dealing veteran left-hander David Peterson to the Cubs<\/a>, but that was more due to the Cubs being waylaid by pitching injuries than the trade signaling the start of a fire sale in Queens.<\/p>\nThe San Francisco Giants have woefully underperformed, but their bullpen doesn\u2019t have many arms worth targeting. Toboni said that because there are still multiple teams reasonably in the wild-card hunt, executing a trade for bullpen help this early might prove to be difficult. <\/p>\n
\u201cNot to say it\u2019s impossible, but we\u2019re in this window where I think teams, there are a lot of teams that are still trying to see if they can put themselves in position to go for it, and usually that means they\u2019re less inclined to make deals,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s clear that Toboni\u2019s keeping his cards close to the vest with around five weeks to go until the trade deadline. Resilience has been a calling card for the team, particularly after suffering three heartbreaking losses against the Phillies. The Nationals haven\u2019t lost more than five games in a row nor won more than four consecutive games. They\u2019ve avoided lengthy losing streaks, but have yet to go on a sustained stretch to truly enter the wild-card picture.<\/p>\n
But fans are clamoring for more bullpen help to at least give the team a chance over the second half of the season, even if it\u2019s just a minor upgrade to avoid more late-game collapses. Toboni said that the pitching staff needs to do a better job of getting ahead and putting guys away with two strikes.<\/p>\n
As constructed, the pitching staff doesn\u2019t have a track record of striking out hitters, so it\u2019s fair to wonder how much reiterating count leverage will help them get major-league hitters out.<\/p>\n
Over the ensuing days, Toboni will see the Nationals face homegrown Red Sox pitchers Connelly Early and Payton Tolle, a reminder of the scouting acumen that allowed him to break into the game. His goal after taking the Nationals\u2019 job was to \u201ccreate a scouting and developing monster.\u201d So far, the returns have been promising in the minors, but most of their top prospects are still far away from impacting the major-league team, where fan interest has returned after being dormant for several years. <\/p>\n
Toboni finds himself in a weird spot ahead of his first trade deadline as the head decision-maker. The fan base is antsy for upgrades to supplement the lineup. They want to see reinforcements at the major league level, and Toboni wants to keep seeing the team play well. But it\u2019s his job to weigh if it\u2019s worth subtracting from the future in the interest of the present. He\u2019ll get a clearer picture as July progresses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came into the year thinking that the best thing we could do for the future Nationals teams is really help our current players develop,\u201d Toboni said. \u201cThe thought is if James Wood takes a huge step forward, CJ Abrams takes a huge step forward, Dylan [Crews], and so on and so forth, it\u2019s going to help us win a ton of games in 2026, but also we\u2019re going to go into 2027 and 2028 with better teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really been where our focus has been. A lot of these players have had awesome years, and it\u2019s a testament to the work that they\u2019ve put in. We\u2019re just going to continue to push them and support them in that regard, and I think it\u2019ll mean good things for future Nationals teams.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON \u2014 Paul Toboni couldn\u2019t even get a pregame jog in without having familiar faces interrupt to chat.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[8475,64,63,4034,591,38796,85],"class_list":["post-768961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-american-league","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-national-league","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}