A lot things happen early in every baseball season that have me scratching my head. Jeff Suppan's continued employment by the Brewers is becoming an annual example, but the most baffling one so far has been the right field situation in Washington.

After cutting Elijah Dukes loose during spring training, a move that GM Mike Rizzo insisted at the time was purely due to on-field concerns and not off-field ones, it was widely assumed that the Nationals would go after a free agent like Jermaine Dye to plug the new lineup hole. While they apparently did make a low-ball offer to Dye, the club has seemed content to stick with their internal options.

Here's the full list of those internal options, and how they've done so far this season:

Willie Harris, .118/.318/.353 in 17 at-bats
Willy Taveras, .133/.188/.267 in 15 at-bats
Mike Morse, 1-for-6 before hitting the DL
Justin Maxwell, 0-for-1 with two walks in his first since being called up.

If you're keeping track at home, that's a combined .128/.277/.282 line between the four of them.

Now, Maxwell is still only 26 and has shown some potential to be an interesting power/speed player on offense, so it's perhaps understandable that they'd want to see what they had in him before making any other decisions. But Maxwell didn't even start the season in the majors; he only got called up when Morse got hurt. Morse is a bit older than Maxwell and is trying to escape a Quad-A label himself, but at this point he looks like a poor man's Ty Wigginton -- an OK bench bat with the ability to play bad defense at multiple positions.

Giving those two guys a chance, though, doesn't explain the dalliance with Taveras at all. And while the rebuilding Nats have been burning a roster spot on the quintessential speed goof, outfielders like Wladimir Balentien, Fred Lewis and Terry Evans have passed through waivers.

Are any of those guys sure things? Of course not. Are they better than Taveras right now? Probably. Do they have at least as much upside as the likes of Maxwell and Morse? Absolutely.

For a team that should be doing nothing in the first half but trying to gather together as much young talent on offense as possible in advance of the beginning of the Stephen Strasburg Era, that inaction is almost criminally negligent.

About the only explanation I can think of for Rizzo not wanting to make those waiver claims is that it seems much like the kind of thing former GM Jim Bowden was notorious for -- churning the roster, and hoarding toolsy outfielders with little actual baseball skill. Balentien certainly fits that mold, but Lewis and Evans less so, and even if it is Bowden-esque, so what?

The Nationals' future is actually starting to brighten, and even as soon as 2011 a squad with Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann in the rotation, and Ryan Zimmerman in the field, could tease a playoff run. But that core will need a supporting cast -- and so far, Rizzo's reluctance to take chances and add free talent doesn't bode well for his efforts down the road to assemble a team around his stars.