Back in the early summer of 2017, Washington’s bullpen was a big issue that Nationals’ GM Mike Rizzo felt he needed to fix because he said he owed it to the team to shore up what was a clear weakness in his roster construction that season.
“This team grinded out so much, and worked so extremely hard through a lot of trials and tribulations I felt that I owed the team to rectify a weakness on our roster,” Rizzo told 106.7 the FAN’s Sports Junkies.
“We went out — our staff scoured the major leagues, we logged a lot of scouting hours looking at — we focused in on about eleven bullpen guys throughout the league and we sat on them and watched them.