Nasim Nuñez’s strong offensive performance anchors Nationals in 6-4 win over Royals

Bobby Witt Jr. fielded a ground ball in the seventh inning behind second base and was a few steps away from starting a double play. The momentum was about to shift in the Royals’ favor. And yet Nasim Nuñez seemed intent on making sure it didn’t.

So he took off in a sprint, barreling toward second base and forcing Witt to step around the base to avoid getting hit. Witt recorded the out at first but Nuñez was safe at second.

Those 90 feet proved critical. Andrés Chaparro walked in the ensuing at-bat. Then, Curtis Mead launched a go-ahead, three-run homer that proved to be the difference maker in the Nationals’ 6-4 victory over the Royals.

“My best big league performance, in my opinion,” Nuñez said. “I showed off all my tools, and then we came out with the win and, even bigger, a series win at home.”

Nuñez reached base in all four of his plate appearances, hitting two triples, earning two walks, driving in a run and scoring three more in the team’s victory. And, of course, he added a few highlight plays defensively.

“It was everything,” manager Blake Butera said. “The defense he played tonight ... that’s Nas, he plays great defense. But then to what he did offensively and on the bases, you can’t pick one because he did it all tonight.”

Former National Lane Thomas hit a solo homer in the ninth for the Royals but Kansas City couldn’t get any closer. The Nationals (39-35) won their four straight game and earned their fourth straight series win.

For most of this season, Nuñez has tested the limits of how much offensive impact is worth sacrificing for defensive value and speed on the basepaths.

Entering the game, the 25-year-old had a .529 OPS, the worst in baseball. After his performance, he’d raised that figure to .568, the second-worst in baseball by the game’s final out.

Nuñez, a 2023 Rule 5 pick, played sparingly in the 2024 season, though he had to remain on the roster for the full season. He spent most of the 2025 season in Triple-A Rochester, but made the most of his September call-up and played well enough offensively to keep himself in the discussion for playing time in 2026.

He admitted following his best performance to date that this hasn’t been his best baseball. He’s consulted with everyone from his family to friends to coaches and teammates. The overall message: keep showing up, keep working and eventually things will turn.

“There’s a quote I like, it was like, ‘At the top of the mountain is the bottom of the next one,’” Nuñez said. “So you got to keep climbing. Don’t get caught up in the highs and lows, just keep going.”

In the meantime, Nuñez generated value because of his glove and his legs. So far this season, he’s second only to Witt in all of Major League Baseball with 26 stolen bases.

“He’s special,” Mead said. “He just creates chaos out there on the bases. And he’s really the guy that you want the ball hit at on defense. It feels like every time it goes near him, he does something crazy. Kind of cool for him to just have pretty much a perfect game.”

On the diamond, he has three outs above average and has improved the Nationals’ middle infield defense despite his eight errors. He made a diving catch to rob Tyler Tolbert of a bloop hit off Foster Griffin in the second.

“Any ball that’s hit to that (right) side, there’s always a chance,” Griffin said. “It’s just ultimate confidence ... it’s very easy to pitch with him back there.”

Griffin, facing the team that drafted him in the first round twelve years ago, tossed six innings of one-run baseball. The left-hander went to Japan for three seasons before returning to the United States on a one-year deal with the Nationals this offseason.

His sweeper, one of the pitches he learned there, was his best offering Tuesday, generating seven whiffs on 10 swings. Four of his seven pitches had a chase rate of 50% or higher. The Royals had traffic on the bases nearly every inning but Griffin avoided major trouble.

With another strong performance, Griffin lowered his ERA to 3.32. Over his last five starts, Griffin has pitched to a 1.93 ERA.

Entering Tuesday’s outing, the Nationals had scored 6.57 runs in Griffin’s starts. The Nationals only scored three runs over his six innings Tuesday, and Nuñez was involved in all of them.

In the third inning, Drew Millas singled before Nuñez hit a 62.7 mph blooper down the right-field line that resulted in an RBI triple. Wood hit a sacrifice fly in the next at-bat and the Nationals led 2-0.

The Royals scored on a Witt RBI single in the fifth to cut the lead in half but Nuñez responded with his second triple of the night. This one was much harder — a 96.9 mph fly ball that bounced off the out-of-town scoreboard.

When asked if any part of him thought the ball would leave the yard, Nuñez quipped: “All of me.”

One batter later, Wood hit an RBI single to drive him.

The Royals tied the game in the seventh on a two-run single by Isaac Collins. But that tie didn’t last long thanks to Mead and Nuñez, the Nationals’ nine-hole hitter whose offensive production on Tuesday caught up with the rest of his game.

“I think he sometimes surprises himself with what he is able to do because of how athletic he is,” Butera said. “I don’t know if he realized he’d get to that ball that he got to when he dove and caught it earlier in the game. I don’t know if he thought he could beat the ball to second base. I don’t know if he thought he could hit a triple off the wall. Some of these things that he did tonight, hopefully, shows him what he’s capable of doing.”