Current MLB ballpark · 2008 – present

Nationals Park

Washington, DC

Opened: 2008
Capacity: 41,376
Surface: Grass
Roof: Open
League: NL
Elevation: 35 ft
Orientation: 28° (NNE)
Time zone: America/New_York

How it plays

Every number is an index where 100 is league average. There is no such thing as one park factor — this park does different things to a triple than it does to a home run, and the only honest version is the whole row. Off 16,041 plate appearances in 2026.

	2026	2024-2026
Runs	112	104
Home runs	127	105
Triples	68	93
Doubles	101	98
Singles	102	105
Walks	104	98
Strikeouts	93	94
Value on contact	106	101
Expected on contact	105	102

How much of this is the park? Across 2022–2026, this venue's single-season value-on-contact index moved by ±3.0 points (a 9-point spread over 5 seasons). The league median is 3.0. Read a single season's figure with that much slack in it — the walls do not move, and the number does.

By the batter's side

Runs	114 RHB	112 LHB
Home runs	125 RHB	128 LHB
Value on contact	107 RHB	105 LHB

7,208 right-handed and 8,833 left-handed plate appearances — each side is half a season, so read these with at least the slack the combined figures carry — the band above is ±3.0 on twice this sample.

What FVR does about it

Every luck gap we measure at this park has −0.0072 subtracted from it, off 3,905 balls in play here this season. That is the number behind every board on this site, which is the only reason it is printed. It is not on the 100-is-average scale above: it is value on contact per ball in play, so it cannot be added to or subtracted from any index in this table. The two can even point opposite ways — Savant's runs index counts all offense, ours is only the residual against what the batted balls deserved.

Index figures: Baseball Savant, single-season and three-year rolling. What a park factor is, and is not →

The lore

Below the Sidewalk

The Nationals' home since 2008, dug below the sidewalk in the Navy Yard and carrying a notch from Griffith Stadium into right-center.

Below the Sidewalk

The playing field at Nationals Park sits 24 feet below street level, dug into the Navy Yard neighborhood near the Anacostia River so that fans on the main concourse walk in from the sidewalk without stairs or ramps. The grade was a design decision — the joint venture of Populous and Devrouax-Purnell, working from inspiration drawn from I.M. Pei's East Wing of the National Gallery of Art, set the field down and the concourse flush with the street.

The park opened March 30, 2008, as the Nationals' replacement for RFK Stadium. It cost more than $611 million and became the first major pro sports venue in the country to earn LEED Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The dimensions are nearly symmetrical — 336 down the left line, 335 down the right, 402 to center — save for one piece of old Washington built into the new park.

The Notch

The outfield wall carries a right-angled jog in right-center, borrowed from Griffith Stadium, the demolished home of the Washington Senators. It is the one place where the park reaches back past its own opening year and into the city's baseball past.

Opening day brought President George W. Bush to the mound for the ceremonial first pitch, and Ryan Zimmerman ended the game with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth for a 3-2 win over the Braves. George Washington University's baseball team had already played the first game there eight days earlier, beating Saint Joseph's 9-4.

The park has since hosted the 2018 All-Star Game, the first in Washington since 1969, and Games 3, 4, and 5 of the 2019 World Series, the first Fall Classic in the city since 1933. Jayson Werth's walk-off home run in Game 4 of the 2012 NLDS against the Cardinals is marked with a plaque on the back wall of the Nationals' bullpen.

The 2026 season is the 19th at Nationals Park, the Washington Nationals' home since 2008.

Reporting: MLB.com, Wikipedia. Park data: MLB StatsAPI and Retrosheet, via the Fever engine.

By the Desk · filed 2026-07-24 — the piece reads as of its filing; the park record around it is live · every fact in this piece comes from a filed, sourced research pack and clears an independent fact-check, and nothing is edited after filing.

The dimensions

Fence distances from home plate, in feet — the same venue.fieldInfo the scorecards draw their hit charts on.

Left field line	336′
Left-center	377′
Center field	402′
Right-center	370′
Right field line	335′

Home club

WSH Washington Nationals

Games we’ve scored here

73 games at this park in our books — every one transcribed mark for mark, reconciled to the official line. The most recent:

…and 61 more in the scorecard archive.

Where it stands

1500 South Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003-1507. Open the map →

Sources

MLB StatsAPI · as of 2026-07-23
Retrosheet · as of 2026-07-23

The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.