Modern baseball is far different from the days when a starter might pitch both ends of a doubleheader. Wilbur Wood of the Chicago White Sox famously started both games of a doubleheader against the New York Yankees on July 20, 1973, but he couldn’t match the feat of Jack Scott who pitched two complete games on June 19, 1927.

These days, and especially in the postseason, the bullpens are asked to cover more and more innings as analytics has changed the strategy in the game. The Washington Nationals did not make the postseason due in large part to their poor bullpen.

This offseason, the bullpen will be a major focus of the Nats’ president of baseball operations, Paul Toboni. He got an early start on improving the relievers in the farm system by moves in his first draft and signing undrafted amateur free agents. He then added more relievers at the trade deadline for the farm system and the MLB roster. Toboni specifically targeted acquisitions of relievers. Recently, he said that his strategy isn’t necessarily to go after high leverage closers this offseason.

“I wouldn’t want to pigeonhole us into just going after [relief pitchers] that have 9ᵗʰ inning experience. Not to say it’s not important — it’s just that there are countless relievers across the league that aren’t throwing in the 9ᵗʰ inning that are really good arms that we’d love to have.”

— Toboni said at the end of the season

There are numerous examples of finding set-up relievers and converting them to closers. Many relievers begin their careers as starting pitchers and transform into relievers. The best relievers work their way into closer spots. Few are drafted as closers like Drew Storen, a first round pick of the Nats in 2009. For an example of the former, look no further than Bryan Baker‘s career, and how the Tampa Bay Rays turned him into their star closer.

After the 2025 season, Tampa’s closer, Pete Fairbanks, headed to free agency, and the Rays went to Baker in a risky move that ended up paying huge dividends. Baker struggled to a 4.75 in his two full months with Tampa. Something told them he was better than that, and the team didn’t replace Fairbanks.

The Nats traded away their presumptive closer, Jose A. Ferrer, in the offseason, but the Nats didn’t have anyone who stepped up like Baker — even though there were multiple opportunities for several relievers to grab that job. It didn’t happen for the Nats. The way the two teams approached their bullpens in the offseason were similar although the end-results were like night-and-day polar opposites.

Through an under-the-radar trade, Tampa Bay acquired Baker in a 2025 trade deadline deal with the Orioles where he was a set-up man and middle-innings reliever. This year, Baker became an All-Star with the Rays and matched Cleveland’s closer Cade Smith‘s 41 saves this season. Baker pitched 62 ^_1/3 innings with a 1.44 ERA in the regular season and closed-out all three wins in a sweep against the Yankees in the ALDS via 3.0 hitless innings with four strikeouts.

How did Baker become so dominant? Credit to analytics where they increased Baker’s usage of his changeup and changed the shape of the pitch. The changeup became his second-most used pitch this season at 43.8 percent while throwing his fastball (52.9%) as his main pitch, and dropping his slider usage to just 3.3 percent from 25.0 percent last year. Baker threw the changeup 22.2 percent of the time last season in Baltimore. His fastball/changeup combo has a combined .153 batting average this season with the changeup as his main putaway pitch.

This is where the Nats have to take some of their better arms and put them through the pitching lab approach as well as working on the mental side of their game. With relievers, it is as much about pure stuff as it is having the steady heartbeat. As they say, you would never want a surgeon with a shaky hand.

If you listen to Toboni, he didn’t mince words when he said, “… We have a number of pitchers on our staff that are at inflection points in their career. … We want their process of really developing this offseason to be really dialed in. …” A career inflection point is a pivotal moment where the message is that jobs are on the line because the old ways were not working. While we don’t know what exit interviews looked like going into the offseason, it sounds like “develop” and improve or expect to be gone.

Some relievers won’t be given a chance to improve due to the roster shuffle. Some will be DFA’d in a roster squeeze once Toboni needs 40-man roster spots. Others will come into Spring Training and will have to compete for jobs. There are several relievers on the current 40-man roster whose future in the Nats’ employment could be in jeopardy. Any reliever with an ERA over 4.20 didn’t make our cut. And just look at some of the WHIP and WAR numbers to go with it.

Many relievers on this list are already gone or were taken off of the 40-man roster. Last week, Justin Lawrence and Max Kranick filed for minor league free agency. Others left the organization during the season. The list is long and a few more will be gone as stated once roster spots are needed:

Beyond Erik Tolman, Orlando Ribalta, Will Dion, Brad Lord, Jack Sinclair, and Riley Cornelio, who else would compete for a bullpen spot? Maybe PJ Poulin if healthy. Do you turn Jarlin Susana into a bullpen arm? What about Josiah Gray whose final appearance of 2026 was a save for the Nats. So many questions and so few answers at this point in time.

Fix the bullpen to a league average, and you have a real shot at better times ahead. This year’s Nats bullpen finished at a 4.99 ERA, and getting to league average would mean improving by 0.93 to the league average of a 4.06 ERA.

The Nats ran their bullpen with a closer by committee system for the 2026 season. That generally doesn’t work. They had 16 relievers who earned saves during the season, one from the MLB record of 17 set last year by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Again, Toboni has a plan, and he came from a Boston system that was near the top of baseball for best bullpens.

¹ Cover photo by Andrew Lang, and pictured from left to right: Desmond McGowan (partially obscured), Devin Pearson, Justin Horowitz (not fully visible), and Paul Toboni.