How will the Nats approach finding a new closer?

Watching everyone's memories of the 2019 postseason run, a World Series win in Game 7 in Houston on Howie Kendrick's clanger and the ensuing celebratory parade in D.C. has been a blast. I've always preferred memories over memorabilia, because memories can't be bought, sold or traded. They'll be with us until the day we die. Man, what a fun postseason we had two years ago, full of memories to last a lifetime.

But the 2021 campaign is over, and it's time to throw another log into the hot stove. We've got - hopefully - a full winter to debate what the Nationals need to do to return to baseball relevance. I say "hopefully" because the specter of a work stoppage is looming in early December, unless Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association can hash out a new collective bargaining agreement to facilitate labor peace.

While we wait and hope for the best, the time has come to throw out a topic for discussion: How will the Nats cover the ninth inning next season?

Closers have become a part of the baseball tapestry, just like balls and strikes, safe and out, fair and foul. And while there's no debate that a good closer can make the 25th, 26th and 27th outs a lot less stressful, there's also no guarantee the Nats will have a veteran arm trotting in from right field on South Capitol Street for the ninth inning next season.

Since one question often begets another, the issue of who's pitching the ninth morphs into another query: How much should a rebuilding club spend to cement the final inning?

According to FanGraphs.com, the Nationals ended the 2021 campaign with a $169 million payroll, thanks in large part to shedding salaries in their trade deadline sell-off, which signaled a change of direction toward a retooling. For 2022, FanGraphs estimates the Nationals will have a $115 million payroll. But before you start spending those dollars, keep in mind that a bulk of that figure will go to a couple of starting pitchers who are question marks, right-hander Stephen Strasburg ($35 million) and left-hander Patrick Corbin ($23.4 million). Salary arbitration will bump up the wages of right fielder Juan Soto and first baseman Josh Bell to $16.2 million and $10 million, respectively, according to MLBTradeRumors.com.

You don't have to be a math wizard to see that raising salaries will shrink what general manager Mike Rizzo has to spend for the rest of the team, and it's a good bet that Rizzo will seek affordable space-holders for a couple of positions. They will keep the overall salary down and, if all goes well, provide the opportunity to flip a player performing well at the trade deadline for a prospect or two to further fatten a farm system that had become bereft before July's swapfest.

As for the closer, Rizzo, manager Davey Martinez and the Nats brain trust must decide whether they've got an in-house candidate to pitch the ninth, whether they can bid for a free agent to handle those duties or whether they will look for a bargain that would help keep overall payroll down.

If they go the in-house route, Rizzo and company will look hard at righties Tanner Rainey and Kyle Finnegan, though the former has significantly more upside than the latter.

Rainey, 28, whose triple-digit heat has made him the closer of the future for several years, finally picked up his first career save in June, had to rediscover his form at Triple-A Rochester after an up-and-down season, and looked like a different pitcher in September, when he fanned eight in 4 2/3 innings and posted a 1.93 ERA and .067 average against before he surrendered three runs in an inning in his final appearance of the season on Oct. 2.

Finnegan, 30, was thrust into the ninth inning after Daniel Hudson was dealt away, and he actually prospered for a while, saving 11 games in 14 tries before he wore down. Finnegan's overall stats - a 3.55 ERA, 1.485 WHIP and .255 average against - are middling. He might be better suited for setup duty than the pressures of the ninth inning, though there were times he looked every bit like a legit closer. And, frankly, some guys are a revelation in the ninth when given the opportunity. You only find out if you try them there.

MLBTradeRumors projects a raise to $800,000 for Rainey in 2022 through arbitration, while Finnegan - not yet eligible for arbitration - will get a modest bump over his $582,000 salary in 2021. So both fall well within the constraints a rebuilding club faces.

That's the simple part of the equation. Figuring out whether Rizzo might spend for an established closer, or work more on the cheap to give a ninth-inning opportunity to a guy without a track record, is a tougher call. But history can be a good teacher.

Back in 2008 and 2009, the Nats' last seasons of 100 or more losses, there wasn't a huge financial impact from the closer. Jon Rauch led the club with 17 saves in 2008, with Joel Hanrahan adding nine in Jim Bowden's final year as GM. A year later, interim GM Rizzo got 20 saves out of Mike MacDougal, a one-time All-Star with the Royals who was on the downside of his career and had started to bounce around for work. By 2010, the Nats had signed Matt Capps as a free agent before flipping him to the Twins for Wilson Ramos in July. A year later, Drew Storen took over as closer and posted 43 saves; the Nats have had a reliable arm in the ninth inning ever since - well, until this summer's sell-off.

But when your entire team's salary is expected to be $115 million, can you afford to spend big - say, $10 million, or a little short of 9 percent - on one player? The Nats will need to spend big on Soto (and spend even more if they're able to sign him to a long-term deal). And history indicates that they won't break the bank on a closer in the middle of a retooling.

So what's on the free agent market? The guys in the top tier - Raizel Iglesias, Kenley Jansen, Alex Colomé, Ian Kennedy - are probably out of the Nats' price range. So if the Nats sign someone from outside the organization, it's more likely they focus on guys with some closing experience, or at least a decent pedigree in the back end of a bullpen. That could be a journeyman or a good reliever who's just never gotten the chance to close. It could be a guy coming off an injury or a couple of seasons of spotty statistical production.

Among the available right-handers, Hudson, 35, is a free agent again and could return, though his work for the Padres wasn't exactly stellar (5.21 ERA, 1.368 WHIP, 8.02 opponent OPS). Kendall Graveman, 31, flourished in his first season as a reliever, and handled the ninth for the Mariners before a midseason trade to the Astros; he doesn't have much of a track record, but won't command a high salary, though probably a multi-year deal. Ex-Phillie Héctor Neris, 33, strikes out a lot of batters, but also walks too many, though he's got experience at the end of games. Archie Bradley, 29, didn't close for the Phillies last year, but saved 18 games for the Diamondbacks as recently as 2018; he's morphed from a strikeout guy to a groundball machine. Yimi García, 31, closed games for the Marlins but not the Astros after a July trade, and he struggled in a setup role. If the Nats want a reunion, guys like Tyler Clippard, 37 (six saves for the Diamondbacks last season), or Trevor Rosenthal, 32 (coming off thoracic outlet syndrome surgery), are options. Former Met Jeurys Familia, 32, might be an intriguing bounceback candidate; last season, he increased his strikeouts and decreased his walks.

Want a left-hander to combat Freddie Freeman or Bryce Harper with the game on the line? The choices are a little underwhelming. Former Astro Brooks Raley, 33, doesn't have a strong ERA, but offers high strikeout totals and some strong peripheral stats (low hard contact and exit velocity). Andrew Chafin, 31, has been a workhorse, with 70 or more appearances in each of the last four full seasons; he doesn't walk a lot of guys, but only offers league-average strikeout and groundball rates. Andrew Miller, 36, was once a feared power pitcher, but he's had an ERA north of 4.00 in three out of the last four years and has struggled against right-handed bats. Among the ex-Nats on the market, there probably isn't interest in Sean Doolittle, 35, or Brad Hand, 32.

How teams approach signing high-leverage relievers changes like the D.C. weather in the summer. Some offseasons, the top tier gets snatched up quickly, or the reliable arms garner multi-year deals before or during the Winter Meetings. Other years, teams wait to see who's left and wait until January to fill out their bullpens.

The Nats seem to be in a good position. They could entrust the ninth inning to Rainey and sign a veteran with some closing experience to work in a setup role. Of course, Rizzo is the wild card here. He likes to make bold moves and the Lerners have traditionally not been afraid to give him money to work with. But with the landscape changed, and the club looking to rework the roster rather than contend, there's every reason to believe he'll be more methodical and cost-conscious as he recrafts his relief corps.