Maybe what’s happening in Washington is a balancing of the sporting universe. If this month indeed marks the end of Alex Ovechkin’s legendary Capitals career, something will have to fill the void of “the Great 8.” And if the baseball gods have a perverse sense of humor, perhaps the Nationals are offering their own punny candidate.

At Nationals Park this week, the eighth inning has not been great for Washington’s beleaguered bullpen. Quite the opposite, actually. On Tuesday night, en route to a 7-6 extra-innings loss to the Cardinals, the Nationals blew an eighth-inning lead for the third straight game. It was their sixth defeat in seven games; only a rally in the bottom of the eighth inning Monday night against St. Louis kept them from Major League Baseball’s longest losing streak.

A pair of 10th-inning RBI doubles from left fielder Thomas Saggese and second baseman JJ Wetherholt off reliever Cole Henry gave the Cardinals their first lead since the top of the third inning. The Nationals could not match them; their only run in the final four innings came on a wild pitch in the 10th. Second baseman Nasim Nuñez struck out to end the game, leaving pinch hitter Jorbit Vivas stranded at third base.

The culprit Tuesday night, however, was a familiar one. Washington entered the game with an 8.10 ERA in the eighth inning, baseball’s third-worst mark. Their relievers’ overall ERA: 6.34, fourth worst. After Nathan Church’s two-out, two-run homer off Nationals reliever Gus Varland tied the game at 5, an announced crowd of 20,036 offered mostly groans.

Now the Nationals (4-7) head to Wednesday’s rubber match against the Cardinals (6-5) with their greatest weakness under even greater scrutiny.

“It stinks,” Nationals manager Blake Butera said. “Yes, a few times now we’ve had leads late in games and just haven’t been able to put teams away.”

Command was an issue from the start. Cade Cavalli, who opened the season as the Nationals’ would-be ace, lamented a “recurring theme” in his third start: He didn’t get ahead in at-bats often enough. He walked four batters. The Nationals finished with 10 overall. Of their 200 pitches thrown, just 118 (59%) were for strikes.

“Ten walks is too many,” Butera said. “You can’t be a team walking 10 people.”

The Nationals’ offense did its part early by plating five runs through the first six innings. Right fielder James Wood led the way, homering for the third straight game, and first baseman Curtis Mead tacked on a solo blast to put Washington ahead 3-2 in the fifth inning. Shortstop CJ Abrams and Mead added run-scoring singles that pushed the lead to 5-2 in the sixth.

But then things fell apart, as they tend to do for the Nationals’ bullpen. Cavalli had departed midway through the fifth inning after an uneven 94-pitch outing in which he held the Cardinals to just two runs, one of them earned.

Paxton Schultz, making his season debut after Washington reinstated him from the 15-day injured list earlier Tuesday, gave the Nationals a clean inning in relief of Cavalli. PJ Poulin followed and allowed one run in a dicey 1 1/3 innings. Church struck the biggest blow, tagging Varland’s 87-mph slider in the eighth, and neither team could find a go-ahead run before extra innings.

“It wasn’t my night,” said Varland, who after posting scoreless outings in his first two appearances has allowed three earned runs in his past two. “I tried to get through with the stuff I had. The slider was playing. Got me some outs. It just didn’t get to a spot when it needed to be.”

“I think we’ve just got to stay on the attack,” Cavalli said. “We’re walking guys, falling behind, so that’s never a good equation. We’ve got to just get better at that.”

The Nationals are looking for more length from their starters, but Butera said their shorter-than-desired outings have not taxed the bullpen. “These guys are pretty well rested,” he said.

Still, he acknowledged, the Nationals need to “get the pitching squared away.” He said he was open to giving other arms a look in high-leverage spots. He also said he didn’t want to overreact.

Even in early April, there was a balancing act to manage. Washington has one of baseball’s worst bullpens. Butera believes it will get better. His job for now is to make sure it gets no worse.

“We all feel it,” Cavalli said. “We’re a team. We win together. We lose together, so we feel it. When guys have to come out earlier than they probably should, it hurts.”