A negative 180° turn for the starting rotation, a historically bad bullpen, and inconsistent offense puts the Washington Nationals in a tough spot.
A 5-game losing streak pushed the Washington Nationals to their low mark in 2025 at 7-games under .500. The fans want to know who to blame. The answer isn’t easy on where to point all of the fingers. The best answer is shared blame towards the players, coaching staff, front office, and ownership.
Look around the internet as fans are looking for heads to roll. The team put itself in a good position to start the offseason with addition by subtraction and were done with Patrick Corbin‘s expensive 6-year deal. The Stephen Strasburg deal is still a cash drain, and he agreed to retire which finally gave the Nats an open roster spot. The team still has to pay him the remainder of his $245 million contract — the worst deal in baseball history. The team looked to be in better shape going forward with just the Strasburg deal and two years remaining on that as the only large impediment standing in the way, but looks can be deceiving.
News broke to the public that the Nationals were getting a 20 percent cut in revenue by MASN that would go retroactive to the 2024 season. Not good news for a team that was already struggling with cashflow. In fact per CNBC, the Nationals would enter this season with the 4th lowest revenue in all of baseball and were sinking in debt. Part of that was self-inflicted by not selling stadium naming rights and a jersey patch sponsorship, but also due to low attendance.
If the team created some offseason buzz and got a top free agent, maybe attendance would rise. That is the theory of “build it and they will come,” popularized in the baseball movie, Field Of Dreams. The offseason goals from general manager Mike Rizzo was to improve the defense, add corner infielders that would add power, and rebuild the bullpen. Early in December, the Nats traded for first baseman Nathaniel Lowe to make a huge splash. But as the offseason went on, that was the only big move. The rest of the acquisitions were all tainted with question marks, even with bringing back pitchers Trevor Williams (2 year deal) and closer Kyle Finnegan.
As of today, the only moves that feel like addition to win production have been Lowe and Finnegan. The rest of the moves represented another $34 million in spending to this year’s payroll and some huge negative WAR. Two free agents who were signed in the offseason, Colin Poche and Lucas Sims, have already been cut. You can see what the bottom six players have cost the teams on the wins and losses by the WAR calculation. As contributor Andrew Ross so aptly put it, “those moves were subtraction by addition.”
What was built ended up turning into the worst bullpen in Nationals history, and that was hard to do with as bad as the 2019 bullpen performed to start that season. After the April 25th game this year, the Nationals had the 6th best ERA in baseball for starting rotations at 3.41. Today, the Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 4.40 and 6th worst in MLB. A negative 180° turn for the starting rotation and now 1-run worse per game.
Combine that 6th worst starting rotation with a historically bad bullpen, and an inconsistent offense, and you can see why the Washington Nationals have spiraled down to this level. The bats have gone nearly silent other than CJ Abrams, James Wood, and Nathaniel Lowe. There are parts of the team where you see players have not given up. That gives you some hope.
But after we pointed out on social media that the umpires have continued to make some terrible and impactfully bad calls against the Nationals, we caught the audio from the Nats’ dugout where assistant hitting coach Chris Johnson is all over umpire Laz Diaz, but why isn’t manager Dave Martinez on the top step or out of the dugout? Hours after the game, a source told us one player had expressed some anger that coaches aren’t backing up players enough with these umps.
Losing streaks of course bring anger. There are probably more than one player who is upset that coaches aren’t more vocal. Only Johnson has been ejected from a game this season from the coaching staff after he argued with an umpire. Why is it that the assistant hitting coach is the only one who has been tossed this year? Yesterday, Alex Call should have walked to load the bases, but a bad strike call put him in a defensive two strike count and instead hit into an inning ending double-play.
While many of the bad ball/strike calls are attributed to poor framing by the Nats’ catchers, many of the poor calls have nothing to do with that. Umpires have been screwing the Nats for years. Do you think Yankees’ manager Aaron Boone would allow it? The answer is no. But poor umpiring isn’t the main culprit in this losing streak. It is just bad baseball at a time when the defense and base running have actually been good. It is just the basics of giving up too many runs by the pitching and not scoring enough runs on offense. It really is just that simple.
Source has told me that there are no clubhouse issues. Players are still in support of Martinez. Will it stay that way even though players are frustrated? That’s a great question. Sometimes you need new voices.
“We’re frustrated. This was a tough homestand down here. We’ve got to be a little better as a group. We’re doing a lot of good things. We’re just not doing quite enough to win right now.”
— starter MacKenzie Gore said after yesterday’s loss
There, you heard it straight from Gore how he feels. But then you also have the numbers over the years. The statistics tell a story of their own.
Even with the Nats high groundball rates, the BABIP of .285 is only slightly below league average and tied for 17th in baseball. The Nats are 16th in most runs scored. Of course it helps to have Abrams and Wood near a .900 OPS each. They have skewed the numbers up along with Lowe who is just under .750.
Then you have a whole bunch of players in the .500s OPS led by Josh Bell at DH and his .512 OPS. Bell still hasn’t produced a game with more than 1-hit. With walks, he only has six games that he has reached first base safely more than once, but then again he got caught stealing to only net five games. Martinez says that “Bell is very streaky. When he gets going, he’s going to carry us for a while.” — but that hasn’t happened and the season is over 25 percent completed already. Wishing and hoping isn’t a strategy. Bell did change his walk-up song to Pink Pony Club. Whatever you think might work LOL.
“Those guys don’t have to freaking hit homers or anything — just get on-base for us. That’s why we talk about the walks. Some guys have to utilize the bunting. Any way they can to get on-base.”
— Martinez said after yesterday’s loss
Martinez just said you don’t have to freaking hit homers. What?!? If that is the case, why is Bell playing at all. Jacob Young sat yesterday and he has the sixth best OBP on this team. He is the team’s best bunter and the best defender on the current roster. And if you got on the umpire on Saturday on the first bogus strike call on Young, he might have received the walk he earned. How many times have we seen Wood screwed on a pitch at his ankles then watched him expand because he knows it was going to be called a strike. We just saw Alex Call expand on a 3-2 pitch — because why leave your fate up to these umpires if you don’t swing at a close pitch?
Clearly, the offseason acquisitions didn’t add enough to this lineup or the bullpen. The bullpen is putrid and leads baseball in the worst ERA at 7.13, most HBPs (19), and highest WHIP at 1.730. And don’t think for a second that the bullpen has been overused. The Nats starting pitchers have the 4th highest innings in baseball. If anything like we saw with MacKenzie Gore yesterday, he should not have come out for the 7th inning when the score was just 2-1 at the time. He quickly unraveled and the inning ended at 4-1 before the bullpen gave up two more runs to lose 6-1. On the other side, Cardinals’ manager Ollie Marmol pulled his veteran starter at 69 pitches to get a matchup at a crucial time. Did I mention the Cardinals have an 8-game winning streak?
For a team that was thriving with their starting rotation is now suffering with a rotation that is struggling to put up zeroes. Mitchell Parker threw an 8-inning game in April when he didn’t need to pitch so deep into the game. Since then, he has thrown three consecutive duds. Same with Jake Irvin. He pitched into the 8th inning with a 3-0 lead, when he didn’t need to as he started the inning with a pitch count of 92 and appeared to be on fumes. Martinez’s normal schticky answer is “He told me he was good to go.” It is mind-boggling to see how Martinez has handled his greatest assets with that same mindset. That just goes against the grain of how most teams manage.
You hear how Davey is a player’s manager. The guy who wants to be a friend to his players. That sounds like the modern parent who never says “no” and wants to be their kid’s best friend. Who is going to be the adult in the room? Where are the limits? Where is Rizzo in all of this? Someone has to make the tough decisions. Reportedly, both Rizzo and Martinez are playing out their final year of their contracts, and the team has an option on each. Firing either of them makes no sense at this point, even though the fans have their pitchforks out. But you can certainly get some new voices on the coaching staff in the meantime. Figure out Martinez and Rizzo’s fates after the season when the final numbers are tallied.
While there was reason to think and hope that ownership was going to spend more on payroll, they clearly made the decision to not expand the payroll much past the $50 million budget we reported in the offseason. The future of what the Lerner ownership group will do is an unknown. Maybe it is time to sell a chunk of the team to someone who can bring a new vision if the Lerners don’t want to give up their majority control. That might be a good compromise to get someone with a marketing vision to enhance the team’s positive image and drive up spending and attendance simultaneously and take over as the face of the ownership group.
If principal owner Mark Lerner cares enough about this team and isn’t 100 percent committed financially and emotionally, he should find someone else to run the team and take this advice, “Leave this place a little better than you found it,” a quote attributed to Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts.
If the team moves backwards this year in their overall record, the Lerners will be forced to make sweeping changes. But they generally aren’t reactionary. But then again, when was the last time Rizzo DFA’d two new free agents so early in a season? Never. There are first times for everything.
The Nationals are 12-6 this season when they score first in a game. The team has won 17 games in a total. You can do that math to see that they are 5-18 when they don’t score first.
“If we come out there and we can score first, I think you’ll see a different mindset because then you start putting the pressure on a team. They come out and score, it really shuts us down early.”
— Martinez said after yesterday’s loss
At some point analytically, Martinez might come up with a lineup that will produce. Call had an 0-fer weekend and saw his stats tumble. He had been a catalyst for this team, but in losing streaks you often see some of your better hitters go into funks. As Lowe said, “Ideally you get two, three bats going at the same time, we’d be able to change a lot of scoreboards in our favor.” Really you want four or five bats going at the same time. More would be better.
No matter what, the players have to step up because hitting coach Darnell Coles is not the one swinging the bat for them. As of now, Coles is still the hitting coach, and if players want to keep their jobs, they have to produce. The Nats get to bat first on this road trip. A good time to score first and score often. Let’s try that.
