June 19, 2025: James Wood’s walk-off home run snaps Nationals’ 11-game losing streak

“Winning in the major leagues is hard. It really is. Winning like that after losing so many in a row – what a feeling.” – Nationals manager Dave Martinez1

George Will once said, “Baseball’s best teams lose about sixty-five times a season. It is not a game you can play with your teeth clenched.”2 For example, when the Colorado Rockies advanced to the 2007 World Series, they did so having lost 73 games in a regular season that included an eight-game losing streak. In 2019 the World Series champion Washington Nationals lost 69 games in the regular season. Read any account of that season and you are bound to think of their 19-31 losing record on May 24. Author Jesse Dougherty uses that record as a chapter title in his book, Buzz Saw, The Improbable Story of How the Washington Nationals Won the World Series.3

Fast-forward to the 2025 season and a warm and windy Thursday afternoon in June at Nationals Park and you find circumstances so vastly different for both teams compared with their World Series years. In fact, the Rockies and the Nationals had the dubious distinction of nearly identical worst-in-baseball records from 2020 through 2024: Colorado’s 288-419 mark was just a half-game ahead of Washington’s 288-420.

Despite winning the first three games of this series against the Nationals, the Rockies were in the throes of an awful season that cost manager Bud Black his job on May 11 after a 7-33 start. Lose this game and the Rockies would tie the 1907 St. Louis Cardinals for the second-worst 75-game start in National or American League history, 17-58.4 As for the Nationals, they were carrying the burden of an 11-game losing streak, just shy of the team record.5

Rockies interim manager Warren Schaeffer counted on rookie right-hander Chase Dollander (2-7, 6.57 ERA) – selected ninth overall from the University of Tennessee in the June 2023 draft – to extend their season-best four-game winning streak. Martinez sent veteran righty Trevor Williams (3-8, 5.71 ERA) to the mound.

The first three innings were of little consequence for each team’s offense. The first Rockies hit came when Sam Hilliard opened the third with a first-pitch bunt single, but he was thrown out by catcher Keibert Ruiz trying to steal second base. In the bottom half of the third, Jacob Young singled to right with two outs, but his fate was the same trying to steal second, thanks to Rockies catcher Hunter Goodman.

In the fourth inning, Williams yielded consecutive two-out singles to Goodman and Ryan McMahon and created his own bases-loaded jam when Michael Toglia walked on four pitches. That threat ended when Brenton Doyle grounded out. In their half of the fourth, the Nationals grabbed the game’s first lead. After CJ Abrams singled to center, James Wood hit Dollander’s first-pitch changeup 403 feet over the center-field wall for his 19th home run and a 2-0 Nationals lead.

Colorado responded in the fifth inning. With one out, Orlando Arcia singled to center and scored when Jordan Beck doubled down the left-field line. Mickey Moniak followed with a single to right to tie the score, 2-2. The Rockies threatened again in the sixth without success. Doyle’s double, breaking an 0-for-18 funk, put Rockies on second and third with one out, but Cole Henry replaced Williams and struck out Hilliard and Arcia to end the inning.

The Nationals’ late-inning offense was limited over three frames by relievers Jimmy Herget and Victor Vodnik to one infield single by Luis García Jr. The effectiveness of the Nationals A-team bullpen – Henry, Jose A. Ferrer and Kyle Finnegan – would eventually push the game into extra innings. When Ferrer followed Henry in the seventh, the defense delivered a double-play groundout, short to second to first. In the eighth, Ferrer struck out McMahon and Toglia swinging before Finnegan came in to strike out Doyle and retire the side in order in the ninth.

Now the Nationals had to rely on two rookie relievers, Zach Brzykcy and Ryan Loutos, from a bullpen that would finish the season with a 5.59 ERA, worst in the major leagues.6 Brzykcy’s turn came in the 10th inning with Ryan Ritter positioned at second base as the automatic runner, a presence colloquially called the Manfred man after Commissioner Rob Manfred.7 Two groundouts to third failed to advance Ritter and after walking Goodman, Brzykcy struck out McMahon to retire the side. In the Nationals’ 10th inning, Rockies rookie pitcher Ryan Rolison kept the ball in the infield and the extra runner, Brady House, failed to advance past third base.     

The Rockies wasted little time in the 11th inning. It was Loutos’s turn on the mound and on his first pitch, Toglia lined a single to center scoring McMahon, the extra runner. The Rockies took a 3-2 lead and the extra-inning drama moved to the bottom of the 11th.

With Riley Adams as the Nationals’ extra runner, Schaeffer gave the ball to his rookie closer, Seth Halvorsen, who had already saved two games in this series. The Nationals had a plan. On Halvorsen’s first pitch, Young sacrificed Adams to third on a perfect bunt in that direction. On the next pitch, however, Abrams grounded out weakly to first, leaving Adams on third with two outs.

Would Halvorsen intentionally walk Wood to pitch to Garcia, as the later-revealed pregame strategy suggested? Garcia had a double and two singles in his three previous plate appearances. Halvorsen pitched to Wood and it proved to be a mistake. Wood hit a ball-one splitter 428 feet over the wall in straightaway center. Halvorsen never turned around. He just walked off the mound. The Nationals’ 11-game losing streak was over thanks to Wood’s first career walk-off home run.8 After the game, Schaeffer admitted that he made a tactical mistake despite the Rockies’ strategy to not let Wood beat them. “I think I can look at myself in the mirror – better – if we lose to García, next up.”9 

Any celebration at the ballpark after a walk-off home run may very well include a dousing of the game’s hero with Gatorade, a sports drink developed at the University of Florida in 1965 and an official sponsor of the major leagues since 1990. On this day, the dumping of the Gatorade cooler occurred during James Wood’s postgame interview.10

The exhilaration felt by the home team after a walk-off home run is immediate, but not long-lasting in the context of the day-after-day grind of the regular season. How about the impact of snapping a long losing streak? Williams put it best: “It feels like we can finally exhale.”11

The impact of losing can be profound and long-lasting. Broadcaster Bob Carpenter, retiring at season’s end, understood the pain of Nationals fans since their 2019 World Series triumph and expressed his feelings on the air during the losing streak. Carpenter recalled, “It was important for me to let them know that we are all in this together. … I think I have found that I can handle any freakin’ situation that comes up during a ballgame and not slam my fist on the table, which I want to do sometimes.”12

What impact did the losing streak have in the clubhouse? After a tough loss to the Miami Marlins, Martinez said the onus for losing was “never on coaching” and consternation lingered in the clubhouse among the players.13 In early July Martinez and general manager Mike Rizzo were both fired and replaced by Miguel Cairo and Mike DeBartolo respectively.14 The interim tag would follow the Nationals for the remainder of the 2025 season, while the Rockies’ 119 losses were the third most in the NL/AL since 1901.

Author’s note

The “inaugural dunk” with Gatorade actually occurred on a football field in the closing moments of the New York Giants’ 17-3 win over the Washington Redskins in 1985.15 Giants nose guard Jim Burt and teammate Harry Carson emptied the contents of a full Gatorade cooler on coach Bill Parcells. Burt was the instigator of the celebration, an opportunity for him to “retaliate” for the coach’s motivational techniques before that game. Parcells repeatedly said that Redskins offensive lineman Jeff Bostic was going to “eat him [Burt] up” and that infuriated Burt.16 It was the first of many dousings to follow.

Acknowledgments

This essay was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

The author accessed Baseball-Reference.com for box scores/play-by-play information (baseball-reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS202506190.shtml) and other data, as well as Retrosheet.org (retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2025/B06190WAS2025.htm). The Topps NOW card (#318) commemorating James Wood’s first career walk-off home run is provided from the author’s collection.

Notes

1 Spencer Nusbaum, “Streak Busters,” Washington Post, June 20, 2025: D1.

2 Baseball Almanac, “George Will Quotes,” baseball-almanac.com/quotes/george_will_quotes.shtml, accessed January 2026 (originally published, Washington Post Book World, November 29, 1987).

3 Jesse Dougherty, Buzz Saw, The Improbable Story of How the Washington Nationals Won the World Series (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 37.

4 Patrick Saunders, “Rockies lose to Nationals in 11th inning, ending four-game winning streak,” DenverPost.com, June 19, 2025, denverpost.com/2025/06/19/rockies-nationals-score-winning-streak-ends/. The Boston Red Sox started the 1932 season with a 16-59 record. The Rockies continued to lose, falling to 17-60 after 77 games.

5 The Nationals lost 12 consecutive games in the 2008 season (August 8-20, 2008). The 1969 first-year Montreal Expos hold the franchise record of 20 consecutive losses.

6 Andrew Golden, “Nationals Inform Cairo That He’s Out of the Running to Remain as the Manager,” Washington Post, October 30, 2025: B10.

7 Baseball Almanac, “Manfred Man – Baseball Dictionary,” baseball-almanac.com/dictionary-term.php?term=Manfred%20Man, accessed January 2026. “Nickname for the runner on second base in an extra inning ballgame. The eponymous term is a directed reference to Commissioner Rob Manfred under whose rule the rule came into play, but it also shares the name with the British rock group Manfred Mann which was active between 1962 and 1969.”

8 “James Wood’s walk-off home run,” MLB.com, June 19, 2025. The walk-off home run was the Nationals only one in the 2025 season.

9 Patrick Saunders, “Rockies Lose to Nationals in 11th Inning, Ending Four-Game Winning Streak,” DenverPost.com, June 19, 2025, denverpost.com/2025/06/19/rockies-nationals-score-winning-streak-ends/.

10 “James Wood on his walk-off homer, 4-3 win,” MLB.com, June 19, 2025.

11 Spencer Nusbaum, “Streak Busters,” Washington Post, June 20, 2025: D5.

12 Scott Allen, “After 20 years, it’s last call for Carpenter,” Washington Post, September 27, 2025: B7.

13 Spencer Nusbaum, “Streak Busters.”

14 Spencer Nusbaum, Andrew Golden, “Last-place Nationals fire manager Dave Martinez and GM Mike Rizzo,” Washington Post, July 6, 2025.

15 Darren Rovell, First in Thirst: How Gatorade Turned the Science of Sweat Into a Cultural Phenomenon (New York: AMACOM, 2006), 78.

16 Rovell.