Photo Sol Tucker/Nats.Talk

Yesterday, Paul Toboni appeared on his weekly radio segment on the Sports Junkies radio show, and said the trade market will start heating up after this weekend’s MLB Draft. But he also said you have to pay a premium if you want a player now versus waiting for the days leading up to the August 3rd trade deadline.

The risk of waiting for teams is that their trade bait player could get injured or have a bad game. Case and point was Antonio Senzatela, a high leverage reliever, who took the loss last night for the Rockies.

But here’s what Toboni could have done weeks and months ago and have tried to promote from within. Yes, that is complicated with position players who you want playing more often. That probably would have been tougher to promote a player like Seaver King, but what about Yohandy Morales in place of the struggling Andres Chaparro? Morales smashed his 20ᵗʰ home run yesterday. What about fireballer Luis Perales for one of the struggling bullpen arms?

This isn’t a guarantee that a Morales over Chaparro roster move would have been an upgrade, but can’t most players hit better than Chaparro’s .157 batting average and .581 OPS? Chaparro doesn’t even give you good defense or baserunning, and the team is giving him favorable matchups against left-handed pitching! The other choice would have been to bring Brady House back.

There is one trade that isn’t aging well as Toboni traded away Jake Bennett for Perales. Why is the question? Bennett looks to be the frontrunner for the top pitcher in the AL Rookie of the Year race. He threw up another scoreless outing yesterday. And there were other questionable trades that weakened the bullpen.

The biggest problem on this team is of course the pitching. We all know that. The team has had a revolving door with the bullpen. But the problem started firmly with Toboni’s decision to trade Jose A. Ferrer, the team’s closer to end the 2025 season, and Toboni didn’t replace him adequately. On top of that, Toboni traded away George Soriano to the Cardinals for Andre Granillo who was DFA’d this week. Arguably, Ferrer and Soriano would have been the two best relievers to anchor the bullpen.

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 4ᵗʰ worst in save conversions at 51.9 percent. And the bullpen is the 3ʳᵈ worst in terms of ERA at 5.04, not the worst. They are also the 4ᵗʰ worst at HR/9 at 1.33. The Nats bullpen is the worst in bullpen K% at only 18.5 percent, which means they rely the most on their defense in pitch-to-contact.

Unless Perales (Triple-A) and maybe even Jarlin Susana (waiting for a rehab assignment) are moved to the bullpen with DJ Herz returning from injury, and possibly Max Kranick who is on a rehab assignment, the only way to immediately upgrade this bullpen is from trades.

A better bullpen and the Nats would have already been considered 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.❞

Well, Toboni, maybe you only have yourself to blame for the state of the union bullpen and the depth of your starting rotation where you are stuck with pitching Miles Mikolas and his 5.78 ERA. Eesh.

Of course, Toboni has to be credited with the great signing of Foster Griffin and the trade for Curtis Mead. Maybe the Bennett and Ferrer trades will work-out in the future if Perales and Harry Ford turn out to be stars. The MacKenzie Gore trade looks like a fleecing for Toboni, and we were very supportive of that trade.

Toboni’s team needs just one more win this weekend to guarantee that the Nats go into the All-Star break at least with a winning record. The Nats are 37-30 (.552) since April 25 and are 12-4-1 in their last 17 series since May 12. The Nationals have 48 wins, the most by a Nationals team prior to the All-Star break since the 2018 Nats also had 48 wins. The Nats have 3 more games this weekend to beat that mark. All of this says, Toboni has done a great job. But can’t this team be better?