Atlanta Braves at Washington Nationals: Final Score & Recap

The Atlanta Braves shut out the Washington Nationals 9-0 at Nationals Park on September 2, 2026, handing Washington its most lopsided loss of the series and dropping the DiamondIQ model's estimate of a Nationals win from a pre-game 42% all the way to 0%. Atlanta's offense was held in check through five innings before erupting in the sixth, and the pitching staff combined to hold Washington to just two hits across nine innings while committing no errors of their own against the Nationals' one.

The decisive moment of the game came in the top of the sixth inning when Sean Murphy launched a home run off Riley Cornelio that swung win probability by plus-34.1 percentage points, the single largest play of the contest. That three-run sixth broke a scoreless tie and effectively ended Washington's realistic path to a comeback. Atlanta added three more runs in the seventh, including a Ronald Acuña Jr. home run off Max Kranick that added another plus-9.7 points of win probability, before tacking on two in the eighth and one in the ninth to reach the final margin. The Nationals had actually made things interesting in the fourth, where a Murphy lineout and a Mike Yastrzemski flyout off Cornelio cost Atlanta minus-8.5 and minus-6.7 points of win probability respectively, briefly keeping the game tight before the dam broke two innings later.

Murphy finished as the game's most impactful offensive performer by a clear margin, accumulating plus-21.7 WPA and plus-2.8 RE24, while Acuña Jr. contributed plus-15.9 WPA and plus-2.3 RE24. Michael Harris II added plus-5.8 WPA as a complementary force in the lineup. On the mound, Elieser Hernández led Atlanta's pitching staff with plus-12.5 WPA, followed by Grant Holmes at plus-5.9 and Dylan Dodd at plus-5.7, as the three combined to render the Nationals' offense largely irrelevant throughout the evening.