David Huzzard: A most pivotal offseason

Before Sunday's actions by Jonathan Papelbon, the Washington Nationals were already headed towards the most pivotal offseason since moving to Washington, D.C., but now it is going to be that much more difficult. The Nationals went from having Felipe Rivero, Craig Stammen and Papelbon in the bullpen for next season to just having Rivero and Stammen, remembering that Stammen is returning from major injury. A Nationals bullpen that was already in shambles is now more of a mess and is going to need a lot more work to repair.

Fixing the bullpen is the No. 1 job of the offseason, but it won't be the first task undertaken. The search for a new manager will come first. Sunday's incident also helped to highlight Matt Williams' largest fault, which was until this point what some assumed was his only strength. If Williams wasn't good at strategy, then he must be great at dealing with his coaches and players. Nope. Williams suffers the same faults of a bad manager in any other walk of life; he isn't able to communicate with those under him.

It shouldn't be as much of a problem as it is that Williams can't tell when a starting pitcher is tiring or when a reliever doesn't have it that day because he has a coach in the dugout whose job it is to tell him those things, but just like Steve McCatty didn't tell Williams about the fight between Bryce Harper and Papelbon, he must not have been telling him when pitching changes needed to be made. The same can go for Randy Knorr and the in-game strategy, which is the area of a bench coach to advise upon. Either Knorr's advice was awful or Williams ignored him. Neither is a good option and calls for a full house cleaning.

That brings us all the way to the top of the food chain and why Knorr and McCatty were coaches for Williams. Why didn't Williams bring in some coaches that he knew that could serve as his right hand men? The answer is that Mike Rizzo didn't let him. Rizzo choose Williams' staff for him, and either Williams never got along with them or is one of the worst communicators in the history of baseball. This is just one of the reasons the Nationals' next manager has to be given complete control of the field team, and Rizzo or whoever the general manager is needs to let him run it. Williams did a bad job as manager of the Washington Nationals, but don't forget he had his legs cut out from under him before his tenure even began.

The position players aren't free from blame in any of what happened in 2015 and what's to come in 2016. Jayson Werth is the leader on the field and he was injured and unproductive for much of the season, all while bellyaching about playing time. A strong manager would have told Werth to start hitting like a player making $20 million and then he can demand playing time, but Williams never had the respect of Werth. In 2014, Williams let Werth decide where he played in the field and hit in the lineup, and if the Nationals hire another inexperienced manager, the same thing will happen again unless the front office finds a way to get rid of Werth, his ego and giant contract.

Getting rid of Werth leaves the Nationals at a small disadvantage. The Nationals lineup could use another productive bat to hit behind or in front of Harper, and the free agent market is ripe with outfielders. Michael A. Taylor proved a valuable asset as a fourth outfielder and saw plenty of playing time. Adding Jason Heyward, Justin Upton, Alex Gordon or Chris Davis will do little to change the future of Taylor and will improve the Nationals' prospects to contend in 2016 greatly.

There are many other changes that could and should be made. The starting pitching had issues in 2015 and an upgrade at catcher couldn't hurt. This is a pivotal offseason for the Washington Nationals, and the front office is going to have their work cut out for them. With all that said, it's important as fans to not confuse activity with improvement. Just ask the 2015 Marlins and Padres about that.

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.