ST. LOUIS — Late Sunday afternoon at Busch Stadium, reporters gathered by Erik Tolman’s locker for the wrong reasons. He had, just a bit ago, given up a one-run lead in the eighth on a solo homer to Ivan Herrera. That was the start of turning a near-win into a 5-3 loss to the Cardinals, keeping the Nationals from a sweep. It was the Nationals’ 42nd blown save of the season, an MLB record and counting.
The Nats (73-84) have still won six of their past nine games. But because they didn’t win Sunday, Tolman talked for a few minutes about failure. About learning from it. About not dwelling on mistakes for too long. Once he was finished, he packed his things for the flight to Detroit, where the Nationals are playing this week before ending their season with a home series against the Mets. Tolman grabbed his headphones. He took a sip of a light brown smoothie. And then he reached to the top shelf of his locker, which was where he had put his Erik Tolman bobblehead.
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Yes, an Erik Tolman bobblehead. The only one in the world. After he debuted in late August, a Midwesterner named Chris contacted him on social media, asking Tolman if he would like his very own bobblehead. Chris lives about two hours from St. Louis. If Tolman were into it, he offered to bring it to the Nats-Cardinals games this past Friday. Chris just asked for some gear in return, which wound up being a pair of Tolman’s cleats. The bobblehead depicts Tolman, a lefty reliever, mid-delivery. On the base, it has the date of first big league appearance: 8-22-26.
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“I’ve never had anything customized like that,” Tolman, 27, told me Sunday morning. “I mean, look, that’s pretty damn cool.”
He’s certainly gained fans inside the organization, too. At Busch Stadium over the weekend, I asked a handful of people for their most immediately intriguing arms in the Nats’ bullpen, trying to figure out who might grow the fastest into high-leverage roles. The most common answers were Tolman and Orlando Ribalta, a hard-throwing righty who’s on the injured list with right forearm inflammation. Both were acquired by the previous front office, Tolman as a 14th-round pick in 2021, Ribalta as a 12th-round pick in 2019. And that means both are in the process of proving themselves to the new front office, which will be making a lot of roster decisions in the near future.
Some players have had months to do that. Tolman is making use of his five weeks. He didn’t allow a run until his sixth appearance. His more recent outings have not been as clean. On Sunday, he gave up that game-tying homer. On Saturday, asked to hold a ninth-inning lead against the Cardinals, he was hurt by bad luck when a soft grounder — hit by Nathan Church, his high school teammate — bounced off second base and turned into a leadoff double.
In 12 ⅓ innings, Tolman has recorded three saves and 12 strikeouts, and has allowed five earned runs.The bobblehead, then, will always be one reminder that he was here, that he pitched at Busch Stadium, Nationals Park and a handful of other big league fields. But just getting there was never the goal. In 2023, a freak injury almost led to the amputation of his right foot, which happened right after he had recovered from two elbow surgeries. He thinks a lot about the long road back, which included doubts about whether he would ever walk normally again, let alone pitch in the major leagues. There’s also a constant reminder on his right leg: a black brace he wears for all physical activity.
“I didn’t come this far to be average,” Tolman said. “It’s really as simple as that.”
Josiah Gray can relate. Gray made his season debut in St. Louis on Friday night, two years and two weeks after he last pitched in the majors. In that time, he also battled elbow injuries, the slow drip of multiple rehabs, those similar doubts about whether he could ever be the same. Five Septembers ago, he was central to the Nats’ plans, having just arrived as a key piece for the return for Max Scherzer and Trea Turner. Now, though, his future with the organization is much more complicated. As an arbitration-eligible player, Gray could be non-tendered — or, in plainer terms, cut loose — early in the offseason to make room for younger talent on the 40-man roster.
In the meantime, all he can do is maximize whatever chances he gets in this final week of the season. In that long-awaited appearance Friday, Gray pitched the ninth inning, a change from his usual starter role. He gave up a leadoff single, then retired the next three batters to finish a 9-1 win. He smacked his chest twice, looked at the sky and smacked his chest again. His fastball touched 94 mph. The next day, when someone complimented him on that in the dugout, Gray said, “It’s amazing what happens when your elbow doesn’t hurt.”
DJ Herz, the Nationals’ starter in Detroit on Monday, also missed close to two years with arm issues before making his season debut against the Tigers. In a 9-2 loss, Herz pitched four innings and allowed four runs on five hits, two walks and a back-breaking homer for Javier Báez. Gray then pitched a scoreless seventh and eighth. Beyond auditioning for their new coaches and front office, Herz and Gray are reintroducing themselves to a fan base that once viewed them as small bursts of hope.
“Obviously 2026 isn’t 2021,” Gray said on Friday afternoon. “But at the end of the day, this next week and a half, hit the ground running and see where they see me slotted in with the future of this thing.”
Keibert Ruiz can relate to the difference five years makes. Like Gray, he came to Washington in the Scherzer-Turner trade, back when the Nats first tore down their roster to start building it back up. He was the biggest get in the deal, almost immediately tapped as the catcher of the present and future. That led to an eight-year, $50 million extension before the 2023 season. But then Ruiz struggled to find his footing. For the next three years, he posted a .656 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in 331 games, well below league average. And somehow even more concerning was his defense, as he ranked toward the bottom in advanced pitch framing stats in 2025.
This season, though, has been a total revelation. Ruiz has been an above-average framer, per Statcast, and has a .770 OPS in 101 games. A big factor has been Bobby Wilson, the Nats’ first-year major league catching coordinator. Also, at the start of the second half of the season, the team began calling some pitches from the dugout, an approach born of an almost unwavering commitment to using analytics for strategic decisions. But one of the exceptions to that is Ruiz, who has continued to call pitches because of the trust he’s earned from the staff.
Pitchers Cade Cavalli and Jake Irvin call their own games from the mound, as does lefty Andrew Alvarez (though not always). The strategy of calling pitches from the dugout is most prevalent with relievers and when rookie Harry Ford is behind the plate. Ruiz, 28, is proud of keeping the responsibility. He’s not, however, ready to call his season a complete success.
“What’s happened with the bullpen, that’s on me, too,” Ruiz told me, referring to all the blown saves. “There is more that I feel like I can do still.”
James Wood can relate to that last bit, which is really to say it applies to every player on the team. From the front office to the field, this is a young organization still finding itself, working through growing pains together. And on Saturday night, Wood, the Nats’ best player, was right in the middle of that. In the top of the ninth, he hit a dribbler, sprinted out of the box and then slowed down when he thought the first baseman had fielded it cleanly. But the first baseman had actually bobbled the ball, which Wood didn’t realize until it was too late.
He sped up again but was out by a good margin. Blake Butera, the club’s first-year, 34-year-old manager, pulled him from the game, an eventual 8-5 win in 11 innings. Afterward, Butera said the decision was partly to improve the Nats’ outfield defense, swapping Wood out for Jacob Young. The other part, though, was because Wood hadn’t hustled all the way down the line. This has happened a couple of times in recent weeks, so Butera chose to send a message through his star player. He told reporters: “He’s never doing it on purpose. Just sometimes it doesn’t look great, and that’s our job, to let him know that.”
Minutes later, the two of them quickly chatted in the clubhouse, Wood nodding at Butera from his swivel chair. In game 155 of 162, in the final days of another losing season, there were still lessons to learn, impressions to make, a foundation that needs attention, all the way to the end.
“I feel like we’re trying to build something here, and I plan on being here for a long time,” Wood said. “So I feel like I’ve got to be able to set an example.”
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