The Nationals beat the Angels 4-3 with an eighth-inning rally

This season, the Nationals have produced one of the top offenses in baseball by slugging their way to wins and wearing down opposing pitching staffs. Since the trade deadline, that offense — and the power production — has slowed.

So on Friday night Washington defeated the Angels 4-3 by playing some late-inning small ball.

The eighth inning opened with a Brady House walk, followed by a CJ Abrams bloop single. Dylan Crews placed a sacrifice bunt down perfectly and loaded the bases when Angels pitcher Samy Natera Jr. didn’t know where to go with the baseball.

Two batters later, Andrew Pinckey hit a sacrifice fly to tie it. Then Jorbit Vivas hit a two-run double down the right-field line that put the Nationals ahead.

For most of the season, Washington has operated by winning with a few big blows. On Friday at Nationals Park, its win came via a series of small ones to snap a seven-game losing streak — though it didn’t come without drama.

The Angels’ Christian Moore hit an RBI double in the ninth, but Erik Tolman recorded the final out and earn his second save.

Entering the eighth inning, the Nationals had only three hits, threatening to spoil another elite outing from Cade Cavalli.

In the first inning, he threw a cutter just outside of the strike zone that Mike Trout laced into center field for a solo homer. In the fourth, he hit Trout with a pitch.

Outside of those two at-bats, the Angels’ went 0-for-17 against Cavalli through the sixth inning. The only other baserunner who reached was Josh Lowe, who was hit with a pitch in the sixth. Cavalli even struck out Trout in his third at-bat, his ninth and final strikeout of the evening.

Then Cavalli lost command in the seventh and walked the first two batters before Moore hit an RBI single and his evening was finished. To that point, the Nationals trailed 2-1 with little offense outside of a James Wood fourth-inning RBI single.

From 2020-25, the Nationals ranked in the bottom third of the major leagues in home runs. Over the last four seasons, they have ranked 24th or lower in slugging percentage. They often generated offense by stringing together three or four hits at a time.

This season, thanks to the development of their hitters and a shrewd internal addition (Curtis Mead), the Nationals blossomed under the team’s new coaching staff.

They’re currently third in the major leagues in homers (198), behind the Chicago Cubs and the New York Yankees. They have 10 players with double-digit homers with the team, and eight of them have set career highs. In July, the Nationals hit 50 homers in just 24 games.

But the Nationals traded Mead and Luis García Jr., who combined for 40 homers in a Washington uniform near the trade deadline. Wood, who has 30 homers, suffered an oblique injury the day of the deadline. Even in his return, the absence of those bats has been noticeable.

Washington has hit 34 homers since the start of August. In September, it has hit six, tied with the Seattle Mariners for the fewest in the month.

On Friday, the Nationals held meetings for a handful of position players as they looked ahead to the offseason. Manager Blake Butera said a recurring message was adding strength, which results in higher bat speeds and velocity. The staff showed players videos of outs that could’ve been homers with a bit more velocity.

Once the game began, there were more examples of balls that fell short of the warning track. In the fourth inning, after Wood’s RBI single, Andrés Chaparro hit a 345-foot flyout that would’ve been a homer in three parks. The next inning, Dylan Crews launched a 322-foot flyout. Yohandy Morales added another, this one 363 feet, that didn’t find the seats.

Of course, it hasn’t helped that All-Star shortstop CJ Abrams has hit only two homers since August. Wood will likely hit a few more before the season ends in two weeks.

As the Nationals look ahead to next season, they’ll have to find ways to produce power outside of Wood and Abrams after Mead and García’s departures. But on Friday they pieced together a series of hits and it paid off.