Patience key in solving Washington Nationals’ problems

The Washington Nationals, considered by many as World Series favorites entering the 2015 campaign, haven’t looked the part through the early portion of the season. An injury-plagued D.C. club has struggled to 13-15 through 28 games, with Jayson Werth, Denard Span, Anthony Rendon, Casey Janssen and now potentially Stephen Strasburg missing time with injuries. It’s easy to call for Matt Williams’ job or suggest the Nationals should look outside the organization to fix their problems, but let’s all calm down for a second.

The 2015 Nationals are the best team Washington has seen since 2011, when they finished with the best record in baseball. On June 1 of 2011, that team was 24-31 — a worse winning percentage than the 2015 team sits with coming into Wednesday. And (Strasburg’s potential injury notwithstanding) this year’s club has reason to believe things will get better fairly soon.

Despite dealing with unimpressive performances from notorious slow starters like Werth and Ian Desmond among others, the Nationals have managed to stay afloat and not fall completely out of things before June. As those players begin to hit their stride and Rendon and Janssen get healthy, wins will come and life as baseball fans in Washington know it will make sense again.

Strasburg’s injury could make things more difficult. But with the likes of AJ Cole, Taylor Hill, Taylor Jordan and Tanner Roark all available to take his spot if he misses time, the struggling right-hander’s potential absence shouldn’t create too much of an impact on the field.

It’s easy to take knee-jerk reactions too far early in a season (remember when Jake Fox led baseball in Spring Training homers in 2011?), but to suggest the Nationals are in trouble this early wouldn’t be a fair assessment of the team that Mike Rizzo has put together. Sometimes the best way to fix a problem is to let it fix itself, and for the time being, that might be Washington’s best bet.