{"id":573948,"date":"2026-03-30T10:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T10:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/573948\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T10:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T10:13:08","slug":"nationals-6-3-cubs-30-mar-2026-game-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/573948\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationals 6-3 Cubs (30 Mar, 2026) Game Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO — \u2014 Joey Wiemer<\/a> and Keibert Ruiz<\/a> homered and the Washington Nationals<\/a> earned a season-opening series win with a 6-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Jake Irvin<\/a> (1-0) allowed two runs and three hits with seven strikeouts and a walk in five innings and Clayton Beeter<\/a>, the last of four Washington relievers, worked a clean ninth for his first save. Washington took two of three in the series.<\/p>\n

Alex Bregman<\/a> hit two solo home runs \u2014 his first since joining the Cubs as a free agent \u2014 and Ian Happ<\/a> added one.<\/p>\n

Brady House<\/a> and Daylen Lile<\/a> hit consecutive two-out singles off Shota Imanaga<\/a> (0-1) in the first and Wiemer followed with his second homer of the season to give Washington a 3-0 lead. <\/p>\n

Imanaga also gave up Wiemer\u2019s leadoff triple in the fourth, but stranded him there with three straight outs. Wiemer was 3 for 3 with a walk.<\/p>\n

Ruiz added a two-run homer off reliever Hoby Milner<\/a> in the eighth. <\/p>\n

Bregman, who signed a five-year, $175 million contract in January, hit a solo shot to center to start the fourth and Happ added his second of the season two pitches later to make it 3-2. <\/p>\n

Bregman added an eighth-inning solo shot to right field off Cionel P\u00e9rez.<\/p>\n

Imanaga was pulled after walking the leadoff man in the sixth. He gave up six hits and four runs while walking two and striking out seven.<\/p>\n

Winnipeg Jets forward Jonathan Toews, who captained the Chicago Blackhawks to three Stanley Cups, threw out the ceremonial first pitch.<\/p>\n

Up next <\/p>\n

Nationals: at Phillies where Washington’s Foster Griffin<\/a> faces Philadelphia’s Taijuan Walker<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n

Cubs: host Angels. Ryan Johnson<\/a> starts for Los Angeles against Chicago’s Edward Cabrera<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO — \u2014 Joey Wiemer and Keibert Ruiz homered and the Washington Nationals earned a season-opening series win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-573948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}