Washington Nationals: Six free agent starting pitchers to pursue

There’s no doubt about it, the Washington Nationals will be looking to upgrade their rotation this winter. Here are six free agents they could look to.

Mike Rizzo put it best “you can never have enough starting pitching”. That phrase holds true for the Washington Nationals this offseason, as they look to bolster their rotation.

After a disappointing season on the starter front, the front office will likely be hoping to add one or two starting pitchers. They simply have to improve on the 4.03 ERA their starting pitchers combined for last season, which ranked ninth in the NL and 13th in all of baseball.

With injuries to Jeremy Hellickson and Stephen Strasburg during the season, they hade to use a conveyor belt of starters who continually struggled in the major leagues. A combination of Erick Fedde, Tommy Milone, Jefry Rodriguez, Austin Voth, and Kyle McGowin made a total of 26 starts, which simply isn’t good enough for a team that hopes to contend.

In an ideal world, the Nationals front office would be looking to add a pair of starting pitchers to the mix in an attempt to make their rotation one of the most feared in the league again. A potential rotation would shake out in the following way:

1. Max Scherzer
2. Stephen Strasburg
3. First Acquisition
4. Second Acquisition
5. Joe Ross or Tanner Roark

This would allow the Nationals flexibility on letting the final two rotation members battle it out, leaving the other a solid fill-in option should injuries strike. Then you can use a more seasoned Fedde as a seventh option should injuries become even more devastating, leaving the team in a much better position.

In this article, we look at six potential options from the free agent market. While the list is in no particular order, we start off with potentially the best starter on the market.