If only you could replace your six worst players with league average players. If you could do that, the math says the Nats would be 21-17. We aren’t even asking for six more stars.
Talent alone does not always cut it. Reputation matters until you cannot perform. The back of the baseball card stats for Nelson Cruz meant nothing back in 2022 for the Washington Nationals. His -0.5 WAR wasn’t awful until you consider that general manager Mike Rizzo paid him $15 million for a .234 batting average and 10 homers over 507 plate appearances. He never got close to his .277 batting average on the back of that 2021 Topps baseball card or the 5.5 HR Rate per plate appearance. The sad part is you wish current Nats’ DH, Josh Bell, was at Cruz’s -0.5 WAR and batting .234. In fact, Bell is exactly 100 points below Cruz’s 2022 batting average. Right now on Baseball Reference’s WAR calculations, Jose. A. Ferrer has Bell beat for the lowest WAR on the team at -1.0.
The Nats bullpen as you know is a hot mess. Not only the worst ERA in baseball but the worst bullpen ERA on this day in Nats’ history — and that’s saying something with the sad state the 2019 bullpen was in to start that season. Somehow the Angels bullpen has a higher WHIP and BAA (batting average against). The Marlins bullpen is the worst in walks. The Nats bullpen leads in wild pitches with 18 — but a lot of that has to be shared with the catchers. The Nats bullpen leads in HBPs with 17 and that doesn’t count in the WHIP calculation.
The mind-blowing numbers put together by Little League Washup in the comments section on TalkNats were eye-popping. Stever20 added some more numbers, and made a great point that the bullpen ERA doesn’t include all of those inherited runners that scored and were put on-base by the starters. Those runs scored count on the starters’ ERA in that stat, not the bullpen ERA.
If the Nats had last year’s bullpen for this year, without even accounting for the inherited runners scored, the Nats would have a run differential of +6 for this year, so far, instead of the actual -37. That would calculate to an expected record of 20-18 today, rather than the actual 17-21 record the team has today.
Here were the stats for 2024 and through today in 2025:
2024 bullpen ERA 4.14
2025 bullpen ERA 7.22 in 124⅔ IP, and 100 earned runs
If the Nats had the same 4.14 ERA from last year transported to this year, the bullpen would have given up only 57 earned runs to date. So 43 fewer earned runs. And 57 earned runs would only be the 14th best in baseball — near average. We aren’t even asking to be the Detroit Tigers with the best bullpen in baseball with only 34 earned runs given up. Their closer, Tommy Kahnle, might be the only name you know in that bullpen. Their bullpen cost less than the Nats.
If you look at @baseball_ref WAR, just taking the 5 worst bullpen arms, they have lost the team already 3.4 games as compared to just a league average bullpen to replace those 5 arms.
Further, take Bell’s -0.9 WAR and add that to the 5 worst bullpen arms and that is 4.3 more wins. This should be a 21-17 team if if if you had just league average players in place of those six players highlighted in the graphics.
How did it get this bad? At one point, Ferrer was being considered for the closer’s spot until Kyle Finnegan was re-signed. Colin Poche from that list was DFA’d last week, and Eduardo Salazar was just optioned to Triple-A. Brad Lord will move from the starting rotation to the bullpen. The newly acquired Andrew Chafin is right at league average on that chart at a 0.0 WAR. That’s progress, amirite?
If you scroll through these highlighted lists with just the names in red, only Ferrer and Salazar were on the Nats’ roster last year. The rest were all offseason free agent acquisitions as was Bell. Of course the remaining players have an opportunity to turn it around, can they? Is there a way to coach these players up to be better?
There are some other players in the negative and we only highlighted those worse than a -0.3 WAR. Hopefully there is improvement coming and some new strategies.
