Photo by Sol Tucker/Nats.Talk

To steal and adapt from Mark Twain, ❝The reports of [the Nats] demise have been greatly exaggerated.❞ After a 4-game losing streak this past week with multiple blown saves, it felt to some that the Washington Nationals might have buried themselves. It turns out that the Nats found second life and won this weekend series in Baltimore with some encouraging pitching, and strength from the bat of Luis Garcia Jr. The Nats first baseman is en fuego.

Exactly a week ago, Garcia was batting .259 with a decent .743 OPS. With seven hits between yesterday and today and six home runs in six days, Garcia’s batting average is now .279 with an .850 OPS which is just behind James Wood (.887) and CJ Abrams (.865).

In the first week of May, Garcia’s bat was slumping and so was his glove. He was negative WAR at -0.3, and now he is +1.3 and only trailing Wood, Abrams, and Keibert Ruiz for position player WAR as Garcia just passed Jacob Young. The other thing is Garcia has been playing solid defense for the past six weeks.

❝It’s work that we put in every day and in the cage, and right now, Keibert Ruiz and I have a competition going for the most walks, so I think that’s also kind of motivation to work on that.

… I think it started like three weeks ago during a hitters meeting. They were going over who had the least amount of walks and most contact, so that was the two of us. So the hitting coaches came up with the competition.❞

— Garcia said after Sunday’s game

As Garcia showed that when he is willing to take walks, pitchers have to pitch him in the zone where he is crushing balls. No Garcia didn’t take a walk this weekend, but he pushed counts. He had three of his 11 walks this season in the previous series. This weekend it was about trying to get to favorable counts like he did today. He drove in five RBIs of the Nats six runs today on the strength of two home runs and a double.

With this en fuego week, Garcia should win NL Player of the Week honors. He batted .526 with a .591 OBP and a 2.170 OPS. Most amazing might be three walks to only one strikeout. And as aforementioned, six home runs in six games is incredible.

The Nats are back to 1-game over .500 as they head to Boston for a 3-game series. With this weekend series win, the Nats are also back in the Wild Card hunt. With the calendar ready to turn to July on Wednesday, does that change anything with President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, and his approach leading up to the August 3rd trade deadline?

❝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 how the next three, four, five weeks go before the [trade] deadline (on Aug. 3rd).

It’s difficult to make trades at this time, but it doesn’t mean that we’re not going to try. We’re going to have a bunch of conversations and see where it goes.❞

— Paul Toboni said on 106.7 The Fan’s Sports Junkies show on Wednesday

What the Nationals do in Boston will go a long way in determining what Toboni’s thinking is as the team approaches the trade deadline. It could be a chance we see an early July trade. That would certainly be a positive to get some help for manager Blake Butera‘s roster.

As of this writing, the Nats offense is still leading the Majors in runs scored. The bullpen is the glaring weakness. An upgrade to the pitching is what needs the immediate attention, and that’s where you would expect a trade to be made to improve the bullpen. There will also be some names that could fit in position players on some salary dumps.

In a year of bad bullpenning in MLB, the Nats bullpen stats are only the worst in K% and blown saves, now at 25. But the Nats bullpen is only the fifth worst in save conversions at 51.9 percent. And the bullpen is the 3rd worst in terms of ERA at 5.03, not the worst. They are also the 4th worst at HR/9 at 1.38. The Nats bullpen is the worst in bullpen K% at only 18.1 percent, which means they rely the most on their defense in pitch-to-contact.

Speaking of team defense, the Nats defense is 12th best in baseball if you believe the FanGraphs metrics. Yes, the Nationals have the most errors by a wide margin at 68. Some good news, the defense is trending in the right direction.

Fix the bullpen and you might become a serious contender. As Toboni said, ❝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.❞

With today’s win, the Nats are currently en route to Boston on their Delta charter jet — and it’s a happy flight. They are set to land just after 8pm. The team has Miles Mikolas, Cade Cavalli, and Andrew Alvarez set for this series before their day-off on Thursday.

Toboni is on the clock for trades, and don’t forget his first draft at the helm of the Nats is just two weeks from today.