The Washington Nationals had a 2-0 lead going into the 9ᵗʰ inning. The pitching was excellent to that point. The Nats received 6.0 scoreless from starter Andrew Alvarez and 2.0 zeroes from Clayton Beeter out of the bullpen. In the final frame, the wheels came off the bus, and the Marlins scored six runs to put a blown-save-loss on the Nats bullpen.

That was the Nats bullpen’s 35ᵗʰ blown save of the season, and two from tying the 2024 Chicago White Sox record of 37. The previous record was by the 2021 Washington Nationals with 36.

With an overused bullpen, manager Blake Butera went to Max Kranick for the 9th inning to get the save. The Marlins tested him right away with a perfect bunt single. Then Kranick put two more runners on-base to load the bases with one out. Butera went to the lefty Tom Cosgrove who plunked the first batter in a lefty-lefty at-bat. That scored one run to make the score 2-1.

The next batter who Cosgrove faced, hit a sacrifice fly that tied the game, and on that same play, Andrew Pinckney, who subbed into center field, caught the ball and threw to third base with urgency. Pinckney missed his mark, and the ball sailed well over the head of the cut-off man and went into the dugout allowing two more runs to score and make the score 4-2 for the Marlins. Third baseman Jorbit Vivas didn’t try to block the throw, and Cosgrove didn’t back up the throw in time. Just poorly played all around with three mistakes on one play. Pinckney was charged with the throwing error.

In the postgame presser, Butera addressed the Pinckney throw, the bullpen issues, and the blown save. But there was no question as to why he didn’t use Will Dion who was his freshest reliever. Per reports, Dion will be the opener tomorrow, but why not pitch him an inning today since he hadn’t pitched in over three days?

This was an horrific defensive day by Vivas who had a fielding error already in the game. He could have had another error when a grounder (112 mph) was not fielded by him, and that was ruled a hit after he couldn’t field that hard smash. Vivas had an inexcusable base running blunder on third base earlier in the game where a comebacker to the third baseman caught Vivas straying off the base. Shocking, right?

All in all, the Marlins weren’t done hitting Cosgrove around. He then gave up a 2-run homer to make it a final of 6-2. Not only a blown-save-loss, that was an absolute 9ᵗʰ inning meltdown.

Yes, the bullpen had been used hard. But as mentioned above, Dion had not pitched in over three days. So why didn’t he come in? These are all questions that only manager Blake Butera has the answers. In back-to-back games, Cosgrove took the blown-save. This is one of those gut-punch embarrassing losses and comes one day after a great Nats walk-off win.

All of the hard work by Alvarez and Beeter were wasted. If you are looking for a positive, Alvarez pushed his ERA down to a very respectable 3.47 for the season. Both deserved better. Most of the Nats players deserved better.

This was just another winnable game that was just handed away. If Vivas blocks that throw from Pinckney with two outs, the game stays tied at 2-2. Who knows what happens from there. To just hand the game to the Marlins on bad baseball just hurts. That put an end to the Nats modest 3-game winning streak.

Photos by Marideth Sandler/Nats.Talk