Charlie Fliegel: Nats don't have a set-up man, let's hope it stays that way

It's a week into the 2016 season, and Nationals closer Jonathan Papelbon has looked good. But that most important of baseball engineering marvels, the bridge to the closer, is far from concrete. The issue is that they have several decent set-up man candidates, but no shoe-in.

This shouldn't be something to worry about, though. Instead, Dusty Baker and Mike Maddux could turn it into a real positive. With no set-up man, they have the freedom to shape the end of each game as they see fit.

Shawn Kelley is a strikeout pitcher, and his strikeouts per nine innings pitched of 11.6 the last three seasons, coupled with a walks per nine innings of 3.47, are what get people into late-inning roles. But his velocity is down, his 90 mph fastball is about two mph slower than early April 2014 and 2015. He's never been a real fireballer, though, and those swings-and-misses are off his slider (last year opponents whiffed on more than 20 percent of his sliders and less than 10 percent of his fastballs), so we'll have to see how much it matters.

I don't see much wrong with Felipe Rivero, but he's young and he's left-handed, and both scare people. I've seen concern about how he'll handle late-inning pressure. Without those chances, though, we'll never know what he can do. Besides, I can think of another young set-up man from the former Gran Columbia whose last name starts with River- ... maybe that comparison doesn't need to be made. ... Youth isn't an issue is my point.

As for his handedness, I'm not sure why we should care because the batters don't. In his short career, lefties have hit .202/.253/.247 against him, while righties have managed .189/.250/.326. Righties stink against him, lefties just stink more.

Then there's Blake Treinen, who looks like a closer, with a 96 mph fastball and a devastating slider. He also has around a 10 mph differential on his changeup, which can be useful against lefties. But he's struggled against them so far in his career, and he's walked too many guys.

With even a slight improvement in control, he's the best option against righties. And if he can use the changeup more against lefties - which he didn't do enough of last season - he could be good against them, too. In his second full year in the big leagues, he has to show he can be trusted in high leverage situations. His ability would suggest he can, even in his disappointing 2015 when he managed an ERA+ of 105.

All of these choices but no obvious answer isn't really a bad thing for the Nats. You've probably heard it before, but putting your best reliever at closer means you're assuming that the ninth inning contains the most important outs of the game. But that's not necessarily true. Likewise, the eighth inning doesn't always contain the next most important out.

Sometimes you're up by two runs in the seventh inning with two men on, and the other team's best hitter comes up. Chances are if you get through that, they'll never have as good of a shot at winning. This allows the Nats more flexibility to put their best relievers, other than Papelbon, at the highest-leverage situations in the game.

It also allows them to play matchups more. You'd be careful to put Treinen in for a lefty-heavy eighth inning, and, even though Kelley actually has reverse splits, Rivero would be the obvious choice. You can look at each pitcher's strengths and try to match them with hitters' weaknesses. And you can use Oliver Perez against a tough lefty in the eighth without a defined set-up man pouting about his inning being stolen.

It's clear the Nats are taking advantage. On Monday, one potential set-up man, Rivero, entered in the seventh. He stayed into the eighth to face lefty Freddie Freeman before another potential set-up man, Treinen, came in. This couldn't really happen this way if either of those two pitchers had a "defined" role. The same goes for Tuesday night's pitching changes during the eighth and ninth innings.

So don't think of it like the Nats don't have a set-up man. Instead, they should do their best to avoid having one, and if things go well, they could have three. And Baker will be able to use those three guys somewhat interchangeably depending on the matchup. If done right, this bullpen could be more effective than all but the best of the "traditional" ones we are so used to seeing these days.

Charlie Fliegel blogs about the Nationals for The Nationals Review. Follow him Twitter: @nationalsreview. His thoughts on the Nationals will appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our site. 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 roster of writers.