WASHINGTON \u2014 These Washington Nationals are not their predecessors, because their fans showed up to Nationals Park this week and finally decided to dream.<\/p>\n
They are not their predecessors because those fans had their faith rewarded on Monday with a meaningful kick to the Philadelphia Phillies\u2019 rear. They are not their predecessors because they scored nine runs on Tuesday despite James Wood going 0-for-5, while CJ Abrams was scratched from the lineup with left side tightness. They are not their predecessors because their predecessors were never two games over .500 this deep into the season.<\/p>\n
But they are also not yet descendants of the old era, nor on the other end of a completed rebuild, as the final two innings of Tuesday\u2019s 14-9 loss to the Phillies communicated. They led 5-0, then the bullpen coughed it up. They reclaimed an 8-6 lead entering the ninth. The bullpen coughed that up, too.<\/p>\n
The Nationals were a strike away from catharsis when Brad Lord threw a belt-high fastball to Trea Turner, who squared it up and singled. In a section down the first-base line, a sea of shirtless fans chanted expletives at the Phillies but quieted a bit when Brandon Marsh tied the game with a two-run blast on a sweeper that caught too much plate. They booed Bryce Harper and chanted that his team sucked, then watched as he and the next seven Phillies who came to bat reached base.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout as frustrating of a loss as we\u2019ve seen, as I\u2019ve ever been a part of,\u201d said manager Blake Butera, who made almost an identical proclamation when the Nationals blew an eight-run lead two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat hurts,\u201d Lord said of the loss. \u201cUse this as fuel to go out there and be better the next time, be better for my teammates, and just look to get better in every aspect from it.\u201d<\/p>\n
This series means something to these players and fans, making it different than every series the Nationals have played since the rebuild began in the middle of 2021. It\u2019s also served as a reminder that the Nationals are ahead of schedule, a nice story filled with promising bits and pieces, including an offensive foundation. If it was meant to scan as a Hallmark movie, the Phillies made sure to burn the film and replaced it with reality.<\/p>\n
Butera said the Nationals \u201cneeded\u201d to bounce back from this loss, and that he was \u201ccurious\u201d to see if they would. That is what good teams do; they expect to improve without treating it as some sort of certainty.<\/p>\n
That undercurrent of curiosity seemed rooted, in part, in a bullpen that has to pitch better if this team is to truly compete in the National League.<\/p>\n
At the end of April, the Nationals bullpen had a National League-worst 5.11 ERA. The coaching staff insisted that the fix was straightforward: Pitchers needed to get ahead in the count more. As they did, better results followed. But opponents seem to have adjusted, which leaves the bullpen (7.39 ERA in June) searching for a solution to a new problem that Butera outlined Tuesday: They cannot put hitters away with two strikes.<\/p>\n
J.T. Realmuto\u2019s go-ahead double in the eighth came with two strikes. Turner\u2019s ninth-inning single that started the Phillies game-winning rally came with two strikes. A whole host of problems have come in such situations over the last month.<\/p>\n
Unlike their pitchers\u2019 inability to get ahead, this issue feels harder to fix.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou work on making better pitch with two strikes, make sure we are starting that pitch as a strike, ending as a ball,\u201d Butera said. \u201cWhen we\u2019re ahead in counts, we need to understand that the hitters\u2019 backs are against the wall, and we gotta make a pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n
The old regime did not develop high-octane relievers. The new regime did not spend money on adding any in free agency, because that\u2019s not what teams that are projected to lose around 95 games do.<\/p>\n
The Nationals bullpen has the lowest whiff rate in the majors by a considerable margin<\/a>. They are on pace to become one of just six teams<\/a> in the pitch tracking era (since 2008) to miss less than 20 percent of bats with two strikes. The bullpen ranks 30th in FanGraphs\u2019 Stuff+ metric,<\/a> which more or less measures the nastiness of a pitcher\u2019s arsenal. There are 82 pitchers in MLB who have thrown at least five innings and sit at least 97 mph, and the Nationals employ none of them<\/a>.<\/p>\n There is no obvious solution on the way. The team is slow-playing it with well-regarded prospect Luis Perales, and has not pigeonholed him in as a reliever. DJ Herz suffered a setback this week. The Nationals have had velocity gains throughout the minor leagues, but didn\u2019t inherit much to begin with, which is partially why president of baseball operations Paul Toboni spoke of their pitching development as something that would take some time.<\/p>\n Still, the Nationals\u2019 offense has only improved as the season has progressed. Their defense went from one of MLB\u2019s worst units to one of its better ones. So they aren\u2019t going to stop hoping now. They are not, after all, their predecessors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 These Washington Nationals are not their predecessors, because their fans showed up to Nationals Park this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2397],"tags":[5,4,144,25,4216,40,71],"class_list":["post-734346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia-phillies","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-philadelphiaphillies","tag-phillies","tag-washington-nationals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116805273076629168","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}