This Former Nationals Starter Has Found His Stride After Moving Into Bullpen

The Washington Nationals are in a somewhat intriguing place when it comes to their roster.

They have a pretty varied mix of veteran talent and young prospects grouped together, which has left them in somewhat of a predicament since the younger players are still developing.

Ultimately, the team is still below average as they go through this process.

This leaves the Nationals with an 18-27 record, placing them in fourth among the National League East, which is not where they wanted to be despite the rebuild. The positive is that they have seen multiple young players start to develop both at the plate and in the field, which is giving them some hope for the future as they continue to progress.

The pitching staff, on the other hand, has been rather fun to watch in many cases, especially MacKenzie Gore, who has shown flashes of elite talent this season.

Beyond him, though, it has been a little inconsistent.

One of the relief arms who has started to stand out is Jackson Rutledge, the pitcher who the team moved out of a starting role and into the bullpen this offseason.

This appears to have worked to his benefit.

The 2019 first-round pick has had a very up-and-down career, especially as a starter at the MLB level. But after converting to a reliever, he has shown some positive signs.

In 18.2 innings pitched he has a 2.89 ERA, 1.286 WHIP, 23 strikeouts to seven walks and only one home run allowed.

Things get more intriguing when taking a look at his advanced metrics since there are a few that truly stand out.

What Metrics Has Rutledge Been the Most Successful In?

Most notably, he is avoiding quality contact, as according to Baseball Savant, he is in the 97th percentile for barrel percentage (2.0%). Additionally, he has been phenomenal at forcing swinging strikes, sitting 91st percentile in chase rate (34.7%), 83rd percentile in whiff rate (31.0%) and 81st percentile in strikeout rate (28.4%).

Intriguingly, his pitch profile has not changed all that much.

He has had a slight uptick in velocity with more break on some pitches, but nothing that would indicate a clear positive trend. He did drop his arm angle substantially from 38 degrees to 32 degrees, which has increased his extension from 34th percentile in 2024 to 41st percentile in 2025, but that is another minor change.

Overall, it seems he has more control of his pitches which has allowed him to utilize more of each pitch type that he has in his repertoire.

This increase in success has been fun to watch and will be something to monitor over the summer months as he continues to improve his game.

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