Abrams, Crews hit back-to-back homers as Nationals beat Athletics

CJ Abrams and Dylan Crews hit back-to-back home runs in the fifth inning, and the Washington Nationals beat the Athletics 5-2 in West Sacramento, Calif. The July 19, 2026 result gave Washington a second straight emphatic win in the series after a 23-4 rout of Oakland the day before.

The power surge mattered because it came from the two names Washington is leaning on most in its rebuild. Abrams, a 2026 All-Star representative for the Nationals, and Crews, who was selected to the club’s major league roster in 2026, delivered in sequence rather than in isolation, a small but meaningful sign that Washington’s young core can already carry a game on the same night.

That kind of production matters more than a single score line. A rebuild is not judged only by prospect rankings or isolated highlights; it is judged by whether the same young players keep showing up in winning moments, and whether those moments begin to define the club’s identity. Back-to-back homers compress that evaluation into two swings: they change the game quickly, they force a pitcher to reset, and they tell a dugout that the lineup has real middle-order punch.

The Nationals also had a more complete weekend than the 5-2 final alone suggests. Left-hander Foster Griffin had given Washington seven innings of one-run ball in the 23-4 win that opened the set, and the two-game stretch showed the kind of balance rebuilding teams search for, with run production backing up pitching instead of covering for it. Washington did not need a slugfest to beat Oakland again; it needed timely offense and enough pitching to hold a three-run lead.

For Washington, the next stretch of the season will matter less for the standings than for the pattern. If Abrams keeps supplying top-end production and Crews keeps turning raw talent into hard contact in big spots, the Nationals will have something more valuable than a hot weekend in California. They will have evidence that the rebuild is starting to produce a credible young core, one that can win games before it fully matures.