A focused analysis on the Washington Nationals’ record of 59-61 is that the team needs to go no worse than 14-28 to end the team’s streak of five consecutive 90-loss seasons. The 2026 Nats are on a 79-83 pace right now. Given that projection, the team should go 20-22 to finish this season in the final 42-games. But you have to play the games.

Maybe the first sign of being humbled after last week’s 7-game losing streak is that the talk of playoffs has dissipated, and has now been replaced by only talking about the process of getting wins.

While the Washington Nationals are 4.5 games out of the Wild Card picture, their playoff odds per BaseballReference.com is down to 13.7 percent. While those are not great odds, the goal should be to finish with the best record that they can achieve.

Per BaseballReference’s Pythagorean W-L, their calculation is that the team could have a record of 62-58. The ‘pythagorean’ stat was developed by Bill James based on what he considered the luck factor, and is calculated by a function of the team’s runs scored and runs allowed.

Even if the Nats had that 62-58 pythagorean record, they would still be 1.5 games out of the Wild Card. Maybe selling off Luis Garcia Jr. and Foster Griffin at the trade deadline was a blessing by disguise.

Through deadline trades, team President, Paul Toboni, added three MLB-ready relievers right into their bullpen with Yovanny Cruz, Will Dion, and Jake Bird.

On top of those moves in the MLB bullpen, there are two more relievers who rank as top minor leaguers per Scout the Statline with the newly acquired Joe Glassey ranked 2ⁿᵈ and Ben Grable ranked 6ᵗʰ.

Add relievers Clayton Beeter, Tom Cosgrove, Max Kranick, Brad Lord, Orlando Ribalta, and Eddy Yean to those other names. On top of that, Toboni did a waiver claim last week on RHP Wyatt Mills. That is a dozen names, and there are several more 40-man relievers who are not on this list, or injured like PJ Poulin. What if Toboni repurposed Luis Perales and/or Jarlin Susana as a reliever? That would potentially make it 15 relievers.

For the first time in a while, the bullpen has looked competent in the past 40 innings even though they had two blown saves. None of the past three blown saves has resulted in a loss. That is progress.

All of this hopefully leads to a great bullpen in the years ahead. In the near-term, Toboni most likely won’t spend a dime on new relievers in free agency in the coming offseason. Expect that he will spend the bulk of his budget on a top starting pitcher.

The rest of the roster will be getting the most out of the position players. After a sweep of the Cincinnati Reds over the weekend, do you feel some renewed optimism after this new lineup, short of the injured James Wood, scored 20 runs in the sweep.

Hopefully all of this leads to better times ahead.