Saturday night’s content between the Nationals and the Miami Marlins was, by just about all accounts, a very forgettable night of baseball. Starter Jake Irvin tossed an up-and-down 6.0 innings of 4-run ball, and the Nats only put up 2 runs en route to a 4-2 loss to drop 9 games below .500.
However, one of the beautiful things about baseball is that an average loss in late August can mean so much more than the box score might show.
While the game ended in defeat for Washington. It was a night of pure
triumph for 27-year-old reliever Erik Tolman.
Tolman joined the Washington organization as a 14th-round selection out of Arizona State University in 2021, and his pro career has been marred by a plethora of struggles.
His career stats look solid on the surface, a 3.78 ERA across 74 games making appearances as both a starter and out of the bullpen. Looking deeper into his story, his journey to the big show is nothing short of remarkable.
Injuries have been at the forefront of Tolman’s playing career since before he made his way into the Nationals’ system, suffering a torn UCL resulting in Tommy John surgery during his junior campaign at ASU. That was just the first of two elbow issues to arise for the southpaw, having to undergo the same procedure in 2022 after having barely made his introduction to the organization.
The setbacks didn’t stop there, either, as a freak injury saw him tear every ligament in his knee back in 2023, marking 3 major injuries in just the span of a few years.
Holman refused to let his health issues derail his MLB future, working as a swing starter across 3 levels in 2025 to a 3.67 ERA in 95.2 innings, and starting 2026 with AAA Rochester.
This season has been statistically his least successful, but an uptick in his metrics and a desperate need for pitching at the MLB level led to the Nats calling him up to the bigs a few days ago.
Despite the aforementioned 4-2 loss, the biggest story of Saturday night’s contest was Tolman.
The first man out of the bullpen, he dazzled in a scoreless inning, picking up his first MLB strikeout along the way. It’s yet to be determined whether or not Tolman will have a future in the Washington bullpen in either the short or long term, but one thing is for certain: years of resilience and refusing to quit have now finally culminated in his place forever being cemented in the MLB history books.
