So here we are, three games in to the Nationals’ 2019 season, and the bullpen has already been identified as the team’s biggest weakness.
To paraphrase Capt. Renault when he shut down Rick’s Café American, I am shocked – shocked – that there is lead-blowing happening on this ballclub. It’s doubtful many people would have identified Kyle Barraclough as the best option as a bridge reliver in October when the Miami Marlins unloaded him for international bonus money or Trevor Rosenthal as the setup man in November when he was picked off the free-agent wire after sitting out 2017 recovering from Tommy John surgery.
Fact is, the Nats were addressing their bullpen needs in their usual fashion, finding the least expensive and most experienced options available. How has that worked out in the past? Remember Greg Holland? Joe Nathan? Joe Blanton? None of them got to re-create their postseason heroics in Washington, although to be fair to Holland, he did have a nice run at the end of last season after the Nats signed him as a castoff from St. Louis as Washington staggered to an 82-80 finish.
We need to face up to the fact that the Nationals have never really had a strong bullpen under general manager Mike Rizzo. That’s sadly ironic in the city where Hall of Fame manager Bucky Harris pioneered creative bullpen use 95 years ago, making Firpo Marberry arguably the major leagues’ first closer in the Senators 1924 World Series championship season.
Even when the Nationals’ bullpen was seemingly strong, as it was in 2012, Drew Storen’s NLDS Game 5 meltdown against St. Louis rendered it all moot. The next season even in missing the postseason, they thought they had the closing situation figured out with Rafael Soriano, but he was a nonfactor in the 2014 postseason, as Tanner Roark and Matt Thornton took the key postseason losses to San Francisco.
The next season brought the ill-fated trade for Jonathan Papelbon, who was more well known for strangling Bryce Harper than for anything he did on the field for the Nats. The 2016 season saw the trade-deadline deal for Mark Melancon and a return to the postseason, but neither the Nats’ bullpen nor the Los Angeles Dodgers’ was much of a factor, and Clayton Kershaw would up closing out game 5 and the series for the Dodgers.
Even in 2017, when the Nats found a winning back-end combination with Brandon Kintzler, Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle, it was again not a factor in yet another NLDS disappointment, and by the end of last season, Kintzler and Madson were gone.
Now the Nats are back with a whole new set of questions aimed at solving the same basic problem: How will they close out games with a slim lead in the seventh inning or later? There is certainly room and opportunity for Barraclough and Rosenthal to get better, and even for manager Davey Martinez to improve his handling. But the fact remains that major league ballgames don’t play out like your favorite video or tabletop games. Real people are subject to real emotions and mistakes and aren’t just reflection of the stats they’ve compiled.
It might be best to put Rosenthal in lower-leverage situations until he can get a feel for throwing the ball, and to lay off using him on consecutive days, even if he volunteers, at least until he has a calculable ERA for the season. Giys who were sent to the minors to start the season, like Austen Williams, will also likely come into play.
The elephant in the room, or on the free-agent list as the case may be, is Craig Kimbrell, the one-time Nats nemesis with Atlanta, who’s still awaiting his World Series ring from last season. His high asking price seems to have scared many teams off, but it’s doubtful there’s one that couldn’t use him, including the Nats. Some armchair GMs would have hit his speed-dial button in the eighth inning of Sunday’s 11-8 loss, when Rosenthal couldn’t retire a batter. The Nats, however, don’t seem to be interested in him, so fans will have to be happy with what they’ve got.
Will it be enough?
With a front-loaded NL East schedule, we could find out very soon.
