In the 2025 Major League Baseball season, the Washington Nationals were one of only two teams to have a team ERA over 5.00. The Nationals finished with a team ERA of 5.35 and are now hoping for a big turnaround in the 2026 season. 

The Nationals already showed that they were willing to make big moves, trading Mackenzie Gore and signing three starting pitchers during the offseason after Foster Griffin kicked off the handful of free agent signings to start the Paul Toboni era. While the starting lineup is starting to round out, the bullpen looks like a more rugged unit.

With Opening Day approaching, it looks like the Nationals will roll with a bullpen of: RHP Brad Lord, RHP Cole Henry, RHP Clayton Beeter, LHP PJ Poulin, LHP Cionel Pérez, RHP Andre Granillo, RHP Gus Varland and LHP Ken Waldichuk.

A pair of big names that come from the Nationals last season would be Brad Lord and Cole Henry. Lord made his major league debut in 2025 and put up a 4.34 ERA in 48 games. The 26-year-old finished with the second-highest WAR on the pitching staff behind Gore. Henry is another 26-year-old who made his major league debut in 2025. He finished with a 4.27 ERA in 52.2 innings pitched. 

Clayton Beeter and PJ Poulin were both late additions made during the 2025 season. Beeter finished with a 2.49 ERA in 21.2 innings pitched in his short time with the Nationals. Poulin finished his with a 3.65 ERA in 24.2 innings pitched.

The other four pitchers all came in as offseason acquisitions. The Nationals selected the contract of Cionel Pérez after a season where he struggled mightily, allowing an 8.31 ERA in 21.2 innings pitched. Pérez has had success in the Major Leagues before. In 2022, he was dominant for the Orioles. He finished with a 1.40 ERA in 66 games and finished with a 7-1 W-L record. He finished 2023 with a 3.54 ERA in 62 games before his production continued to decrease in 2024 and 2025.

The Nationals traded for Andre Granillo from the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for RHP George Soriano. Granillo pitched 42 innings in Triple-A and 21 innings in the Major Leagues, where he allowed a combined 17 earned runs. 

Gus Varland and Ken Waldichuk were both signed off waivers. Varland is coming off an undisclosed injury that sidelined him for most of 2025, but he did pitch 7.1 innings in Spring Training, where he did not allow an earned run. Waldichuk struggled in 2025, finishing with an 8.65 ERA in 51.0 innings on the Oakland Athletics' Triple-A team, the Las Vegas Aviators.

But with the new bullpen also comes a lot of concerns entering the 2026 season. 

Pérez and Waldichuk are the only two pitchers in the bullpen who have played over a single season in the Major Leagues. Both of them are coming off a wildly inconsistent season. Lord and Henry will be entering their second season, but the other four pitchers don’t even have an entire season in the Major Leagues under their belt. 

The Nationals moved on from both Kyle Finnegan and Jose A. Ferrer in 2025 and are now without a designated closer. Finnegan served as the Nationals' long-term closer since 2020 before getting traded to the Detroit Tigers, and it looked like Ferrer was destined to be next in line before getting traded to the Seattle Mariners.

Poulin and Pérez are the only two pitchers to have real closing experience before the 2025 season. After trading Ferrer, Henry took a lot of the closes, finishing with 13 games finished in 2025 and two saves. Which pitcher steps up to the plate as the Nationals' primary closer is still unknown. 

As stated earlier, only two of them have played more than one season in the Major Leagues, and both of them are coming off the worst years of their careers. 

While there are pitchers that have the potential and space to grow, there is nobody who has carved out a consistent reputation, and only a couple of them are entering the season highly regarded. 

It looks like guys like Lord and Beeter will have to go out and turn into a big name if the Nationals want to find major success in the relief department. 

The Nationals begin their season on Thursday, March 26th, on the road against the Chicago Cubs, where we will start to see the blueprint of the Nationals' new bullpen.