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.
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? Interim manager Miguel 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.
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.
Lord was one pitch away from completing a scoreless top of the second when he made his true one and only 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 he 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.
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. Connor 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.
But wait, it only got worse from there. The top of the seventh saw the Brewers score seven more runs off Zach Brzkycy 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.
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 Drew Millas and Jacob Young.