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Washington Nationals news & notes: Nats shut out by Twins, 10-0; Rubber match in D.C. today…

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Washington Nationals news & notes: Nats shut out by Twins, 10-0; Rubber match in D.C. today…


CORBIN KEEPS MISSING LOCATION:

Davey Martinez summed up Patrick Corbin’s struggles on Tuesday night succinctly when he spoke with reporters following a 10-0 drubbing the hands/bats of the Minnesota Twins, who evened things up in their three-game series in Washington, D.C.’s Nationals Park.

Corbin, who was actually on a nice run in the month of May, with a 3.24 ERA, a 3.21 FIP, and a .297/.343/.438 line against before Tuesday’s start, giving up six runs in three starts and 16 23 IP, after he finished the first month-plus of the 2024 campaign with a 6.82 ERA, 4.63 FIP, and a .353/.405/.564 line against in six starts and 31 23 IP.

The 34-year-old gave up two home runs in his first outing of the season, but he’d given up just two in 44 innings in his previous eight starts before taking on the Twins.

Corbin gave up nine hits, three of them home runs, and eight runs total in a six-inning start, walking three, and striking out three.

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The common factor in the home runs by the Twins? (By Byron Buxton in the second, Jose Miranda in the third, and Buxton again in the fifth).

“Missed location,” Martinez said. “He tried to go in on all three of those home runs, and left the ball out over the plate. His location was just bad today.

“But he’s pitching well, and for what it’s worth he gave us six innings and kind of saved our bullpen for tomorrow.”

But the outing, in which he threw 106 pitches, 60 for strikes, was not a good one for Corbin.

“Sometimes those days just happen. He’s been really good and keeping us in games. Today it just didn’t happen.”

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A night after the club scored 13 runs on the Twins, the offense just didn’t happen either.

Twins’ starter Joe Ryan tossed seven scoreless innings against the Nationals, giving up just three hits and two walks, while striking out six, and collecting 10 swinging strikes, eight of them on his fastball, and 14 called strikes, 13 of them with his heater.

The difference for his offense night-to-night in the first two games of the series?

“Obviously the pitcher,” Martinez said. “We fell behind, but the pitcher, Ryan, he kept us off-balance, but his fastball played really well tonight.

“He located it, it was up in the zone, we couldn’t get on top, so he threw the ball well.”

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“His stuff was good. His stuff was really good. So we got a chance to come back tomorrow and win a series, so let’s go back and go 1-0 tomorrow and win a series.”

DID RUIZ RETURN TOO SOON?:

Keibert Ruiz missed 13 games while dealing with a particularly rough bout of influenza. In his time on the IL, he reportedly lost 18-20 lbs. He played just two games on a rehab stint beore returning to the big leagues, and after a 2 for 4 game in the Nationals’ 12-3 win on Monday, he had hits in 3 of 4 games, but still just a .153/.176/.222 line, two doubles, a home run, one walk, and 12 Ks over 20 games and 74 plate appearances since the IL stint.

How, if at all, have his struggles affected his confidence?

“He’s been really, really good, he really has,” manager Davey Martinez said in his pregame press conference on Monday.

“He’s frustrated,” Martinez added, “… because we really thought, and he really thought that he was in a good place before he got sick, and we’ve been really, really trying to stay positive, with him, we really have, because it’s not his fault he got real sick. But he’s been very positive.”

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In hindsight, did the club rush him back? Should they have given him more time to get back up to speed in the minors after the prolonged illness?

“He said he felt really good, and then he hit a little lull,” Martinez explained, “but that’s part of kind of building him up a little bit. So like I said, I’ll continue to monitor him, but he said now he’s at the point where he said now he feels like he gained some weight back, and he feels good enough, and now it’s just going out there and playing baseball.”

Ruiz is working both sides of his game, the manager said, and trying to get back to hitting and improve his catching as he plays most days as the Nationals’ No. 1 backstop.

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“He spends a lot of time working on his catching, so hopefully he’s starting to feel better all the way around. We talked to him today about just not trying to do too much, just getting a good swing, swinging at strikes. The biggest thing for me is that he’s chasing a lot. He’s got to get the ball in the zone. When he does that — usually when he does that he strike the ball pretty well. He’s a big part of our lineup and a big part of our young players, so he’s going to be okay.”

MLB: Minnesota Twins at Washington Nationals

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Martinez said he tried to assure Ruiz he believes the catcher is capable of turning it around.

“I told him, ‘This is not the first time — and granted, you’ve been sick, but this is not the first time you’ve started slow neither. You’ve done it and all of a sudden you’ve picked it up and you were — Wow! So let’s just focus on today, and focus on what you need to do to get ready to catch, and each at-bat try to get to that next pitch. But he was good. I saw him today, he was laughing and smiling amongst his players in the cage, so we just got to keep him positive.”

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Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

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Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week


4 things to know about the weather:

  1. Chances of rain in the morning
  2. Gusty Sunday
  3. Chilly Monday
  4. Temps will rise again through the work week

Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.

After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.

The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.

Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.

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However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.

QuickCast

SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s

MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s

Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.



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‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

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‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington


The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.

In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.

“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”

Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.

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Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.

“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.

“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”

Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”

A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.

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Rachel Reeves posted this image on Instagram from Washington DC on Thursday with the message: ‘Friends that run together – work together.’ Photograph: Rachel Reeves/Instagram

Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.

Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.

But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.

“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”

At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.

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The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.

Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.

For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.

“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.

“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”

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For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.

In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.

Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.

“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”





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Rosselli opens in DC, serving classic Italian flavors from chef Carlos

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Rosselli opens in DC, serving classic Italian flavors from chef Carlos


Rosselli is the newest restaurant to open in DC.

Bringing in classic Italian flavors, Chef Carlos explained how he hopes his food is a unique addition to the Italian food scene in the DMV.

Chef also demoed a signature dish with Brian and Megan.

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You can learn more and book your table here.



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