The Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies have already given baseball fans a reminder of how cruel October can be. In two Wild Card games, the teams combined for three blown saves, and two of those ended in losses. That kind of collapse is the sort you don’t forget fast.
Atlanta’s bullpen had been one of the club’s strengths back in April, but the latest debate centered on the move to Dylan Lee in a 3-1 game against lefties Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper. Both homered, and a two-run lead vanished in less than two minutes. That sequence turned a comfortable situation into a mess, and the reaction came just as quickly.
Only two days earlier, Walt Weiss was being talked about as the frontrunner for Manager of the Year. A day later, social media had flipped the script, with fans calling him a “dope” and worse. That’s the sport in a nutshell: praise one day, outrage the next.
For the Washington Nationals, the larger bullpen question is still unresolved, and it may need a full-scale rebuild again. If Cade Cavalli’s October talk is the target, then the bullpen has to be built to survive April first. A blown save that costs a game can wreck everything.
A lot of the time, though, relief pitching isn’t just about stuff. It’s about handling the moment.
It comes down to heartbeat, breathing, and the amygdala - that small, almond-shaped part of the brain tied to nervousness and fear under stress. When that goes sideways, everything else can follow: the grip tightens, the arm jerks, the command disappears.
As the saying goes, you never want a surgeon who can’t handle the pressure.
That pressure is what separates baseball from so many other sports. Some players rise into the moment; others shrink from it.
Dylan Lee’s numbers in his career tell part of that story. In the regular season, per Baseball Reference, he has a .589 OPS in low leverage, a .616 OPS in medium leverage, and a .712 OPS in high leverage.
In the postseason, his career FIP is 7.81.
There’s also the simple reality that hitters are supposed to win a lot of these matchups. The best hitters, on average, are still making outs about 70 percent of the time.
Ryan Zimmerman, Mr. Walk-Off, used to put it plainly: “The pressure is on the pitcher.
He’s supposed to get me out.” That idea was on display when Juan Soto went after Josh Hader 7 years ago today.
Soto was 20 at the time, and instead of swinging for the fences with the bases loaded, he was looking for a hit.
Hader is now viewed as one of the game’s top relievers, but on that day the damage came in a more ordinary-looking sequence: a hit-by-pitch, a bloop, a walk, and then a clutch single that found the right spot. Baseball can turn on a string of moments like that.
The Nationals know what a bad bullpen can look like over a full season. Their 2019 group was awful in the regular season, finishing with 29 blown saves, second most in MLB, and a 5.68 ERA, second worst in MLB.
By comparison, the Nats’ 2026 bullpen posted a 4.99 ERA and 42 blown saves. In 2019, the fix came from a different approach: using starting pitchers in relief on their off days and leaning on Daniel Hudson, Sean Doolittle, and Wander Suero in the highest-leverage spots.
Tanner Rainey was not used in those situations. It worked.
Now the Nationals have to figure out how to build the 2027 bullpen, and president of baseball operations Paul Toboni is at the center of it. In an interview on 106.7 The Fan radio yesterday, Toboni accepted full blame for the bullpen’s failures.
Last week, he also said the team might have been a playoff club if not for the 24 losses tied to those 42 blown saves. That math checks out.
The list of possible bullpen candidates is not long. Beyond Erik Tolman, Orlando Ribalta, Will Dion, Brad Lord, Jack Sinclair, and Riley Cornelio, the options get thin.
Maybe PJ Poulin if healthy. Maybe Jarlin Susana becomes a bullpen arm.
Josiah Gray’s final appearance of 2026 was a save for the Nationals, which adds another name to the pile. The free-agent market for relievers is also thin.
Washington used a closer-by-committee setup, and it didn’t work. Sixteen different relievers recorded a save during the season, just one shy of the MLB record of 17 set last year by the Arizona Diamondbacks. The question now is what Toboni does next.
In Other News...
Former Nationals Are Suddenly Giving Fans Unexpected Postseason Reasons To Watch
There are a few familiar names scattered across this postseason bracket for Nationals fans, and they all carry a different kind of reminder about how quickly a roster can turn over. Alex Call, dealt to the Dodgers, was part of their run to a previous World Series title, while Erick Fedde has carved out a new chapter with the White Sox and even made his first postseason appearance in the Wild Card round with effective work on the mound. Derek Hill, who had only a brief stop in Washington, is also back on the October stage with Philadelphia.
For a fan base still tracking the next core in D.C., it is the sort of postseason detail worth keeping an eye on because it links the present to a recent past that never fully settled in Washington. Calls status remains one of the few open questions as the Dodgers move deeper into October, while Hills spot with the Phillies gives the Nationals another former player to watch as the bracket tightens and every roster decision starts to matter a little more. [Read more 🡒]
Dylan Crews Just Made The Nationals Long-Term Call Much Harder
Dylan Crews spent much of his first two major league seasons trying to find the version of himself the Nationals expected when they brought him up, and the progress never came cleanly or all at once. After a rocky start and a stint in Triple-A Rochester, he did show stretches that hinted at why Washington has remained invested, with better moments surfacing at different points in the summer and again near seasons end.
Even so, the bigger picture still leaves the Nationals with a difficult call. Crews did not put together the kind of sustained offensive season that settles a young player into an everyday role, and the uneven production leaves his place in the long-term plan open to interpretation. For a club trying to build around its young core, that kind of uncertainty is exactly what makes his next step worth watching. [Read more 🡒]