When will Tanner Rainey be ready to close?

So little went right for the Nationals last season that it's easy to get excited about the players that made significant improvement. Tanner Rainey is one of them, a bulldog of a right-hander who used the shortened 2020 season to show that all that fantasy baseball chatter about players making a leap in their age-27 seasons isn't just idle babble.

Rainey has something few pitchers possess: a triple-digit fastball with life. And though he is often mentioned as a closer of the future, the presence of guys like bullpen holdover righties Daniel Hudson and Will Harris and newly signed left-hander Brad Hand begs a question.

When will the Nats let Rainey take over the ninth inning?

Manager Davey Martinez is already on record as saying that he would not identify a single reliever as his closer, preferring instead to use multiple weapons out of the 'pen when the highest-leverage situations present themselves. In the past, the Nats have carved out roles for their relievers; it wasn't uncommon to see different pitchers in the seventh, eighth or ninth innings.

Rainey, who turned 28 on Christmas, stands to learn a lot from the veterans who will join him at the back end of games. While his grit and electric fastball are easily noticed, Rainey still has only parts of three seasons and 80 major league games under his belt. But what he did last season is the kind of jump that opens eyes and creates opportunities.

In 20 games last year, Rainey went 1-1 with 32 strikeouts to seven walks in 20 1/3 innings. His breakout included some pretty impressive numbers. He dropped his ERA from 3.91 to 2.66, cut his WHIP from 1.448 to 0.738, trimmed his walks per nine innings from 7.1 to 3.1, upped his strikeouts per nine innings from 13.8 to 14.2 and decreased his hits per nine innings from 6.0 to 3.5.

Yes, his homers per nine innings went up - from 1.1 to 1.8 - and 2020 is admittedly a small sample size, with only 75 batters faced to 214 the previous season. But the numbers strongly suggest Rainey isn't just a hard-throwing guy only capable of serving as a bridge to more experienced relievers.

And though he has yet to record a save, that time is coming. And perhaps sooner rather than later.

Most managers are creatures of habit. They go with the relievers they can trust in certain situations. If a guy locks down the ninth inning - even without a track record of doing so - he earns another chance. A couple of successful saves help to carve out a niche. Sean Doolittle did so after arriving from the A's in a July 2017 trade, though he'd had some previous experience in the role. Hudson took over as closer in 2019 when Doolittle struggled and had the role last year, though his 10 saves were outweighed by a 6.10 ERA.

The one thing a reliever cannot be taught is how to bounce back after a rough outing. It's either there or it isn't. Waiting for that short memory to develop has been the bane of many a young pitcher in the bullpen. But that's an area where Rainey has largely prospered.

In 2019, he yielded runs in 14 of his 52 appearances. Eleven of those times, he followed up with scoreless work in his next outing. Take away a five-game stretch in which he allowed seven runs over 3 2/3 innings and his ERA was 2.82 in the rest of his outings. Last season, he gave up runs in only five appearances, and only once in back-to-back outings, on Sept. 4 and 7. Before allowing four runs in his final four outings, Rainey had a 1.10 ERA.

How will 2021 shake out for Rainey? Taking Martinez as his word, there will be some mixing and matching going on out of the bullpen. But this is less closer by committee and more of choosing to use his more reliable arms in the most critical situations. For example, Hand might get the call in the seventh or eighth inning if two or three lefty-hitting sluggers are coming up in the heart of the opposition's order.

What Rainey has to do is keep on doing what he's been doing. At some point in the coming season, he will be fresh when one or both of the other right-handers have been overused. Every closer had to get his first save at some point - and used that as a steppingstone to a more definitive role. And whenever Rainey finally collects his first save, it's a good bet it won't be his last.