Whether you use statistics or visual observation, the Washington Nationals bullpen in the 2025 season stunk. They were putrid, rotten, and embarrassing at times. It was the worst in Nationals’ history — and that’s saying a lot given some horrific seasons in Nats’ history. The prior administration just struggled to build good bullpens — even in the 2019 World Series season. Sorry for giving you those flashbacks to Mr. Infinity aka Trevor Rosenthal, Kyle Barraclough, and others.
Even if you believe the best laid plans can go awry, the 2025 bullpen was never planned well. It was an after-thought on a collision course with disaster in the offseason. Anyone with baseball sense knew that when the plan was to rely on Lucas Sims (13.86 ERA), Colin Poche (11.42 ERA), and Jorge Lopez (6.57 ERA) that the plan was destined to fail. They were three of the four offseason free agents signed with only Kyle Finnegan (4.38 ERA) working out. By the way, Finnegan went to the Tigers in a trade and pitched in 16-games and improved to a 1.50 ERA. That itself was an indictment on how bad things were in Washington. So part of it was the player himself, part was the bad defense, and much of it was the coaching and bad decisions.
The Nats’ relievers finished the 2025 season at a 5.59 combined ERA which was the worst in baseball by .41 runs per game on average. The worst in Nats’ history. There was a time they were over 6.00 which at least shows they finished the season better than where they began. From August 10 to Sept 10, the Nats had the best bullpen in baseball.
Not counting position player Amed Rosario who pitched an inning in relief, 11 relievers used by the Nats in 2025 are off the roster. It was like a revolving door, and if you didn’t know better –you would think it was self-sabotage. The bullpen would screwup right there on Opening Day against the Phillies. The Nats had the lead until the ball was given to Sims who had a blown save in his first appearance then Poche took the loss in extra innings. The second game of the season, Poche took the loss. That became a pattern.
When you consider how bad the bullpen was, ex-manager Dave Martinez shifted the burden and just kept pushing harder on his starting pitchers. The Nats starting rotation was the 7th best in baseball with a 3.55 ERA through April 23, even though the bullpen was allowing too many inherited runners to score on the starter’s ERAs.
The team was a respectable 11-13 at that point on April 23 — even with the terrible bullpen and defense that were last in baseball. Seven of those losses were from the bullpen of the 13 losses at that juncture. It would just keep getting worse — and eventually the bad bullpen would drag the starting rotation down with them — and the whole team.
If the Nats had a great bullpen like the Boston Red Sox with their 3.41 ERA, that would have saved the Nats over 2.10 runs per 9.0 innings of bullpen work. If incoming President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, who came from the Red Sox, could just build that type of bullpen, then this team would see huge improvements. Build a better than league average defense with an improved bullpen, and this team might actually be good.
This is simply a getting back to the basics approach. This should be the focus and maybe some of the pieces are in-place to do that with the current roster. But this team really could use a traditional fireman type of reliever to come in to rescue a starter and another back-end high leverage set-up man.
The current 40-man roster has nine relievers now with Clayton Beeter, Julian Fernandez, Jose A. Ferrer, Cole Henry, Sauryn Lao, Konnor Pilkington, PJ Poulin, Orlando Ribalta, and Jackson Rutledge. But we don’t know if more starters will be part of the 2026 bullpen such as Mitchell Parker, who finished his 2025 season in the bullpen. While we believe Brad Lord will be in the starting rotation, at this point, nothing is a given. The 2026 Opening Day bullpen will have eight relievers. Figure you take six from the aforementioned names, and two from free agency.
When people wondered why Patrick Corbin looked better in Texas than D.C., you have to look at his defense, his catchers, and the bullpen that relieved him in 2025. Corbin’s ERA improved from 5.62 in 2024 to 4.40 this year. But underlying numbers told you that Corbin was really the same pitcher when you compared his FIP of 4.41 to 4.25. The Nats pitched Corbin to 5.46 innings per start, and the Rangers kept him at an average of exactly 5.0 innings per start, rarely exposing him to the third time through the opposing batting order during his first two months of the season. Martinez always wanted more with Corbin. The Rangers got more with less. Knowing when to pull a starter is part of the strategy. It helped that Texas had the 5th best bullpen in baseball this year. Texas was far from perfect, they had problems in other areas.
Too often Nats’ players went to other teams and shined in the short-term. But Martinez will tell you that “It’s never on the coaches.” That was laughable then and now. Martinez was given a terrible bullpen that even Bruce Bochy wouldn’t have been able to do better with. But Martinez allowed the bad bullpen to take down his starting rotation by pushing harder on them. You don’t shift the burden. You deal with the problem. Pushing the starters just made the situation worse. Imagine if they actually coached up players to get more out of them? Finnegan’s improvement was seen in his FIP also as that improved from 3.65 to 1.97 in Detroit.
Changes with Finnegan in Detroit:
- Pitch usage: Finnegan shifted to throwing his splitter more than his fastball, a big change from his time with the Washington Nationals.
- Strikeout rate: His swinging-strike rate jumped from 9.2% with the Nationals to 14.3% with the Tigers. His strikeout-to-walk ratio also improved.
- Pitch shape: The Tigers helped Finnegan to improve the shape of his splitter and his slider
- Results: His ERA, WHIP, and batting average “against” all improved after joining the Tigers, and he was dominant for the team in August.
Some simple tweaks worked with Finnegan. So coaching does matter. Imagine that. This will be part of the challenge for Toboni and new manager Blake Butera as well as his pitching coaches (TBD) and the analytics group. Part of this is the pitching lab approach.
“The top bullpen arms traded at the Deadline — Mason Miller, Jhoan Duran, Tyler Rogers — have been stellar. But Kyle Finnegan, however, has been spotless. After registering a 4.38 ERA across 39 innings with the Nationals, Finnegan has thrown 13 1/3 scoreless innings with Detroit. That has included three hits, three walks, 18 strikeouts and four saves in as many chances.”
— MLB.com analyst Brian Murphy said at the end of August
That should be an indictment against the prior administration. Maybe Finnegan tired at the end, approaching the finish line. But his August helped to get the Tigers into the postseason. And Finnegan and Corbin highlighted what we had been espousing all along that you need a competent bullpen, defense, and catchers to set the right foundation for the team — and then coach them up!
These aren’t even expensive fixes. These are commonsense fixes.
