The 2027 Nats’ bullpen with some thinking outside the box!

For the Washington Nationals, they have had some horrible bullpens over the years. Don’t let anyone try to tell you that this is a new problem. If you take the Rockies out of the equation, the Nats bullpen has been the worst in MLB for the 10 years of 2015-to-2025. We aren’t even including 2026 in those numbers. And there were some very expensive bullpens that the Nats assembled in those 10 years — and they still were putrid.

This year isn’t close to the worst bullpen season in ERA or WHIP or any other metric you want to use except for blown saves. Okay, the 35 blown saves are really bad this season, and the Nats might set the new ignominious record. With those with short memories, the 2021 Washington Nationals had 36 blown saves as the worst mark in baseball history until the 2024 Chicago White Sox set the current record of 37. These 2026 Nats look like a lock to beat the record.

Who would be a lock for the 2027 Nats’ bullpen? We can tell you in small sample sizes as to who has looked good:

Orlando Ribalta RHP 3.77 ERA
Erik Tolman LHP 0.00 ERA
Will Dion LHP 2.04 ERA
Jared Simpson LHP 0.00 ERA
Brad Lord RHP 3.58 ERA
TBD
TBD
TBD

Some names not on that list from the current bullpen are Clayton Beeter RHP, Riley Cornelio RHP, Max Kranick RHP, Luis Perales RHP, PJ Poulin LHP (currently on the IL), and Matt Waldron RHP. You would probably say that Waldron looks the best of that group. He has a 0.00 ERA in 3-games with the Nats this season. Waldron is team controlled through the 2030 season.

Minor leaguers who are not on that list include Jake Bird, Yovanny Cruz, Joe Glassey, Ben Grable, Cole Henry, Zak Kent, Wyatt Mills, Kyle Nicolas, Carson Palmquist , Paxton Schultz, Gus Varland, and Eddy Yean. All of them are on the 40-man roster except for Glassey and Grable. And there are others too.

President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, has really beefed up the minor league bullpen system through the draft, trades, and undrafted free agents. It took Toboni a while to figure it out that the Nats’ relievers in the minor leagues was very light.

On top of that, what if the Nats thought outside of the box and converted Jake Irvin and fireballer Jarlin Susana to bullpen arms?

Here is what Keith Law (The Athletic) had to say about Susana which is what I have been saying for three years:

“Jarlin Susana sat 99-101, topping out at 101.6 mph, and he threw a handful of vicious sliders at 87-88, firing them at the back feet of some left-handed hitters to generate helpless swings. He still has no third pitch at all, and the delivery still puts a lot of stress on the shoulder, both of which point to a more likely future in the bullpen.”

“The stuff is wow, and he could just miss enough bats to stick around as a twice-through-the-order starter even with fringy command and nothing for lefties.”
— Law wrote in that article

You don’t even have to squint to see that Susana could be Aroldis Chapman or maybe even Mason Miller. The value of closers is immense. They save you from those blown-save-losses. And they now cost you about as much as a No. 2 starting pitcher if you acquire them in free agency. If you acquire a top closer via trade, they might cost you the top-2 prospects in your system which is about what the Padres paid to acquire Miller from the A’s.

So why wouldn’t you commit to Susana now, and build your bullpen internally, and then spend your offseason wad on two starting rotation pieces, and a key bench bat or two.

Okay, yes it is risky to count on Susana. But as the Dodgers and other teams have learned, costly free agents like Edwin Diaz aren’t necessarily a lock. And you never know when a future Hall of Famer like Craig Kimbrel will run out of gas. That’s what makes Chapman so unique as far as Hi Lev bullpen arms go. He’s been doing it since 2010. Coincidentally, Kimbrel and Chapman both debuted in the same year.

Fans want money thrown at building a new bullpen. How did that work for the prior front office? They tried that many times. It took extreme creativity in the 2019 World Series season to create what was essentially a 2-man “A” bullpen of Sean Doolittle and Daniel Hudson with a “B+” bullpen of Fernando Rodney and Wander Suero. The rest were “B-” and “F” bullpen arms. They were so bad that in the regular season of 2019 that their ERA was 5.68. That is not a misprint. The 2026 bullpen ERA is currently 5.02 after today’s meltdown.

Part of the problem is use and usage, coaching, player development, and some of the players just are not good enough. If we can use Riley Cornelio‘s appearance yesterday when facing Sean Murphy in a righty/righty matchup, he threw him three straight sliders and hung one that was hit for a 3-run homer. But the scouting report said that Murphy hits 4-seam fastballs the worst of any offerings. And Cornelio didn’t throw one. There were 2-outs when the hanging slider was hit over the fence. A costly mistake.

So yes, it’s broken, but when you’re pitching position players out of the bullpen and players who shouldn’t be in MLB, what do you expect?