Steve Mears: Figuring out where Taylor and Werth fit in Nats lineup

Before Monday's game, the trio of Bryce Harper, Ryan Zimmerman and Daniel Murphy had combined for a .540 on-base-percentage, which means the three of them on base 54% of the time. The Nationals have had runners in scoring position (RISP) aplenty in the first four games, but are only batting .229 in their 35 RISP situations. That should certainly improve in RISP efficiency, but in the meantime, the batters in the back of the order are getting many RBI opportunities.

The strategy for Dusty Baker to take advantage of some more RISP efficiency could be to move Michael A. Taylor back in the order as he was a .317 batter in RISP spots in 2015, while Jayson Werth batted .232 in RISP spots last year.

For those who aren't keen on roster construction order, they might not care where certain players hit, but there are tendencies and statistics that make some players better in one spot in the lineup versus another. Leadoff, for instance, is the most difficult spot to hit in the batting order for some players.

Baker favors speed at the top of his batting order, which is one reason that Taylor has been his leadoff hitter; however, if you look to last year, Taylor batted leadoff for Matt Williams and struggled in the 31 games he led off with a .201 batting average. Does Taylor have the ability to learn and flourish in Baker's lineup atop the order, or should the skipper go by the stats and move Werth to leadoff where he has been effective in the past? Those are the questions that we can contemplate as the sample sizes grow.

This roster construction debate should all be a moot point when Ben Revere comes off of the disabled list, as he will slot right back in as the leadoff hitter, and then Baker will have a good idea how to get his outfielders playing time. The two new debates when Revere comes back will be who gets taken off of the 25-man roster and how does the playing time get split up between Taylor, Revere, Werth and Harper. As we say, playing time issues are a good problem to have, so stay tuned for those debates!

Steve Mears blogs about the Nationals for Talk Nats. Follow the blog on Twitter: @TalkNats2. 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.