Nats routed by Brewers again to complete season sweep (updated)

The fear when the Nationals traded away their three most reliable relievers before Thursday’s deadline was what would remain in the bullpen for the final two months of an already-lost 2025 season. Interim general manager Mike DeBartolo was willing to take that chance, recognizing Kyle Finnegan, Andrew Chafin and Luis Garcia weren’t going to be a part of the team’s 2026 roster, so he might as well get what he could for the three veterans now.

Those fears, though, were fully realized this weekend when the remnants of the Nats bullpen met the full extent of the Brewers lineup. It wasn’t pretty.

Today’s 14-3 thumping was merely the final blow in a series of blowouts. In getting swept by the team with the National League’s best record, the Nationals were outscored 38-14.

And the Nats weren’t just swept by the Brewers this weekend. They were swept in the season series, outscored 60-23 in six games that more than proved the chasm that currently exists between these two teams.

"That's what a winning team looks like," interim manager Miguel Cairo said of a Milwaukee club that's now 67-44. "They beat us, simple as that."

It’s not entirely the bullpen’s fault. The rotation wasn’t sharp all weekend, with Brad Lord joining Mitchell Parker and Jake Irvin in that department. The lineup, after scoring nine runs Friday night, was held to five total runs on nine total hits in the final two games of the series.

But the bullpen most certainly took games that theoretically were still winnable and turned them into completely unwinnable games. Today’s finale took the cake, with six relievers turning a 3-1 deficit in the sixth inning into a 14-1 deficit by the eighth.

How bad was it? Cairo may not have used a position player on the mound, but he did use a catcher in the field. Riley Adams played the ninth inning at first base, only the second time he’s done that in his career, the first a direct result of Lucius Fox’s on-field vomiting incident April 22, 2022.

The Nationals Park crowd of 20,066 only felt like upchucking while enduring through the home team’s fifth straight loss, this one dropping it to a season-worst 23 games under the .500 mark.

"We've just got to dig deep," catcher Drew Millas said of a young group that has lost 17 of its last 24 games. "We've got to come together as a unit and want each other to do well, want each other to win, want the best for each other."

Given how smoothly his transition from the bullpen back to the rotation had been, it was easy to overlook how tricky that move actually was for Lord. He entered this outing having allowed two total runs over 9 1/3 innings in two starts; more impressively, he did that on 109 total pitches.

Lord wasn’t nearly as efficient this afternoon, and that ultimately cost him more than anything else. The Brewers' “pain-in-the-butt” lineup, as Cairo called it Friday night, made the rookie right-hander work and forced him to throw 27 pitches in the top of the first alone. Only one run crossed the plate (via a ground ball single up the middle), but the tone already had been set.

"I wasn't executing my fastball as much as I was in my last two outings," Lord said. "Threw a lot more balls, worked deep into counts. But they also battled and fouled pitches off. Kind of a combination of both."

Lord was one pitch away from completing a scoreless top of the second when he made his one and only true mistake of the afternoon: an 0-1 changeup that Brice Turang launched over the out-of-town scoreboard in right-center to turn a 1-0 deficit into a 3-0 deficit.

He was solid after that, posting zeros in both the third and fourth. But the lack of efficiency left him with an elevated pitch count of 80, already well beyond his count of 59 last time out. Nevertheless, Lord got the opportunity to retake the mound in the fifth and did retire the first two batters he faced before surrendering a hit to Andrew Vaughn that brought Cairo out of the dugout to make the call to the bullpen.

Thus did Lord depart with three runs allowed in 4 2/3 innings, a subpar stat line. And yet by building up all the way to 92 pitches, he should now be considered fully stretched out and capable of being treated just like any other starter moving forward.

"I feel like I'll definitely be fully built up," he said. "Being able to go 90 pitches today, I feel like, set me up to be built up for the next starts."

Lord at least kept his team in the game. The same couldn’t be said for the parade of arms that came out of the Nationals bullpen in his place. Konnor Pilkington endured through his first shaky relief appearance since getting called up from Triple-A a couple weeks ago, retiring only one of the four batters he faced. Cole Henry then allowed both inherited runners to score without benefit of a hit.

Those two runs scored thanks to Henry’s errant pickoff throw to second, a sacrifice fly to left and catcher Drew Millas’ wild throw to third on a stolen base attempt that included a huge jump by Milwaukee’s Caleb Durbin. It was a textbook example of the difference between these two clubs, one of which does a bunch of little things right to win games, one of which consistently makes rudimentary mistakes to lose games.

"It's about wanting it," Millas said of the team's defensive woes. "It's about wanting to get better, day in and day out, not only during the game but before the game. Just working, working, working at it to be comfortable in those situations. And knowing in big spots, when we've got to make a play, we can reach back into what we've done throughout the day. It's very important."

But wait, it only got worse from there. The top of the seventh saw the Brewers score seven more runs off Zach Brzykcy and Ryan Loutos. Brzykcy loaded the bases on two walks and a single, hit a batter with the bases loaded and gave up two more two-run singles, raising his ERA to 9.00 in the process. Loutos served up a homer to the first batter he faced, raising his ERA to 12.75. He was optioned to Triple-A Rochester after the game.

That extended Milwaukee’s lead to 12-1 and left some in the crowd booing the continued struggles of the home team’s bullpen. Not that the lineup did much in this one to offer a glimmer of hope itself.

Avoiding rookie phenom Jacob Misiorowski, who was placed on the 15-day injured list this morning with a bruised left shin, the Nationals still had no answer for replacement starter Logan Henderson. Henderson, to be fair, entered 3-0 with a 1.71 ERA in four career starts, so he was hardly the typical fill-in starter. Nevertheless, the Nats managed only one run on three hits in five innings against this rookie right-hander, the run scoring on back-to-back hits by No. 8 and No. 9 hitters Millas and Jacob Young.

As they did during Friday night's 14-9 loss, they did show some fight in the bottom of the ninth, scoring two runs and loading the bases after that. But as was the case in the series opener, it was far too little far too late to change the outcome of a weekend series that couldn't have been more lopsided.

"We've got to play still, what, seven more weeks," Cairo said. "And we've got to finish strong. I know we've got fighters in there, and I know they're going to keep playing. We've just got to play the game a little more clean."