You could say it was great while it lasted. All of that optimism we felt at 2-games over .500 on July 26ᵗʰ turned into an emptiness as the Washington Nationals sunk to a season-low 6.0 games under .500 as of today. Why is the date of July 26ᵗʰ significant? That was the day the team said goodbye to Curtis Mead who was traded after that game. The Washington Nationals have not really been the same since. The Nats are 6-14 from that point to today.
That Mead trade just shook the young core of this team and signaled that even though the Nats were in the playoff hunt, a sell-off was on. To be clear, this was supposed to be more of a soft sell-off as the team was looking to move any player who had a contract expiring within the next calendar year, and team president, Paul Toboni, made it clear that the they were not looking to trade CJ Abrams. The Mead trade was one that shocked the team because he had long-term team control. But the team got a frontline starter for him, and those types of deals make sense to trade high on a player like Mead.
This is known as ‘short-term pain for long-term gain’ as Toboni made moves for the future with several relievers and a few promising starters acquired in the trade packages. Nobody was surprised that the team’s best pitcher, Foster Griffin was dealt, and so was first baseman Luis Garcia Jr. Griffin’s contract was up at the end of this season, and an attempt to extend him failed. Garcia’s tenure was up next season.
To make matters spiral further, the team’s best player, James Wood, might be lost for the season as he injured his oblique on August 4ᵗʰ, coincidentally the day after the trade deadline ended. Wood’s injury was said to be a minor strain. Well, Wood still is not pain-free. So who knows if he will return with just 36 games remaining in the season.
While Abimelec Ortiz and Andres Chaparro might be putting up comparable numbers to what we saw from Garcia, he is really the only traded player where the players who have replaced him have filled in as well. Brady House is close to what Mead was putting up. But there is no replacement for Griffin’s incredible production. And nobody could do what Wood was doing. On top of that, Abrams is now in a skid.
To make matters worse, the bullpen has not improved overall with the infusion of three new arms with Yovanny Cruz, Will Dion, and Jake Bird. Yes, Dion has been a plus so far, but Cruz and Bird have been negatives — and they were 50 percent of the return of the Garcia trade. The other 50 percent brought Jack Cebert and Ben Grable to the Nats, and the hope is they were the jewels of that trade.
Hopefully the Nats’ pitching coaches have a positive impact on Cruz and Bird. But who could you say that the pitching staff has improved from the revolving door of a bullpen and starting rotation?
The Opening Day bullpen consisted of RHP Clayton Beeter, RHP Andre Granillo, RHP Cole Henry, RHP Brad Lord, LHP Cionel Pérez, LHP PJ Poulin, RHP Gus Varland, and LHP Ken Waldichuk. The only pitchers still in the bullpen today is Beeter because Lord was put back in the starting rotation. There’s only two starting pitchers left from Opening Day in Cade Cavalli and Jake Irvin.
Seriously, who could you say the pitching coaches have improved? Maybe Cavalli and Andrew Alvarez. Who knows. It’s a subjective call if they improved due to coaching. The team has already used 35 pitchers. Think about that number for a few minutes, and expect that number to increase by the end of the season. Last year, the Nats used 30 pitchers in total.
We know the hitting coaches led by Matt Borgschulte have been amazing. The improvement from the five returning starters from last year as we discussed has been over 20.5 percent in OPS. Those five starters are Wood, Abrams Garcia, Keibert Ruiz, and Jacob Young. You could even throw in a sixth player in House who has not been with the MLB club all year, and he’s gone from a .574 OPS to .697 today. That’s a 21.4 percent increase. No shocker there. Who could you say from the pitching staff has improved by 20 percent or more besides Cavalli from the regulars?
Some would say it’s the quality of players. In some cases of course. Dylan Crews has improved by 10 points, and the only regulars who have decreased are Daylen Lile and Nasim Nunez. Well, Lile was an .845 OPS in a 91 game sample last year, and now he is at a respectable .705 today. Nunez in his 39 games last year was at a .699 OPS, and this year is a .578. That’s an issue. Really the only player of concern offensively. And maybe the most dramatic increase is Chaparro — but that’s from small sample sizes.
Again, all of these offensive improvements can’t be a coincidence. The Nats were 20ᵗʰ last year in runs scored and are 1ˢᵗ this year. Coaching matters, and the pitching coaches need to figure it out. What we’ve seen with the revolving door of pitchers is that they cannot get the job done and are sent back to Triple-A or DFA’d. The pitching staff has been in a constant churn, and they are the reason overall as to why the Nats are not in a playoff spot — and the blame shift probably goes more to the bullpen as well as the bullpen construction.
For some of the focus on the pitching issues, look no further than the 32 blown saves by this 2026 Nats bullpen with 36 games remaining in the season. That is a key part of the pitching failures. But all blown saves are not created equally. Until Saturday night’s blown-save loss, there was a span of the three previous blown saves that occurred in Nats’ wins.
Bad bullpening has been an issue in Washington for years. Until the 2024 White Sox set the modern record of 37 blown saves, the 2021 Nats held the record at 36. People certainly have short memories because the 2019 bullpen finished with a 5.68 ERA. The 2026 bullpen has an ERA of 4.88. So yes, blown saves have been the real issue — but not the way social media has portrayed it.
The sense that many of us got was that the Nationals had the right instructors in-place for offense, defense, and pitching to create analytics and tech to a point that they would be able to replicate what the best hitting and pitching labs were doing. We believe they did that on offense, but not on the pitching side. If you start 30 games you have 29 side bullpen sessions. We’ve seen all the video equipment and tech in-play. So why did we not see more tangible improvement? That’s the million dollar question.
Again, it would be fair to say that the quality of the pitchers just were not good enough, and coaching can’t fix bad players. Yes, that is probably true. But you would still expect more than just a couple pitchers who have improved. The Nats hired almost all new coaches and analytics staff as well as new technology. It feels very 2025 with the pitchers, and that is not a compliment.
The Nats front office has to get this figured out, and would anyone be surprised if there are coaching changes on the pitching and player development side after the season?
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