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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.