{"id":19687,"date":"2026-06-26T09:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T13:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=19687"},"modified":"2026-06-26T09:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T13:36:09","slug":"this-weeks-bullpen-catastrophe-may-be-the-deaths-knell-for-the-seasons-playoff-aspirations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=19687","title":{"rendered":"This Week’s Bullpen Catastrophe May be the Death’s Knell for the season’s playoff aspirations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I like Lord, but man he got pummeled this week. Photo via threads.com IG<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s always fun when Philadelphia comes into town. Three of their best hitters are former Nats (Turner, Harper, and Schwarber) and a massive number of DC area residents are PA transplants more than willing to scarf up cheap seats, drink beer, and make noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week’s trip though had a somewhat ominous feeling. That’s because this week may finally have been the breaking point for the cobbled together bullpen for this erstwhile wild card contender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • On Tuesday, the bullpen gave up three in the 8th and eight in the 9th to blow two leads in two innings.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • On Wednesday, they gave up 2 in the 9th to blow another lead.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • On Thursday, they turned a 5-0 lead into a 10-5 loss, this time giving up five in the 9th, including a F-You homer from or former prodigal son Harper.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    That’s, not good. Those are debilitating losses for an offense that did its job and demoralizing for starters who put the team in position to win. Nearly every guy in the bullpen over the last three days showed the kind of ineptitude that would lead to demotions or outright releases on a real team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    • Tuesday it was Lovelady for 3, Lord for 6, and Schultz for 2<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Wednesday it was Ribalta and Lovelady for 1 apiece<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Thursday it was Parker for 3, Varland for 5<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      The only relievers not named for ineptitude this week were Poulin (the opener on Tuesday who also got a hold Wednesday) and our closer Beeter (who blew saves on both Tuesday and Thursday but somehow avoided having any ERs). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Fun fact, and a reason I began writing this post: I read someone on twitter point out that the Nats relievers now have had 48 Save Opportunities this season and have blown HALF of them. Half! Mitchell Parker has as many blown saves by himself as the entire Houston Astros team this season, and our closer Beeter isn’t far behind, having padded his stats this week. Pretty awesome statistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n\n\n\n

      I’ve been kind of beating the drum on this bullpen for a while, having been thrown together primarily with MLFAs, Waiver claims, and low-level trade acquisitions. Somehow the team has remained above .500 for weeks thanks to an amazing offense in spite of the pitching staff deficiencies. But this week, it finally collapsed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There’s five 40-man relievers in AAA right now, four of them down there because they weren’t even as good as the crew we have in the majors. Henry has a 6.00 ERA in the majors this season, Granillo a 9.64 ERA, Kent a 6+ ERA in limited innings, and Schulz at 5.87. We also have a just-acquired waiver claim in Justin Lawrence, who may be next in line for the firing squad if the team decides to demote one of these guys before the weekend series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      On top of that, the team has spent most of the last 2 months grabbing every MLFA they could find looking for reinforcements. This team now has 35 MLFAs in its system signed this year, all up and down the system, many of them arms. They’ve got 26yr old MLFAs in rookie ball, they’ve got Indy league castoffs up and down the system, they’ve got a 29yr old MLFA from the Mexican leagues in AA. All looking for found gold apparently. Havn’t really found it yet, but we’re running out of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Is this week’s results the end of our Wild Card dreams? Well, no, but they’re not looking good. We lost 3 games to a Wild Card competitor and now sit 3 games out of the last wild card spot. We can get healthy fast; our next six games are away to AL East competition that normally would be competitive, but are not this year (Baltimore and Boston). However, these two teams are not easy to beat, especially on the road. Then we host Pittsburgh and Houston, both hovering around .500 like us. Our last series before the ASB is hosting the Yankees, which could be a telling series to take us into the break. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      If this team scuffles through its next few series, then gets pulverized by the Yankees, that could be the signal to the front office to Sell, Sell, Sell. We’ll see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      It’s always fun when Philadelphia comes into town. Three of their best hitters are former Nats (Turner, Harper, and Schwarber) and a massive number of DC area residents are PA transplants more than willing to scarf up cheap seats, drink beer, and make noise. This week’s trip though had a somewhat ominous feeling. That’s because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minorspitching","category-natsgeneral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19688,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19687\/revisions\/19688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}