This is a list of seasons completed by the Washington Nationals , originally known as the Montreal Expos , professional baseball franchise; they have played in the National League from their inception in 1969. They are an American professional baseball team that has been based in Washington, D.C. since 2005. The Nationals are a member of both the Major League Baseball's (MLB) National League Eastern Division. Since the 2008 season, the Nationals have played in Nationals Park; from 2005 through 2007, the team played in Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.
Contents
- Table Key
- Season-by-season results
- All-time records
- Record by decade
- Postseason appearances
- Post-season record by year
- Footnotes
- References
As the Expos, the team had just fourteen of their 36 seasons finish with a winning record. The Expos made the postseason for the only time in 1981 as champions of the second half of the strike-shortened season. They then met the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1981 National League Division Series, defeating them in five games. They faced the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1981 National League Championship Series but lost in five games. The 1994 team was 74–40 at the time of the league-wide strike that killed the season, with their winning percentage of .649 still being a team record. The Expos played in Montreal, Quebec, Canada as expansion team in 1969 through 2004, with the majority of that time (1977–2004) spent in Montreal's Olympic Stadium. Dissatisfaction with the stadium resulted in their relocation to Washington in 2005.
While the Nationals had a losing record in six of their first seven seasons, the team eventually came together in 2012 under the talent of players such as rookie Bryce Harper and pitcher Stephen Strasburg to win their first NL East title in 2012 and bring playoff baseball back to Washington for the first time since 1933. In the 2012 National League Division Series, the Nationals were one out away from winning Game 5 against the St. Louis Cardinals before they rallied to defeat and eliminate the Nationals. From 2012 to 2017, the Nationals would win the NL East four times but lost in the NLDS each time, with three of them going the full five games. In 2019, the Nationals had won just 19 of their first 50 games but managed to reach the postseason with a 93–69 record as the second Wild Card team in the NL. They defeated the Milwaukee Brewers in the Wild Card Game for their first win in a winner-take-all postseason game since moving to Washington. They upset the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLDS that went the full five games before sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS. With the win in their 51st season as a franchise, it ended the longest drought for a team's first pennant in MLB history. In the 2019 World Series, led by Strasburg, Max Scherzer and Juan Soto, the Nationals rallied from a 3–2 series deficit by winning the last two games on the road, with Howie Kendrick hitting a go-ahead home run in the seventh inning of Game 7 to give Washington their first World Series championship, with Strasberg being named World Series MVP. Since the end of 2019, the Nationals have not reached the postseason, finishing 5th in the NL East in five of the last six seasons from 2020 to 2025.
The following takes into account both teams, as all Montreal records were carried with the franchise when it moved to Washington.