The Washington Nationals dropped the first two games in this Mets series, and yesterday’s game came with a familiar ending with a blown-save-loss. As we know, not all blown saves are the same, but when it’s coupled with a loss — those are the gut-punch games that really hurt.

The bullpen was not fixed even by injecting trade deadline acquired relievers into the MLB roster. Yovanny Cruz and Jake Bird were acquired from the trade with the Yankees. You can click on their stats if you want. The Will Dion trade with Cleveland is showing better results. But in the end, Cruz gave up two runs while only recording one out in the loss.

Today, the Nats have a salvage game to avoid getting swept in CitiField. Not a good situation, and obviously not a good feeling for Nats fans who have seen too many wins given away.

As of now, no changes have been made to the roster to get a fresh arm to Blake Butera‘s bullpen. Truthfully, there aren’t many options right now, other than Eddy Yean who is not eligible to return yet. In another move in Triple-A, the Nats had scheduled Luis Perales to start today, but changed that plan and moved him to the bullpen for Saturday night in Rochester — and he pitched 2.0 scoreless innings giving up two hits, one walk, with five strikeouts.

After this game, the Nationals will fly to Texas for a 3-game series. The Nats have a scheduled day-off on Monday, and that will allow the bullpen to get some much-needed rest. The front office has to decide what they will do with Brad Lord after his start yesterday didn’t even last a full inning. His struggles burned the bullpen as everyone has been overworked.

At some point, the Nats have to get on a winning streak as there are just 36 games remaining in this regular season. If they don’t, the final results might look very disappointing. To avoid a 100 loss season, the Nats need to win three more games. To avoid a 90 loss season, the Nats need to win 13 more games. And to get to a winning season, the Nats would have to go 22-14 to finish the season.

❝Will Dion pitched his [butt] off for us. … To be able to do what he did, it was outstanding. I couldn’t have been happier. He gave us a chance to win that game, and it’s not easy to do that when your starter’s not able to get through the first inning.❞

— said manager Blake Butera

On offense, the Nats have the 1st in MLB for the most runs scored this season at 667 runs, and that is an impressive 5.34 runs per game. With the Nats pitching giving up 4.73 earned runs per game, the difference is really those pesky unearned runs due to the errors. Overall, the Nats have a +19 run differential on the season.

Here is manager Blake Butera‘s bullpen chart:

The FanGraphs WAR chart is now large in its sample size. You can certainly start to extrapolate the numbers for the full-season. The OAA defense stat is now giving us a picture of what the Nats have — and don’t have.

Washington Nationals vs. New York Mets

Stadium: CitiField, Queens, New York
1st Pitch: 1:40 PM EDT
TV: Nationals.TV
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 182 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.

Photo by Sol Tucker/Nats.Talk