David Huzzard: Nats bullpen needs fixing, but don't expect many changes soon

They are riding a five-game losing streak and in need of bullpen help. That is the current state of your Washington Nationals. A five-game losing streak is nothing to worry about. It happens. The fact that the Nationals have avoided a prolonged losing streak for this long is a miracle. It's the way the Nationals have been losing.

Jonathan Papelbon wasn't the best closer, but the bullpen was built to have him as the closer. Shawn Kelley surpassed all expectations, but he works much better as the set-up man against a lineup full of righties with Oliver Perez facing a lineup full of lefties. The same works for Blake Treinen and Felipe Rivero in the seventh inning. With Papelbon on the DL, the rest of the Nationals' bullpen has been exposed and it needs to be fixed.

For those of us waiting for Mike Rizzo and the Nationals to fix the bullpen, I'm afraid I've got some bad news. It is currently June 23 and, as we all know, baseball teams love to wait until right up against any deadline. The Nationals shouldn't be waiting. They have already lost multiple games on a single road trip because of the bullpen and shouldn't wait to lose more. The Nats and Yankees have reportedly discussed Andrew Miller, but the Yankees' asking price was too high. This is why everyone waits.

The thought on one side of the trade is that the asking price is ridiculous and when no one else offers that much in prospects it will have to come down. Meanwhile, the other side thinks "as the deadline approaches and that other team gets desperate they'll cave to our demands." As history has shown us, the price closer to the deadline is much lower. It wasn't that long ago that the A's tried to jump the deadline and gave up Addison Russell for Jeff Samardzija. That same deadline the Tigers pulled off a three-team trade for David Price and gave up no one close to as good as Russell.

That was a weird and wild trade deadline. I for one am always hoping for a repeat of that, but when it comes down to the price that teams are willing to pay it is good to illustrate that waiting can be worth it. There is the flip side to that and that is the unknown. How many games will the Nationals' bullpen cost them between now and the end of July? And is it enough to trade someone like Victor Robles to the Yankees for Miller? The price is going to come down, but so might the Nationals' winning percentage, and with Cleveland now having a championship, Washington D.C. is argubaly the most depressing sports town.

That last part really shouldn't factor in Rizzo's decision and that is why he's paid to make those decisions. I'm less emotional than most fans and I'd be working on a trade to get Todd Fraizer and Chris Sale from the White Sox for Lucas Giolito, Trea Turner, and Robles. That's the type of trade that gets GMs fired and it's also why they're paid to make the decisions. The Nats' bullpen needs help, they've lost five games in a row, and there is a sense of urgency to fix the problem. Decisions based on emotion and need are the ones most often to backfire. While most Nationals fans would celebrate a move for a reliever at this time, it isn't going to happen. We are going to have to wait. Teams do not act until the deadline is at hand, and that is more than a month away.

Perhaps this is the year that the Nationals are that team that makes the wild and whacky move that really pays off in the end, or they show patience with the team they have, Papelbon returns from injury and everything is as it was before he was hurt. The team still needs tweaks and I'd like to see them sooner than later, but as the history of baseball has taught us it's always going to be later.

David Huzzard blogs about the Nationals at Citizens of Natstown. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidHuzzard. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our regular roster of writers.