Washington Nationals’ outfield plans after the Michael A. Taylor injury...

Davey Martinez acknowledged that the options to replace outfielder Michael A. Taylor on the roster right now are not ideal when he discussed the results of the MRI Taylor took, which revealed a strain of the left knee and hip the 27-year-old suffered on a diving play in the outfield earlier this week.

Juan Soto, Victor Robles, and Adam Eaton were projected to be the starting trio in the Nats’ outfield on Opening Day, with Taylor as the fourth outfielder. Andrew Stevenson is the only other outfielder on the 40-Man roster. Martinez said he’d get Matt Adams some time in left, and throw Wilmer Difo out there to get some reps if he’s needed. Howie Kendrick has spent time in the outfield, but he’s coming off a season-ending Achilles injury, and is currently on the mend from a hamstring issue. Hunter Jones is the only other outfielder in camp. If you just said, “Who?” that’s kind of the point. No offense to Mr. Jones.

“There’s no outfield depth,” Martinez acknowledged, as quoted by MASN’s Mark Zuckerman in the aftermath of Taylor’s injury. “So I think Adams, as you know he can play left field. And Difo’s going to play center field [and] left field both here in the next couple days, and I think he can do it. He’s done it before, so he’s excited about it.”

The second-year skipper explained after the results of the MRI were in that it wasn’t as bad as they feared, but was still a serious injury that would cost Taylor a “significant amount of time.”

“It stinks,” Martinez told reporters.

“It’s a little bit more than we were hoping for. But he’s going to rehab, and as soon as we get him back, we get him back.”

In the meantime, the manager said, Robles, who was likely going to start the year in center anyway, will continue to play out there and they’ll see what they have to do next.

“Victor is going to play,” Martinez said, as quoted on MASN, “... but when you start a season with just four outfielders, you want a guy who can play center field. So we’re going to have to really look for that guy.”

With two weeks to go before the start of the regular season, however, limited options on the free agent market at this point, and the payroll close to the luxury tax threshold ($206M in 2019), which the Nats do seem determined to stay under, after going over it in each of the last two seasons, what will they do?

GM Mike Rizzo visited with the MASN broadcast team of Bob Carpenter and FP Santangelo during Saturday afternoon’s game, and he offered his thoughts on what the Nationals need to do to make up for Taylor’s absence.

“He got dinged up pretty good,” Rizzo said. “I think it’s the best possible scenario we could think of,” all things considered.

“We don’t think there’s anything structurally wrong. He’s just — he got beat up pretty good. I think he’s going to have to rest it and let it heal and then ramp his baseball activities up. We don’t have a distinct timeline yet, but we’re hoping it’s not a long-term situation.”

As for the in-house options as of now?

“We’ve got Andrew Stevenson, [who] is a terrific defensive outfielder, contact bat, can really run, steal you a base, and play good defense. He would be our No. 1 possible option and we’ve got some depth in the minor leagues, but also on the big league roster. Howie Kendrick can run out to the outfield and you see Difo athletically could play out there and we’ve had [Adrian] Sanchez in left field and first base. So we’re trying to build some versatility for Davey to utilize on his roster.”

“We still got some time,” Martinez said on Friday afternoon. “And we’ll reevaluate here in the next week or so.”