Pitching and defense.
“Obviously you guys know that I strongly believe in pitching and defense,” Davey Martinez said in the winter of 2020-21.
“But without starting pitching it’s hard to win championships, we proved that in 2019.”
The need for improved starting pitching is something that Rizzo and Co. in the Nationals’ front office identified as an obvious area of need for improvement this winter when the GM spoke with reporters at the end of the regular season.
“For eleven years, when we were a championship-caliber club, we had starting pitchers that led the league in innings pitched and strikeouts, and wins,” he said, “and that’s how we built our championship clubs.