Photo by Clint Often/TalkNats

In sports, they say ❝If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.❞ For those who are wondering if the Washington Nationals will make any roster moves to improve, that is a million dollar question that only a few people know the answer to — and they ain’t showing their cards right now. The season reaches the one-third completion mark this week. And the team just skyrocketed up the MLB Power Rankings to the No. 16 spot today. The Top-12 spots are generally reserved for playoff contenders and the next several for teams competing for Wild Card berths.

The reason for the optimism on the Nats is the offensive runs scored. The reason for the pessimism is the pitching and defense. If the Nats just had a great bullpen all season plus league-average defense, this would be a team in the playoff hunt. How many wins have been squandered away? Quite a few, and the team is still just two wins from a winning record. But if just one of those losses was a win, the team would be 24-23 instead of their actual 23-24. ❝We could be 4-or-5 games above .500 right now,❞ said President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, on Thursday.

Here’s the thing, some change can be positive. It signals to the rest of the team that you care enough to make improvements. Incrementally, can you make some slight roster moves to move the needle up? Can you send down some players who need work — just like Toboni did with Dylan Crews when he demoted him to Triple-A near the end of Spring Training?

The bullpen was broken and Toboni made some changes in the second week of April. Part of it was necessity as he had some injuries, and part of it was that the bullpen was awful and needed some fixing. But the starting rotation has only been re-imagined using “openers” and the five bulk pitchers are still the same with Cade Cavalli, Miles Mikolas, Jake Irvin, Foster Griffin, and Zack Littell. Some of those ERAs need fixing, and fortunately Littell’s is headed in the right direction — but Mikolas is still struggling with the highest ERA, 6.91, on the entire pitching staff (not including Joey Wiemer‘s 22.50).

While the offense is tops in baseball for runs scored by a good margin, there are still some weaknesses when you consider Drew Millas has a .494 OPS and Nasim Nunez is at .519 and swinging like he’s a power hitter. But given Nunez’s tools of defense and speed, he does have a positive WAR, and only Millas and Brady House have a negative WAR for the positional players per FanGraphs. His defense has been very disappointing. Millas and House are only slightly negative at -0.1 WAR each which is near replacement level. But that isn’t the case with Mikolas with his -0.6 and not trending in the right direction.

But if you carved off Wiemer‘s first three games in Chicago, and used every game since, he is only batting .190 with a .587 OPS. His 8-for-8 start to the season with that early power surge has kept his season numbers looking fine — but he is a -0.2 WAR for the rest of his season. And the team is using him as a platoon bat only.

Here’s the problem for Toboni, there is no clear-cut upgrade for Mikolas unless you put Andrew Alvarez in his spot. There is no catcher on the roster who is putting up numbers better than Millas, and the only outfielder with limited MLB success is Crews who Toboni has given lukewarm answers when asked about his progress in the Triple-A.

All of that puts Toboni in a tough spot. He might not be making moves because he doesn’t trust that there are clear upgrades. Yohandy Morales would be the most-deserving player to make his MLB debut, but he isn’t a catcher or a corner outfielder.

If you were in Toboni’s shoes, what would you do?