organization.
San Diego bench coach Randy Knorr worked in the Minor Leagues, as a bench coach, and as a bullpen coach for the Nationals.
Padres hitting coach Steven Souza Jr. spent 2014, his rookie year, in Washington. He closed the season with a diving catch in left-center field that completed Jordan Zimmermann’s no-hitter in Game 162.
They were all back in Washington, together, for the first time on Friday.
Stammen said he never imagined returning to this memory-filled stadium in his current position. He thought back to some of the hard-driving managers during his time in Washington -- Jim Riggleman, Davey Johnson and Matt Williams among them -- and how they influenced his ascension from older reliever to young manager.
“I can hear those voices in the back of my head,” Stammen said before the game. “Especially Davey and the usage of the bullpen. [I try] to do my best in that regard to honor him. A lot of those guys poured a lot into me and allowed me to be in the position that I am in now. Taught me baseball from a very young age when I thought I knew it all but didn’t know anything.”
Stammen said he would second-guess his managers’ bullpen usage while a player. Now, he tries not to second-guess himself because he remembers how he felt when he pitched.
“When I was on the mound, I wanted the manager to leave me in the game at all costs,” Stammen said. “Knowing that, it’s hard for me to sometimes not feel that for the pitcher, them wanting to stay in the game. Sometimes they’re going to get [the next hitter] out, sometimes they’re not. You can’t really predict if the guy coming in is going to be as good as you think he will be, no matter what the matchup is. That's the hard part of it. It’s probably a never-ending, you’re never-going-to-figure-it-out type of thing. But that’s been fun for me because I feel like it’s been a big part of my life.”
Giolito’s Friday struggles made the decision simple. The now 31-year-old allowed four earned runs in 2 2/3 innings, his fastball velocity topping out at 91.8 mph. Almost 65% of his pitches on Friday were offspeed, and just more than half were strikes.
“Just terrible,” Giolito said. “The stuff we’ve been trying to work on is not taking hold at game speed. …It’s not viable to have short outings like this.”
Fernando Tatis Jr. added three hits, though he’s still yet to hit that ever-elusive first homer of 2026. The bullpen allowed just one run across 6 1/3 patched-together innings while surviving a tenuous eighth. Mason Miller recorded four outs for his 17th save.
In the end, Stammen and Co. picked up the win, generating new memories in Washington to replace the old ones.
“I don’t know what it was, you feel like it was another game, but it meant a little more for whatever reason,” Stammen said. “Just fun to be back here.”