More than a few mocks have us on Georgia Tech OF Drew Burress at #11. Photo via BA
It’s never too early to do a mock draft. Well, yes of course there is, but what’s the fun in that?
Here’s a smattering of super-early mock drafts and ranks that i’ve seen. I think these have value because they give you an idea of what the industry is hearing about the very top guys, plus we can see who’s highly ranked now but who may drop to the Nats #11 pick range (which has happened with us more than a few times to our great benefit, ahem, Anthony Rendon). These links run from December to the end of April.
For each mock i’ll list the top 5, then (if they go that deep) who they project to #11. I won’t repeat full names past first mention for space.
MLBPipeline’s first mock Dec 2025: Roch Cholowosky, Grady Emerson, Justin Lebron, Drew Burress, Jacob Lombard. Nats at #11 take Liam Peterson, RHP, Florida
Baseball America’s first mock Dec 2025: Cholowsky, Emerson, Lebron, AJ Gracia (a 1B/OF from UVA), Derek Curiel. Nats at #11 take Ace Reese, 3B from Mississippi State.
Bleacher Report first mock Feb 2026: Cholowsky, Emerson, Lebron, Burress, Curiel. Nats take Peterson.
BA Staff Draft 3/23/26: Cholowosky, Lebron, Emerson, Lombard, Van Lackey (fast-rising C from Ga Tech). Nats at #11 take AJ Gracia from UVA.
BA Mock 2.0 4/13/26: Cholowsky, Emerson, Lackey, Lombard, Flora. Nats at #11 get Ace Reese, 3B, Mississippi State. Big bat, projected pro 1B so has to keep hitting. Has been 5-6 in draft ranks in the class, but is a risk taking a non-premium position here. This pick also leaves leBron on the table, which is crazy to have said a month ago.
BA Staff Draft 2.0 4/27/26: Cholowsky , Emerson, Flora, Lackey, Lombard. Nats at #11 get Drew Burress, OF from Georgia Tech. Burress was top 5 early in the cycle and has dropped a bit. Understandable: he’s “only” slashing .360/.484/.611 as of 4/27/26 with more walks than Ks. (sarcasm). In their draft we leave the likes of Curiel, Lebron, and Reese on the table.
BA’s Top 400 Draft ranks 4/29/26; Ranks aren’t the same as mocks, but it is useful to see where BA ranks these players independent of team drafting proclivities. Their top 5: Cholosky, Emerson, Lackey, Flora, Lombard, and #11 on their board is Drew Burress, so that’s relatively consistent with the BA staff draft.
Conclusions: Cholowsky is #1 on every single mock, without fail. Not one pundit has moved him off the top, and his performance so far in the college season has kept him there. The major name flying up the board this spring is Van Lackey, and it seems like he’s going #2 or #3. Nearly everyone has prep phenoms Emerson and Lombard in their top 5 as well. The top arm now seems to be Flora across the board.
Falling out of top-5 contention and now likely in the conversation for the Nats pick at #11 include Burress, Lebron, Gracia, and Curiel primarily. Also throw in there Tyler Bell and Liam Peterson, both college guys who were ranked higher but have had injury issues this year. If Mike Rizzo was still drafting, I would almost bet money on him taking Derek Curiel if he was here, just based on how “famous” he is (he was a 1st round talent out of HS before becoming perhaps the wealthiest NIL player in the country at LSU). But the new crew went prep-heavy in 2025 and may do so again in 2026.
I don’t really see any prep kids right in the 10-12 range on any of these mocks, and our new front office may be looking to go young again. One mock has us taking Eric Booth, but others have him ranked in the 6-10 range and going before he drops to us. If you want to see who the highest ranked Prep kids are by BA, here’s that list. It goes Emerson, Booth, Lombard, relatively big gap, then Spangler (who has a strong commit to Stanford) and a LHP out of florida named Rojas who’ll be 19 at the draft and is a Miami commit. Neither of those seem like Nats guys, not when there’ll be a slew of college players that make sense. But, if they get slot savings at #11 on someone like Rojas who is ranked in the teens, that lets them throw money in later rounds at prep kids who have slipped, which is how we ended up with the likes of Harmon, Sime, James, Fitz-Gerald, Fien, Jones, etc.
Ronny Cruz is having himself a nice April. Photo via Nats IG.
We finally get the last major pundit chiming in on the state of our system’s prospects, on this 24th day of April 2026. Eric Longenhagen and his Fangraphs crew have published their top 41 for the system. They are the last of the major pundits I track (Baseball America, MLBpipeline, Keith Law, Kiley McDaniel) plus more fringe prospect shops (Prospects1500, Prospects361, ProspectsLive, and BaseballProspectus, which hides everything behind a paywall i’m not willing to buy).
With this data, we have a complete set of “pre-2026 season” rankings for the system, and I will now work on my own such ranking. I published a top 125 at the end of last season, which had a few players ranked wildly out of place in retrospect, plus we’ve added at least 14 prospects who will feature in the top 50 or so and have released/traded at least 8-10 others who I ranked at the time, so I’ll work on a re-rank and see where things land. Ranking 125 guys out of a system that has 165 players domestically and another 30-40 in the DSL, 95% of whom won’t ever even get to Florida, may seem like a fools errand, but hey, this is what we do 🙂
Here’s the Fangraphs top 41 for our system, which seems like an odd number but is driven by the total number of our prospects who Longenhagen determines to have a Future Value (FV) of 35+ or more (FV runs on the typical scouting 20-80 scale, and anyone 50 or above is projected to be at least an “Average Everyday Player.” We’re projected to have just five of these players out of this top 41, which may temper your opinion of the system).
Fangraphs
First Name
Last Name
Position
1
Eli
Willits
SS
2
Jarlin
Susana
RHP (Starter)
3
Harry
Ford
C
4
Ronny
Cruz
SS
5
Travis
Sykora
RHP (Starter)
6
Alejandro
Rosario
RHP
7
Landon
Harmon
RHP (Starter)
8
Miguel
Sime Jr.
RHP (Starter)
9
Jackson
Kent
LHP (Starter)
10
Devin
Fitz-Gerald
SS
11
Davian
Garcia
RHP (Starter)
12
Luis
Perales
RHP (Starter)
13
Luke
Dickerson
SS/CF
14
Gavin
Fein
SS
15
Yoel
Tejeda Jr.
RHP (Starter)
16
Nauris
De La Cruz
OF (Corner)
17
Isalas
Suarez
OF (CF)
18
Samil
Serrano
OF (Corner)
19
Alex
Clemmey
LHP (Starter)
20
Abimelec
Ortiz
1B/OF (Corner)
21
Ethan
Petry
1B/OF (Corner)
22
Riley
Cornelio
RHP (Starter)
23
Sir Jamison
Jones
C
24
Caleb
Lomavita
C
25
Seaver
King
SS
26
Coy
James
SS
27
Marconi
German
SS
28
Eriq
Swan
RHP (Starter)
29
Christian
Franklin
OF (CF)
30
Yeremy
Cabrera
OF (corner)
31
R.J.
Sales
RHP (Starter)
32
Josh
Randall
RHP (Starter)
33
Andry
Lara
RHP (Starter)
34
Jorgelys
Mota
SS
35
Angel
Ramirez
OF (Corner)
36
Kevin
Bazzell
C
37
Angel
Feliz
SS/3B
38
Brayan
Cortesia
SS
39
Daniel
Hernandez
C
40
Jose
Feliz
RHP (Starter)
41
Sam
Brown
OF (Corner)
Phew. There’s a lot to talk about here. I’d say at least a third of these players are ranked completely at odds with the entire rest of the industry. So, how did we get here, and what does it mean? Well, Longenhagen’s FV driven rankings is almost entirely about Ceiling, so you’re going to see teenagers who are performing ranked well higher in his methodology than you might see elsewhere, where pundits take a more balanced floor/ceiling/age approach. I’ll call out the outliers as we go.
1-2-3 Willits-Susana-Ford is mostly unassailable. You can quibble about not having Sykora higher, but basically every other shop has the exact same top 5 right now (these 3 plus Sykora and Fein).
Ronny Cruz at #4. that’s crazy high; most others have him in the mid 20s if at all. Prophetic? he’s already been promoted to High-A at age 19 and showed up there and hit 2 more homers in his first three games, likely pushing Angel Feliz off Short for now.
Rosario at #6 is also well above where anyone else has him, and I really don’t get this ranking. He didn’t pitch in 2023 after getting drafted. Sure, he looked awesome in his 2024 pro debut as he should have; he was a 3-year starter in Miami’s rotation pitching in A-ball. The problem is this: he missed all of 2025 with injury, gets traded, and THEN gets Tommy John. So he’ll miss all of 2026 and may not be ready for 2027. How is that possibly the 6th best prospect in our system? He’s going to be Rule-5 eligible this coming December with a grand total of 88 pro innings!
He’s got Sime way higher than others, but from what we’ve seen so far in Fredericksburg this may be warranted (23 Ks in 11 innings). Sime sits right behind Harmon, who has also come out of the gate shining for F-burg.
Jackson Kent at #9. Ok, so I like Kent, and I think his numbers aren’t flattering his capabilities so far, but top 10 in the system? For a command and control lefty? Seems high.
He’s clearly high man on Davian Garcia at #11, who surprisingly made the AA rotation to start 2026 after barely pitching in Wilmington. Maybe there’s something to Longenhagen’s madness.
He loves Sir Jamison Jones … who has been kind of forgotten with the Willits draft, all the other HS guys pouring in, and all the trade acquisitions. But he’s holding down the fort as starting Catcher in Low-A with all these other teenagers, which must make for a fun time on the bus rides.
He’s got two 2026 IFA signings in his top 20 (Suarez and Serrano). Hard to pass judgement here, other than to say that Longenhagen is probably the most plugged-in guy to the DR scene.
We’ve talked about nothing but elevated prospects so far. Well, for all the guys above who are super high, there had to be guys who got knocked down.
Gavin Fein; Top 5 on every other board and as high as #2 on Keith Law’s board … is #14 here. Interesting. He struggled in his pro debut last year, got traded, then immediately got hurt for us, with little idea of how bad it is. We know he had off-season surgery on a bone spur, which can explain his pro debut crummy numbers; is this a follow-on injury? Nobody knows.
Alex Clemmey: What the heck is he doing at #18? Ok, so no he can’t find the plate right now, but he’s a 20yr old in AA for the second year in a row. If he was in High-A right now with a 2.47 ERA like he had last year, he’d likely be top 5. You can’t punish a guy for punching way above his weight class and not putting up sub 2.00 numbers.
He’s a bit low on Ethan Petry, likely thinking he’s a 1B-limited bat. Fair enough. He’ll hit until he doesn’t. There’s nobody blocking his path in AA in the “1B-corner OF” realm from a top-end prospect perspective with a MLFA, a Rule-5 draftee, and a minor trade acquisition starting at 1B, LF, and DH respectively.
Here’s where things get weird: Seaver King is at #25. Ok, that just seems ridiculous. Even if you thought he was over rated via his 2025 season … we’re still talking about a 1st round pick who is a starting SS in AA with solid numbers.
Angel Feliz is way down at #37, nearly out of his rankings, despite mostly being an upper teen in other places. I wonder what Eric sees here.
Ranking to 41 should capture every name one could think of … but there’s some curious omissions here:
Yohandy Morales: totally missing. Which we’re starting to see more and more of, as some believe he may be in the Andrew Pinckney camp of stalled AAA players who couldn’t even turn themselves into 4-A taxi squad guys.
Sam Peterson; completely missing as well, and a bit more shocking. This is a guy who was top 10 in other lists, a true CF with power and speed. Not sure what we’re missing here.
No love for our POTY Glasser, but no surprise either.
Previous Bonus babies like Hurtado and Vaquero have dropped out.
Shockingly, no Elijah Green. (kidding).
Conclusion: Interesting list here. It made me question some of the spots i’ve got players ranked at in my current top 100 and something draft rankings spreadsheet. I may have to go back to the drawing board.
Do you know who this is? He’s our most effective reliever so far in 2026, and I’d guess you couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, even as an ardent Nats fan. its PJ Poulin. Photo via MLB.
When the team chose to go to war for the 2026 Opening day with a bullpen that featured
2 trade acquisitions with negligible MLB service time (Beeter, Granillo)
… one could probably have been a little concerned about how they’d fare.
Well, 3 weeks in, we have our answer. They’ve already made use of every other reliever on the 40-man at some point (Rutledge, Ribalta, and Fernandez … yet another Waiver claim) plus have made use of two starters (Parker and Alvarez) to eat innings with varying success.
As Mark Zuckerman pointed out, with Fernandez’s ridiculously awful outing last night (where he gave up 2 hits, 2 walks, threw a pitch to the backstop, and bounced so many balls in the dirt that his catcher Millas seemed completely fed up when one of them caught him flush in the hand), the team has now used 21 pitchers already, including one mop-up inning from outfielder Joey Weimer.
21 pitchers. That’s hard to do when you only have 25 arms on the entire 40-man roster, and four of them are on the 60-day DL.
Clearly, this isn’t sustainable. But, I’m not entirely sure where they go from here. It’s one thing when you build a bullpen as Rizzo did so frequently in the past, from a combination of holdovers, veteran FAs, and call-ups. At least there you weren’t rolling the dice with 75% of the pen. But with so many trash-heap players, who other teams didn’t even think were worthy of keeping a 40-man spot, let alone a 26-man active roster spot, this was always going to be a recipe for disaster.
There’s zero 40-man help remaining in Rochester; the only two guys they haven’t called up are starters Perales and Cornelio … who aren’t exactly locks to be able to come in and pitch effectively in relief after being on longer rest. There’s a couple more MLFAs there with MLB time who aren’t pitching half bad (Yean and Gott), but the rest of the AAA bullpen isn’t exactly inspiring confidence either.
Parker reacclimating himself with the buses in AAA. Photo via WP
With the staggered starts now in place for MLB, AAA, and then the rest of the full-season minor leagues, we no longer get the massive data dump of roster releases like in year’s past. We get MLB, then AAA, then the rest. So, I’ve kind of held onto this post for a bit. We also had to wait for all the leagues to get totally through one rotation so I could write this reaction piece.
Here’s some reactions to the five Full-season roster announcements. I’m primarily focusing on the starting rotations, and just for fun i’m pulling in my 2026 Rotation predictions piece written last October to talk about just how far off I was. I’ll throw in some commentary on each rotation, and I’m also adding in commentary on some notable position player assignments.
MLB predicted for 2026: Gore, Grey, Cavalli, a Free Agent, Alvarez
MLB Actual 2026: Cavalli, Mikolas, Irvin, Griffen, Littell
Rotation Thoughts: Well, that didn’t go how I thought it would last fall.
I thought the team would hold onto Gore through the 2026 trade deadline and flip him then (wrong: they found a trade partner willing to part with some top-end prospects)
I thought Grey would be healthy (nope: flexor strain, on top of an entire year lost to TJ. not good)
I thought Alvarez’ September would earn him a spot as the sole lefty worthy of the rotation (nope: by all accounts reading the tea leaves from sping training coverage this team never really considered him, or Parker, for the 5th starter spot.
I figured we’d sign just one FA, not three.
And I certainly didn’t think Irvin would earn a spot after his awful 2025.
Lots of “wrong” in there.
Losing Grey was a bummer; Flexor Strain often turns into more. I know he’s not an Ace in this league, but he has promise, and would be a solid 4th starter on a good team. Unfortunately, we’re not a good team, so he was our opening day starter two years ago. Lets all just hold our collective breath and hope these three veteran FAs pitch well enough to net talent at the trade deadline.
In my prediction piece, I thought the team would push all three of Parker, Irvin, and Lord to the bullpen. Lord’s relief splits were so much better than his starter splits that it made too much sense, while the others could hopefully morph into better starters. Instead, the team sent Parker down, along with (initially) four other 40-man members.
Other Roster thoughts: MLB Bullpen, Roster reactions: I already posted on this topic around Opening day. TL/DR: the bullpen is a collection of waiver claims and MLFAs nobody’s heard off and the team sent down or cut loose prospects instead of playing them at the MLB level. And, through the first week we’re not exactly seeing a murder’s row of relivers coming out of the pen. After a promising opening series, the bullpen has looked worse than awful, and it may be a long season of up-and-down options/call-ups from the AAA core.
AAA predicted for 2026: Lao, Ogasawara, Cornelio, Bennett, veteran MLFA
Rotation thoughts: We thought we had a clean set of 40-man starters set to go in AAA when the opening day MLB rosters were announced, but then the team DFA’d Linan and has had to scramble in the opening weeks of the season to find a 5th starter. The first turn through was a brief stint from former 40-man member Lara, but the real candidate seems to be MLFA signee Champlain, who’s basically always been a starter. This is an experienced, expectations-heavy crew; Parker hasn’t been in AAA since late 2023 and (for me) should be in the MLB bullpen. Same with Alvarez: not sure what he has to prove in AAA after a stellar 2025 (his first two starts in 2026 confirm that so far). Cornelio more than earned his spot on this roster with his meteoric rise in 2025; should be interesting to see if he sticks. My off-season predictions were understandably shredded when the team released Lao (to go to Japan) and traded Bennett (straight up for Perales). Ogasawara got pushed down with so many 40-man players pouring into AA to be the richest guy in the Eastern league.
Other roster thoughts: the team, by virtue of sending down so many 1B/OF types, now has a massive logjam of players in AAA who need playing time. AAA now has Ortiz, Chapparo, Hassell, Crews, and Franklin, all of whom are on the 40-man and aren’t in AAA for their health. On top of that you have well regarded OF prospects Pinckney and Glasser with little room to play, and then so many 1B types has pushed Morales to 3B … that’s like 7 guys for 5 spots night in and night out. At least they alleviated the pressure a little bit by releasing Mervis … but a 40-man guy is now sitting regularly in AAA. So far, it seems like Pinckney is the odd-man out, with the more flexible Glasser playing mostly 2B. Pinckney may be another sign of something I alluded to previously; he was clearly a favorite of the previous front office, getting spring training NRIs out of nowhere despite being basically less-than 4A talent.
The Bullpen features basically three 40-man guys on their last chance (Rutledge, Ribalta, Fernandez). If these guys couldn’t beat out the any one of the waiver claims currently in MLB, that really is an indictment of where they are. They’re joined by four 2026 MLFAs (one step above a waiver claim) in Yean, Gott, Penrod, and Montes de Oca (already hurt). There’s three former starters in the pen (Lara, Shuman, Tolman), so it should be interesting to see who gets the 5th starter spot long term once Eder got DFA’d and traded for basically nothing (ok, they got “cash”). Technically it looked like Lara got the start when they first needed a 5th starter, but i’m guessing it may actually be Chander Champlain, an end of spring training MLFA who pitched to a 7.84 ERA last year as a AAA starter in the PCL. Could be an interesting year of churn in AAA with the new regime so freely grabbing guys off the MLFA/waiver wire.
AA predicted: Rotation: Kent, Clemmey, Choi, Sthele, Atencio
AA Acutal: Clemmey, Garcia, Luckham, Ogasawawara, Swan
AA D/L rotation: Susana, Sykora, Stuart, Rosario, Kent.
Rotation thoughts: Gee, kinda wish our AA rotation was our DL list and not who we’re actually throwing out there. That’s two top-5 prospects, a near top-10, and two current/former mid teen prospects.
Happy to see both Swan and Garcia moved up. Where is Kent?? I thought he was a key member of this rotation but he’s nowhere to be found to start the season (answer: he’s on the DL, put there after the season started, though apparently not yet onto Milb.com’s register). Luckham and Ogasawara were pushed down to AA thanks to too many 40-man guys coming down from MLB, and that ended up impacting a couple arms here: I initially predicted Choi to be here but he was a MLFA after last season … and remains a MLFA. Same with Atencio; he elected MLFA as well and is out of the system (not sure how I screwed that up). Nonetheless, AA a major prospect and two promising arms to watch. I’ll have to time it right in the rotation when Harrisburg comes to visit Richmond so I can see one of the better prospects throw.
Other roster thoughts: the AA non-pitching roster has a lot of holdovers from the end of 2025, and a lot of down-ballot but still important prospect depth. Lomavita’s pathway to the majors has been severely impacted with the Ford acquisition; how will he react? Is Seaver King mid-2025 version of AFL-version? Is Wallace a top 10 prospect or a mid-30s prospect? Is Sam Peterson the real deal? Lots of fun questions for this roster. The day before this writing Made broke his leg (or something similarly bad) and went straight to the 60-day DL, opening up probably the last chance for DC-native Cortland Lawson to get a chance.
The bullpen, like AAA’s, features a growing collection of MLFAs and rule5 guys, including a few signed on the eve of the season and newly introduced to Nats fans when the rosters were revealed and we were like, “Uh, who is that guy?” Gaston? Van Scoyoc? Tebrake? Linarez?
Rotation thoughts: From predictions, Garcia made AA, Linan got flipped, and Sales started the year on the 60-day DL, so that opened up some spots. Polanco seems like he’s the LR/SS, and Sullivan got promoted up a level from where I thought he’d be last fall. It’s great to see Tejeda keeping a spot and not getting pushed to the bullpen. It should be good to see what Maddox can do; he didn’t really pitch last year. Lastly, we have a guy in Bruni who got the opening day start who was not only just a reliever last year, but struggled. I wonder if he sticks in the rotation, or if he’s actually really in the rotation, or if someone else (Polanco?) was supposed to go opening day and got hurt last minute.
Interestingly, when i shook out all the rosters on opening day, there were half a dozen names missing who I figured were headed for release … instead, a big chunk of them were added to Wilmington a few days later and are on the DL to start. Biven, Arguellas, Collins, Sthele, Tepper, and Dugas are all in that same category … wouldn’t have been surprised to see any of them released, but instead they’re on the High-A DL.
Other roster thoughts: There were a couple of kind of surprising roster assignments when the High-A roster was announced. I’ll kind of go through them one by one:
Hunter Hines made this team. Hines was a negligible bonus senior draftee in 2025 but not only made a full season squad but made High-A right out of the gate. Bravo there.
Devin Fitz-Gerald straight to High-A; this was one way to fix the log-jam of high-end SS prospects in Low-A; send one of them up. Looks like he’ll move to 2B for Feliz.
Also in High-A is Angel Feliz, as we suspected. Feliz likely splits time with Jorgelys Mota at 3B/DH if i’m reading the roster right.
I wonder if Elijah Green is there to play, or for social promotion. We’ll soon see. He got the early starts in Center, and picked right up where he left off (4 ks in first 8 ABs). It got even worse: he had a 5-k game the day before this drops, giving him 11 Ks in his first 16 ABs. He’s only 22, so High-A isn’t a reach, but with a new regime not wedded to keeping mistakes of the past, one has to wonder if/when Green gets released.
Marcus Brown popped up out of nowhere 2 days in; he wasn’t on the social media roster releases then suddenly was subbed into a game 2 games in.
The Bullpen is super heavy on MLFAs and rule5 minor league phase guys: 6 of the 12 guys. I don’t think this Front Office was impressed with what they saw down on the farm in terms of arms. However its safe to say
Rotation thoughts: My 2025 predictions were awful. Sullivan in High-A, Agostini and Farias were released, and Feliz is in XST. I was sort of surprised to see both our high-end bonus picks from 2025 (Harmon and Sime) here to start; the prior regime would have absolutely started them in XST and FCL. so, bravo to see them thrown to the wolves.
The first turn through the rotation looked like a ton of “tandem starting,” where two (or in some cases three) guys each go 3 innings/50 pitches. We’ll see how this shakes out; I’d guess the leaders in the clubhouse are Portorreal, Sime, Harmon, Johnson, and Lyon. But we’ll see.
Other roster thoughts: Well, if you’ve got half a dozen SS prospects who all need playing time, you do what Low-A is doing with them. Signed as SS but playing elsewhere early on includes Ronny Cruz (2B), Luke Dickerson (3b), Coy James (LF), and Gavin Fein (RF). Trade Acquisition SS Ramirez hurting for time early on. A good problem to have: good SS can move around.
Fredericksburg is suuuuper young. Half the lineup and two of the starting pitchers are teenagers.
Who’s still in XST or missing?
Per the big board, which has been a bit challenging to keep up with this spring. there’s just a few names still hanging in XST purgatory.
Jackson Ross, 1B 9th rounder from High-A last year.
Brenner Cox, OF 4th rounder; career .177 BA who got squeezed out of the A rosters and may be done.
Juan Abreu, a middle reliver from Low-A last year who’s without an assignment so far.
5-6 IFAs who clearly are headed to the DSL eventually, but there’s so many players listed there right now they’d overflow the XLS. I’d imagine we’re going to see at least 20 cuts from the DSL roster in the coming weeks.
One of these random files I have maintained since 2005 is a history of our Opening days. Now that we’ve had both our opening day on the road and our 2026 home Opener, here’s that data updated for 2026.
Home Opener Attendance and Weather through the years
The weather for 2026’s home opener was solid: 62 and partly cloudy is a heck of a lot better t han it has been in the past. 2011? 41, overcast, windy. 2022 a 4+ hour delay, 52 and rainy.
I think the best weather we ever had for a home opener may have been the infamous Philly invasion: 1pm 80-degree and sunny day. Too bad it was ruined by so many South Jersey bros who had been drinking for 3 hours by the time they got to the stadium.
2017: 42,744 (1:05 monday game, 66 and cloudy, slight wind)
2016: 41,650 (4:05 thursday game, 60 and 1.5hr rain delay)
2015: 42,295 (4:05 monday game, 75 and gorgeous)
2014: 42,834 (1:05 friday game, 50s and overcast)
2013: 45,274 (1:05 monday game, 60 and beautiful)
2012: 40,907 (1:05 thursday game 56, partly cloudy)
2011: 39,055 (1:05 thursday game, 41 degrees and overcast)
2010: 41,290 (1pm game monday, beautiful weather 80s and sunny): This was Phillies Invasaion
2009: 40,386 (3pm game on a monday, chilly 53degr and overcast).
2008: 39,389 (season and stadium opener), 8pm sunday night, Braves, nat’l tv clear but cold.
2007: 40,389 (in rfk, 1pm game vs Florida, 72 degrees
2006: 40,516 (in rfk, tuesday day game vs Mets, 72 degr and sunny)
2005: 45,596 (in rfk, debut of entire franchise, 62 degr and clear, evening game).
Home opener Results and Box Scores
The Nats are just 6-16 all time through 2026 in their home openers, a pretty interesting stat given that for most of the 2010s they were one of the best teams in the sport.
