Report: Nationals and Phillies "making progress" toward Papelbon deal

The talks about the Nationals looking to improve their bullpen heated up this morning as Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal tweeted that the team is "making progress" in their pursuit of Phillies' closer Jonathan Papelbon:

Sources: #Nationals making progress on acquiring Papelbon from #Phillies. Papelbon has said he will only approve deal if he can close.

-- Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 28, 2015

Papelbon has been outstanding again this season for a bad Phillies team. He is 2-1 with a 1.59 ERA in 37 games with 17 saves. The most intriguing part of the potential deal is Papelbon has repeated several times that he will only approve a deal if he is the closer for his new team.

Of course, the Nationals already have a closer in Drew Storen, who is rolling along in what might be a career year: 1-0 with a 1.73 ERA and 29 saves. Also, Papelbon has World Series success and Storen had difficulty in his first postseason appearance against the Cardinals in 2012. In six games in the playoffs, Storen is 1-1 with an 8.44 ERA. In 18 postseason games, Papelbon is 2-1 with a 1.00 ERA and seven saves.

So would Storen take an eighth-inning spot? Could general manager Mike Rizzo convince Papelbon to accept the setup role? Is there more to the deal or other deals that Rizzo has cooking up? It seems like Storen has already been pushed around once (Rafael Soriano signing). One wonders how this would affect him a second time around.

Interesting news to say the least, and we will have to wait and see how it plays out, but it demonstrates that Rizzo doesn't appear to be standing pat this trade deadline with a team that already has a ton of talent.