Cubs head to Washington for three-game series against Nationals, rekindling a March matchup that went the Nats’ way

The Chicago Cubs open a three-game road series against the Washington Nationals in the nation’s capital, turning a long-ago early-season meeting into a fresh late-season storyline. The matchup is noteworthy not for a complicated history of previous postseason battles, but for how the first regular-season chapter already ended.

As highlighted in a series preview published Tuesday by Yahoo Sports, the Nationals were the Cubs’ first regular season opponent of the year, back in March. That early schedule placement set the tone for what would become a recurring theme for the rest of the season: small margins, repeated looks, and the familiarity that grows when teams meet more than once.

In that March series at Wrigley Field, the Nationals took two of three games from Chicago. That result matters because it was not a one-off outcome. It came early enough to reflect organizational matchups, early season adjustments, and the way each team handled early timing at the plate.

With the series now set in Washington, the question for the Cubs is how much they have closed the gap since that first exchange. Returning to a rival they already faced earlier in the year creates a practical advantage for both sides, since each club has a base of observations to draw from, even if lineups and roles have shifted over months of baseball.

For Washington, the series is another chance to build on a demonstrated ability to play the Cubs well, particularly after showing it in Chicago during the season opener stretch. The Nationals will also be looking to confirm that the March performance was not merely a product of early-season volatility, but something more repeatable against this opponent.

A preview like this also tends to spotlight the non-glamorous factors that often decide series outcomes: the ability to run down pitching-to-hitting plans over multiple games, the sequencing of plate appearances, and the way each team responds when the ball starts to move differently from park to park. Those are the areas that tend to show up quickly once the first game begins.

What to watch over the three games is less about any single moment and more about whether the Cubs can flip the script from that March set, and whether the Nationals can sustain the edge they established in Chicago. The series will serve as another checkpoint on how both teams have evolved since their first shared stretch of games this year.