Washington Nationals get Shawn Kelley and Koda Glover back from DL stints..

The Washington Nationals announced this afternoon that both Shawn Kelley and Koda Glover are back from their respective DL stints.

In order to make room on the roster, the Nationals optioned A.J. Cole and Matt Grace to Triple-A Syracuse.

Nationals’ GM Mike Rizzo expressed confidence in the relief corps the Nats assembled this season when he spoke about the bullpen’s struggles with 106.7 the FAN in D.C.’s The Sports Junkies this week.

With a numbers of injuries to relievers who were expected to play important roles, some young and unproven arms pressed into action in tough spots, and a couple of underperforming veterans, Rizzo acknowledged that the bullpen has been bad.

He did, however, note that help was on the way with Kelley and Glover close to returning at that point.

The rest he said, would hopefully sort itself out.

“I’ve got to trust the track record and the stuff and past performance of these guys to believe that there are better days coming,” Rizzo said.

“We’ve got a bullpen full of guys that are in unfamiliar roles because of injuries, and once we get back our guys that we were planning on counting on like Kelley, and Glover and [Sammy] Solis, guys with really, really good stuff and a good history and good track record with ample sample sizes of performance.”

“I always say, water seeks its level and they call them averages for a reason.”

“They’re going to pitch better and they have to pitch better,” he continued, “and if they don’t then we have to make decisions internally or externally to improve ourselves, but I think that I still trust these guys, I trust the stuff, I see the track record in the past with an ample sample size and we can’t make any rush judgements to do anything drastic.”

Getting Kelley and Glover back is step one for Rizzo and Co.