Sage advice was not followed, and the Nats are paying the price for it in 2026
Published by
Stephen “Ghost” Mears
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Photo by Steve Mears/Nats.Talk
They weren’t even the best laid plans when the 2026 Washington Nationals bullpen was assembled. The top dollar signing was the $1.9 million acquisition of Cionel Perez who has already been DFA’d. The presumptive closer, Jose A. Ferrer was traded in the offseason for a top prospect catcher — and he didn’t even make the Opening Day roster. The team had holdovers of Clayton Beeter, Brad Lord as the only two locks after the Ferrer trade.
Building a roster should only rely on a small sliver of hope and prayers. This finalized bullpen counted on divine intervention and at least two miracles which oddly is also required for sainthood. The opposite of a competent bullpen is an incompetent bullpen. The final assembly of the Opening Day bullpen paraded in mostly waiver claims to piece together another rag-tag attempt.
This is squarely on President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, who looks like a genius in every facet of the team … except for the bullpen. He actually made the bullpen worse the second he traded away Ferrer — and didn’t replace him with a competent closer on a free agent deal.
We kept thinking that Toboni surely had a Plan “B” like when he traded away LHP Jake Bennett for fireballer Luis Perales that maybe he’d be the step-in closer since he was limited to innings. Or maybe top prospect fireballer Jarlin Susana would be the guy. None of that happened. And the bullpen demise is on the failure that what we saw on Opening Day wasn’t a plan at all. It was a tinderbox trap waiting to burn down.
❝We’re not shying away from the fact that we could have a lot more wins right now if our bullpen was throwing a little bit better.❞
— Paul Toboni said on 106.7 The Fan’s Sports Junkies show after Tuesday’s blow-save loss
On October 12, after Toboni was hired, we wrote an article: Best laid plans can go awry; Don’t reinvent the wheel, just build a better one! If you read it then, read it again. If you haven’t read it, read it now. There just is no excuse for what we are seeing with the key blown saves, questionable managerial decisions, and inability to execute.
Like we said, Perez is gone, Granillo is in Triple-A, Henry has been inconsistent and mostly on the IL and in Triple-A, and Waldichuk was lost for the season with an arm injury. The only three surviving names from the Opening Day roster are Beeter, Lord, and Varland. The depth in the merry-go-round just wasn’t there — but the mistake was in the initial construction.
For those who are trying to scapegoat the bullpen issues on the Lerner ownership group, trust me, they didn’t tell Toboni to trade away Ferrer or to trade Bennett or even trade George Soriano for Granillo. And while we couldn’t get a source to give us the payroll budget like we did in the past, we were only told that Toboni didn’t spend his entire budget. Ownership certainly takes the blame for other issues.
And speaking of Soriano, he’s been one of the Cardinals best relievers this year even considering that he has three blown saves all while protecting 1-run leads and two turned into losses. Still, with his 3.03 ERA and 1.133 WHIP, he’d be one of the best relievers on this Nats’ team.
Pitching and Defense Wins Games
The quote “pitching and defense wins games” is a variation of the famous saying, with the baseball version often attributed to Earl Weaver, who said, “The secret of success is good pitching and good defense. If you have that, it doesn’t matter what the other team scores.” That’s why Weaver finished as one of the best managers in baseball history. He valued up-the-middle defense and it worked as he had strong bats with solid defense at the corners in the infield and outfield.
The Nats have the best scoring offense in baseball. While Weaver knew that pitching and defense wins games, he had big bats in his corner outfield and corner infield. It was a formula that got him to the World Series in three consecutive years.
Managerial and Coaching Decisions
In the 8-run lead demise in San Francisco, manager Blake Butera took a lot of the blame. He thought the lead was safe. Until the other team actually waves the white flag, the lead is never safe. Two nights in a row bad defense and bullpen mistakes caused blown save losses.
First off, you never catch a ball on a dive and have your glove pointed down to the ground. You want your glove to be flat to the ground meaning your palm has to be pointed to the side and not with your palm facing the ground. That mistake caused three runs to score on Tuesday. On Wednesday, in a different type of mistake, two unearned scored when a grounder just wasn’t fielded. So the defense played a big part in the losses the past two nights.
The decision last night to pitch to Kyle Schwarber with 2-outs in the 9th inning in a 4-3 lead wasn’t smart — even if it worked out. I don’t say this in hindsight, my timestamped comment was IBB (walk him) and don’t put in any energy to pitch to him. Others vehemently said the same. Let Orlando Ribalta face Chase Crawford righty on lefty and put his energy into that at-bat. The alternative was that if Schwarber gets on or hits and XBH, then you have extended Ribalta’s pitch count which was already at 17 from the day before and 44 in the previous three games (much too high). Butera decided to pitch to Schwarber and it turned into a 10 pitch battle won by Schwarber who walked! Ten pitches wasted to get back to a walk. Ribalta was done, and of course Crawford was pinch-hit for with Derek Hill, owner of two pinch-hit home runs in his career, and make that three now after Richard Lovelady grooved a fastball down Broadway for him.
The amount of mistakes made by Butera is mounting. Over the weekend, he had Ribalta face his brother-in-law in relief. Of course that failed miserably too. Why put your relievers in positions to fail? This isn’t the family softball game on July 4th. These games count. Of course Yandy Diaz was going to win that battle and he did. Put your players in their best positions to succeed. That is the basics of coaching.
Where do you go from here?
Even before Wednesday’s blown save loss, Toboni was on his scheduled weekly radio appearance on 106.7 to say that he was open to making trades.
❝The tricky part is the time of the year. There are certain things you can do at this time of the year. You can be active on waiver claims and DFA’s and that sort of thing. You can look to make trades which we’re doing, and at the same time, it’s a window where teams look to see… pic.twitter.com/OTeX4PGKCu
So we know that Toboni was already pissed off driving home after Tuesday’s blown-save loss because he said it, ❝I was driving home last night so freaking pissed off [after the loss]. It kind of hit me, that it’s a good thing. We have higher expectations than people had coming into the year. ❞ How pissed off do you think he was last night?
Again, this is shared blame that you can place on ownership, Toboni, Butera, the coaches, and of course the players. It was a team loss. If Nasim Nunez doesn’t boot the grounder for two unearned runs, the Nats still should have won in theory, right? Or maybe the Nats win if Schwarber was 4-fingered to intentionally walk. Or maybe this or maybe that. But it really came down to that the Nats built a faulty bullpen in the offseason and that starts right at the doorstep of Toboni.
In a year of bad bullpenning, the Nats bullpen is only the worst in K% and blown saves, now at 23. They managed to have two blown saves in the same game on Tuesday. That’s not good. But the Nats bullpen is only the fourth worst in save conversions at 51.1 percent. Per FanGraphs, the Nats defense is 14th best in baseball if you believe their metrics. And the bullpen is the 4th worst in terms of ERA at 4.90, not the worst. They are also the 4th worst at HR/9. The Nats bullpen is the worst in bullpen K% at only 17.9 percent, which means they rely the most on their defense in pitch-to-contact. Those are a lot of stats that point to the bullpen is the most impactful problem on the team.
Fortunately for Toboni, he built other parts of the team that have exceeded expectations. As someone said, the Nats in 2026 weren’t built to be a Ferrari, they were built to be an economy car, and they put a retread tire on one of the wheels. What happens when you’re driving your family on that long trip? Yep, the retread tire blows. This bullpen blew while the other three tires have done their job. Toboni tried a patch job and it failed. A lesson on roster building.
I said that my goal is to make the Nationals the envy of sport.
To me, that means an organization defined by our relentless pursuit of excellence, strengthened by our connection to each other and fueled by our positive energy. As a result, we become an organization that players and staff are itching to join because they know it’s where they will develop and thrive most; a place that energizes our loyal fans and attracts new ones, and where success is achieved – and sustained – over time.
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