Rutledge may be pressed back into the starting role. 2023 photo via 3rdmanin.com
We’re two weeks into the season … and the Nats are already running out of pitching.
With the latest moves, here’s the status of our 40-man SPs:
MLB Rotation: Gore, Williams, Irvin, Parker*, Lord
SPs on DL: Grey, Herz, Cavalli, Soroka
40-man SPs in minors: Ogasawara, Lara,
At the end of last year, we were in a similar situation to some extent … except that we were still calling Rutledge, Adon, and Henry “starters.” Now, we’re not calling any of those guys starters anymore, and we’re now one injury away from a disaster occurring. Two of the four guys on the DL are down for months in various stages of TJ surgery (Grey, Herz), a third is just only now starting throwing some innings and seems weeks away (Cavalli) and a fourth has a biceps issue and isn’t expected back until “May” (Soroka). “May” could mean 5/1 or 5/31.
Neither Ogasawara or Lara is MLB ready: Ogasawara got shelled in spring training and has a 4.80 ERA in 3 starts in AAA. Lara has a 9.26 ERA and is getting rocked right now in AAA and may need more AA time. Neither looks like an option if we have another starter go down, and we probably call up Alvarez as option A before looking at returning Rutledge to the rotation as optionB. Maybe you look at someone like Plinkington (long-time ML starter) or Adon (even if we know how that goes) .. but neither are on 40-man at present.
At least we have some starting pitching options here … the bullpen is in dire straits.
Its April 15th and we’re basically out of relievers.
MLB bullpen: Finnegan, Lopez, Sims, Ferrer, Poche, Salazar, Rutledge, Henry
RPs on DL: Law, Brzycky, Ribalta, Thompson
40-RPs in minors; None (!)
That’s right; we don’t have a single 40-man reliever in the minors right now. Thanks to early April injuries to Law and Ribalta, the team has already called up its minor league reliever depth in Rutledge and Henry. Next guy who goes down? We’re adding someone to the 40-man and rolling the dice. Nobody in AAA has more than 3-4 innings, so attempting to guess who would make sense to callup is folly, but the two names that might make the most sense initially are Carlos Romero and Jack Sinclair, both setup/closer types that have shown success in either AA or AAA. There’s also three 2025 MLFAs in AAA in Plinkington, Weidel, and Helvey, two of which who have MLB time, so those two make sense to callup as well (they probably also have opt-outs built in).
I can’t remember a season where this many arms hit the DL so soon. I can remember Aprils with bullpens so bad that Rizzo cleaned house, but nothing like this. Should be interesting to see what happens next. With a full 40-man roster, every move has to have a corresponding move … and its not like we have a ton of deadweight on the 40-man right now. With seven guys on the 10/15 day DL, that’s just seven remaining 40-man players:
SPs: Ogasawara, Lara,
C: Millas
INFs: Baker, Lipscomb
OFs: Yepez, Hassell
There’s not a name on that remaining list that is an obvious DFA. There’s not really an obvious name on the DL right now to whack either. So that means a pretty deep cut DFA or a 60-day stash for every move.
Tough to focus on winning ball games when you don’t know who’s pitching the 7th.
Andry Lara in AAA now, a long ways from whatever this field was. Photo via mlb.com
Now that we’re a full turn through the rotations of all the full season squads, I thought i’d kick off the monthly series of rotation reviews with an “Opening day” rotation review, comparing it to how we ended last year and talking about who’s where, who’s surprisingly up or down where i thought they would be, etc.
End of 2024 Season: Gore, Irvin, Williams, Herz, Parker, Corbin
Prediction for 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Herz, Veteran FA signing with Grey on DL, Cavalli in AAA)
Opening Day 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Soroka, TWilliams
Rotation Prediction and 2025 Observations: Well, we were pretty close on the predictions, getting four of the five right (Gore, Irvin, Parker, and Veteran VA signing in TWilliams). We missed on the Nats signing several more arms to have open competition for the 5th slot between Soroka, Ogasawara, and Herz. In the end, Ogasawara didn’t quite look ready for prime time (more on that in AAA section), and Herz looks like he’s heading to TJ. Grey on the DL as expected; Cavalli also on the MLB DL instead of in AAA because, well, apparently it now takes like 5 years to recover from TJ surgery in the Nats organization.
Shortest Leash to start the season: I’d say Parker is on the shortest leash, in that he was clearly the 5th starter to earn a spot. However, Soroka is already down win an injury and interestingly the team seems to have chosen not to backfill him immediately with a AAA starter. That’s partly due to early season off-day schedule, and partly due to the fact that they have a starter-turned-bullpen guy in Brad Lord in the bullpen (update: Lord made last night’s start and went three, so I’m penciling him in as 5th starter for now).
Bullpen comments: As is typical for Mike Rizzo constructed teams, the bullpen is a hodge podge of random Nats developed arms (Ferrer, Ribalta, Lord), Scrap-heap signings (Salazar, Poche, Law), and veteran one year FA types (Finnegan, Lopez, Sims). They’ve been less than impressive to open the 2025 season, not helped one bit by their 2024 stalwart Law immediately hitting the DL. I’m sure we’ll see the DCA-ROC regional shuttle get good use this year.
AAA:
End of 2024 Season: Alvarez, Lord, Ward, Rutledge, Watkins (Stuart hit DL last week of season)
Prediction for 2025: Rutledge, Lord, Alvarez, Stuart, Cavalli/MLFA signing
Opening Day 2025: Alvarez, Lara, Ogasawara, Choi, Solesky
Rotation Prediction and 2025 Observations: Watkins and Ward departed the season (by MLFA and Waivers respectively). My Nov predictions for 2025’s rotation were scuttled by a couple of surprising, and welcome moves. Rutledge has been moved to relief (which I never thought the team would do), and Lord (a personal favorite) made the MLB team. Stuart remains on the DL, otherwise likely would be in the rotation at the expense of (probably) Choi. I thought Cavalli would be ready to go and would be in the rotation; no dice. So instead we get a AA-level Rule5 guy in Choi to start along with two guys who moved up from AA last year in Lara and Solesky. Is 22-yr old Lara ready for AAA? I don’t think so, but he’s there. You could argue he had little to prove with 19 2024 AA starts; fair enough. Solesky needed the promotion; he’s 27 and its either up or out, even if I predicted he’d be back in AA last fall.
Next guy to get promoted: Both Lara and Ogasawara are on the 40-man, but neither seems ready to move up if needed. I think Alvarez would be the guy who makes the most sense unless Cavalli came off the DL if they need a starter. Solesky is 27 and is the elder statesman of the bunch, but his AAA time came in 2023 and he got shelled, so he needs to prove himself a bit more before getting a shot.
Shortest Leash to start the season: Choi seems like he should be in AA as a minor league Rule5 guy and would be the first guy I would think gets demoted if the results aren’t there/they need a spot. Lara had 19 starts in AA last year and apparently that’s going to be enough.
Bullpen comments: Rutledge started the year as the closer, but got pushed up quickly with Soroka’s injury. This led to the cascading promotion domino effect of Henry getting pushed up to now be AAA’s closer, following in the Starter -> Reliever conversion trend. There’s a couple of home grown, intriguing arms here (Sinclair, Romero), and the rest are what you’d expect of a AAA bullpen: MLFAs, Rule5 picks, and waiver claims.
AA:
End of 2024 Season: Lara, Shuman, Solesky, Luckham, Saenz (Theophile)
Prediction for 2025: Lara, Shuman, Sokesky, Luckham, Cuevas with Henry (i), Knowles (i) on DL.
Opening Day 2025: Shuman, Luckham, Saenz, Susana, Atencio
Rotation Prediction and 2025 Observations: The first day of 2025 looks an awful lot like the last day of 2024 for this rotation: Luckham, Saenz, and Shuman leading the line. They’re joined by the newly promoted Susana, aggresively moved up from his half season in High-A last year. I predicted Lara would be the 5th here in the typical Nats “half season promotion plan” but instead he’s in AAA. Henry to the pen as discussed, and Knowles still hurt, which leaves us with Atencio, who earns the promotion as well. Cuevas was in and out of the rotation all last year and is still in AA, likely filling in as LR/SS. Last year’s rotation stalwart Theophile hit 6-year MLFA and is out of the system.
Next guy to get promoted: If Shuman stays healthy, he’s already 27 and should be on the way up. Luckham was up briefly to AAA but got shelled; he might be 2nd in line to move up. The rest, especially Susana and Atencio, are likely here for at least half a season.
Next guy to get cut/demoted: Saenz is probably on the shortest leash here: he had an 8+ ERA in AA last year. Luckily for him there’s not huge pressure on him just yet in the form of injured starters coming out of XST to the AA level.
Bullpen comments: One of our more important reliever prospects is here in Grissom, along with some solid performers in the system like Peterson and Powell. We also stuck three MLFA signings from the off-season here; they could move up quickly. I’m sure a MLFA signing with AAA time is not happy to be in AA.
High-A:
End of 2024 Season: Susana, Cornelio, Tepper, Caceres, Atencio
Prediction for 2025: Susana, Sykora, Atencio, Bennett, Clemmey (with Young, Caceres, Cornelio, Tepper, or Davis getting moved to the bullpen)
Opening Day 2025: Clemmey, Cornelio, Kent, Sthele, Tepper
Rotation Prediction and 2025 Observations: My prediction for High-A got shellacked with the aggresive promotion of Susana & Atencio and the lingering DL stays for Sykora & Bennett. That means I got just one name right; Opening day starter Clemmey. He’s joined by two guys who i’m kind of shocked are still high-A starters (Cornelio, Tepper), a surprise promotion (Sthele, who had a 4.81 ERA in 23 G/21 Starts last year in Low-A), and a surprise High-A pro debut for 2024 4th rounder Jackson Kent (who I thought would be in Low-A). I was correct in that Young and Davis moved to the bullpen, and Caceres was just put on the 7-day DL.
Next guy to get promoted: I have no idea. You have to think Clemmey and Kent, the two most important prospects, are here for at least two months no matter what. Cornelio and Tepper are hold-overs but have never really shown they should still be starters, let alone get promoted. Sthele just moved up and isn’t going to be ready for AA anytime soon. Hence my above comment about there being almost no pressure on the AA rotation right now unless someone like Bennett shows back up and dominates in A-ball like one would think he should/would.
Next guy to get cut/demoted: Cornelio & Tepper seem likely to make way when Bennett is ready to pitch.
Bullpen comments: NDFAs, senior draftees, and MLFAs. A hodge podge of arms here. I am kind of surprised Davis is in the bullpen; he had really good numbers last year. Maybe he’ll pitch tandem.
Low-A:
End of 2024 Season: Sykora, Romero, Clemmey, Sthele, Polanco
Prediction for 2025: Tolman, Aldonis, Kent, Colon, Portorreal, with Sthele, Polanco, Romero as LR/SS options. (dl: Sullivan, Agostini)
Opening Day 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia
Rotation Prediction and 2025 Observations: My predictions last November were way off. Tolman is now a reliever, Aldonis is still hurt, Kent & Sthele made the High-A team, and Colon & Portorreal are still in XST. Brayan Romero is on the DL, along with Sullivan & Agostini, both of whom went straight to 60-day to start the season.
That left three slots for 2024 draftees, which is a great thing for the development honestly. So we get Meckley (12th rounder), Tejeda (14th rounder) and Garcia (6th rounder) in the opening day rotation. They’re joined by IFA signings Polanco and Roman. We do not get Cranz in the rotation as some scouting pundits predicted.
Next guy to get promoted: I’d guess Polanco, who was in the Low-A rotation for most of 2024. Garcia is the highest profile 2024 draftee and may push his way up quickly.
Next guy to get cut/demoted: I’d guess Meckley or Tejeda has the least amount of capital investment and have the shortest leashes. Roman was a sub $10k IFA signing and is found money; I hope he succeeds.
Bullpen comments: converted position player Mejia is here, age 30 pitching in Low-A. There’s 5 guys with names that start with “B” in this bullpen. Not much else noteworthy.
Who’s left in XST/FCL? Colon and Portorreal, who I thought maybe would make the low-A team. Another couple of newly graduated DSL guys like Farias and Moreno. However, when the FCL season starts i’m guessing its 5-6 starters all coming straight from the DSL roster.
Sorry MacKenzie, you can’t win ’em all! Photo wikipedia
Welcome to the 2025 Baseball Season!
Well, it isn’t every day you get a 6ip, 1hit, 0run, 13K, 0BB effort from a starter and lose, but that’s what the Nats managed to do yesterday in their home and season opener against the hated Phillies. MacKenzie Gore certainly carved through the Phillies lineup, each of whom struck out at least once on the day (Philadelphia made 19 of their 30 outs via the whiff).
As I mentioned in the comments, It’s rather ironic that both of the Philly homers on the day came from ex-Nats (Harper and Schwarber). I wish them well.
One random little artifact I maintain for some reason is a collection of our Opening Day and Home Opener data, like attendance, box scores, W/L, etc. Here’s that information for review with some trivia sprinkled in.
Home Opener Attendance and Weather through the years
2025’s attendance was up from previous years, a good sign for the team as it tries to convince the town that it may be close to competing again. We’re still well below the debut years of the stadium (I think they’ve removed a bunch of seats since the stadium opened in 2008 so the capacity will never be back in the 45k range), and the home opener record will likely always be the 2005 debut game of the franchise in DC, 45,596 at the old RFK, as people fought past protestors and secret service to often get into the game in the middle of the 2nd inning. (Note; the record for the franchise is record for the stadium still remains 2012 NLDS Game 5, or the “Storen” game, of 45,966).
Best and Worst weather for a home opener? Yesterday was 57 and sunny; that’s pretty good. I’d probably say the best weather for a home opener remains the “Phillies Invasion” game back in 2010, though we’ve had a slew of mid-70s and sunny openers in our history. The worst weather for a home opener? probably the 2011 41-degree afternoon game, though it must have been brutal to sit through the 2022 opener 4+ hour delay). Reminder from 2020: the 90-degree day was b/c the season was delayed into the summer.
2017: 42,744 (1:05 monday game, 66 and cloudy, slight wind)
2016: 41,650 (4:05 thursday game, 60 and 1.5hr rain delay)
2015: 42,295 (4:05 monday game, 75 and gorgeous)
2014: 42,834 (1:05 friday game, 50s and overcast)
2013: 45,274 (1:05 monday game, 60 and beautiful)
2012: 40,907 (1:05 thursday game 56, partly cloudy)
2011: 39,055 (1:05 thursday game, 41 degrees and overcast)
2010: 41,290 (1pm game monday, beautiful weather 80s and sunny): This was Phillies Invasaion
2009: 40,386 (3pm game on a monday, chilly 53degr and overcast).
2008: 39,389 (season and stadium opener), 8pm sunday night, Braves, nat’l tv clear but cold.
2007: 40,389 (in rfk, 1pm game vs Florida, 72 degrees
2006: 40,516 (in rfk, tuesday day game vs Mets, 72 degr and sunny)
2005: 45,596 (in rfk, debut of entire franchise, 62 degr and clear, evening game).
Home opener Results and Box Scores
The Nats are just 6-15 all time through 2025 in their home openers, a pretty interesting stat given that for most of the 2010s they were one of the best teams in the sport. We nearly always play a divisional rival in our home opener: of our 21 home openers, just 4 have come against non-divisional rivals (including the weird 2020 Covid year and our franchise opener, which was delayed after a huge road trip to start the season to allow the stadium add’l prep time).
It figures that one of the biggest pieces of franchise news hits at the exact moment I get into my car for a day and a half long business trip (I was in Tysons yesterday meeting with a client, then playing some pickleball at the new club off of Tyco road). So, apologies for being a little late to this.
Some salient details from the various announcements I’ve seen and some commentary:
The teams have ripped up their 2022-2026 agreement, which was (of course) in dispute anyway, and have agreed on a one year 2025 MASN deal worth an undisclosed amount, but if they honor the terms of the agreement for 2024 it should be around $58.3M.
There’s been so many hearings and appeals and what not that it’s not entirely clear what the Baltimore Franchise actually still owes the Nats: They only settled the 2012-2016 amount ($296M) in June of 2023. The implication is that the teams are still thus fighting about the amounts due for 2017-2021 and 2022-26, each of which is separately about a $300M payment.
It’s important to know just how combative and argumentative Baltimore has been throughout this entire process. They were never supposed to go to court to dispute the agreement; they sued anyway. Then they whined about the law firm MLB used. Then they whined about the team reps involved. Then, after the law firm was replaced and three new team reps were included … the group came to the same conclusion, and Baltimore appealed again, refusing to pay. It took another four years before the team finally, begrudingly was forced to pay.
While I find it tough to be sympathetic to multi-billionaire owners who clearly are not losing money on this team (why could they afford a $200M payroll 4 years ago but a third of that now?), the fact that they’ve had to fight over these figures for a decade is patently ridiculous, and MLB should have stepped in LONG, LONG ago.
Selig should have forced this to completion more than a decade ago, but i think he was afraid of Angelos and his tendency to sue. He was right.
I honestly thought MLB would force the divesture of this MASN partnership when the Baltimore team sold … and honestly i’m shocked this popped up now. What’s changed?
This was a ridiculously one-sided deal from the get go, and never should have been agreed to. MLB certainly has learned its lesson with these bullsh*t territorial rights agreements, and with promised expansion coming I’ll bet you a dollar they’re already working on freeing areas like Charlotte (from Atlanta) and Portland (from Seattle) to avoid this nonsense in the future.
Even in 2005, when this deal was struck, Anyone with a brain and a car KNEW there was not a real territorial control from Baltimore over the DC suburbs. Imagine today if I told you that you needed to be in Baltimore for a 7:05pm start time on a Tuesday, and you lived in, i dunno, Centreville. What time would you leave to avoid traffic to get to Baltimore on time? Noon? I mean seriously. If you left Centreville at 4pm, headed east on 66, around the beltway, then up 95 … you wouldn’t get there in three hours. You’d be better served taking a flight out of IAD to BWI and renting a car. So, Baltimore had no real fan base coming from huge swaths of the DC area for its games, and became a weekend touristy visit. Nobody’s buying season tickets to that team who lives in Virginia. So, I struggled with this from the get go.
The cancellation of this deal now has basically robbed the Nationals of the golden years of RSN money. Again, hard to be completely sympathetic to the billionaire Lerners, but for years they’ve gotten nothing but legal bills while comparable markets got massive amounts of money to help run their franchise. The DC area is ranked amongst the top 10 markets in the US for all major factors (6th in MSA, 6th in DMA) and generally compares with the following markets from a size/wealth perspective: Philly, Dallas, and Houston. You want to know what those three teams get from their RSN deals? Philly=$125M. Texas Rangers = $110M. Houston = $73-$80M). DC has had to fight just to get around $60M a year. That’s real money, and has real impacts on a team.
Now, of course, we’re seeing the collapse of RSNs, with half the teams around the league basically without a deal at all. I have to suspect this is what’s leading to the collapse of this deal altogether; Baltimore probably is looking at its RSN revenues and going white with shock, since its driven by a sh*tty Baltimore market and the complete underutilization of the Washington market (have you seen the MASN production values for Nats games? Its like Wayne’s World-quality sets and production value). And, of course, we’re in a new wave of streaming and cord cutting and the overall decline of conventional viewing patterns. Something likely gave, and even at a $50M clip the Baltimore owners probably balked and chose to walk away rather than continue to fight.
Remind me again … how the hell is Baltimore considered a “small market team” and given comp draft picks year after year … when we are legally obligated to get the exact same amount of TV revenue as they are, yet DC is considered a major market??
WP’s Barry Svrluga posted a scathing article basically calling out Lerner for the loss of “cover” for this deal going south, and he’s not wrong. This franchise no longer has any ‘excuses’ for not spending. Frankly, the last couple of years have been ridiculous, and they should have been more active to supplement the team. He also notes the patently ridiculous point that this team has yet to sell naming rights for the stadium (worth $20M a year usually) or jersey patches (worth $15M/year for some teams). Why?? We’re the ONLY DAMN TEAM in the league without either deal right now. Can you spell incompetent?
This handcuff of a deal had to be a massive displeaser for potential buyers of this franchise, so bravo to Lerner’s for getting out of it. I’ll bet this increased their franchise value by hundreds of millions of dollars overnight.
Speaking of selling, One has to think that this breakup was toasted with champagne by Ted Leonsis and his Monument network. I’ll bet Leonsis’ first call was to Lerner to basically say …. “so, you still interested in selling??” If the Lerner’s want out (and one has to think they do), then Leonsis is the way to go. He’ll immediately add to his two other pro franchises, immediately take the broadcasting in-house and get the “inventory” of an entire season of games for his network, and be able to do bundled/combo packages of Nats/Caps/Wizards players all cross-promoting. I mean, it makes too much sense not to happen right? Oh, and it’ll take Leonsis about 15 minutes to finally put a professional broadcasting studio together to do proper pre-game/post-game for the Nats, something that they’ve … never had.
Anyway, so that’s some stream of consciousness for today. Bravo for this happening, sorry it didn’t happen a decade ago when it should have, and no more excuses not to spend money.
House is the highest profile NRI this year.
Photo via primetimesportstalk.com
You know we’re getting close to Spring Training when the annual press release goes out announcing Non-Roster Spring Training Invitees (NRIs). The Nats announced the initial crop this week, immediately forgot at least a couple guys who have ST invites on their transactions page, and probably will add more as they sign up veteran FAs, but for now here’s who we have:
Outfielders: Daylen Lile, Andrew Pinckney, Franchy Cordero (left off press release)
The list includes a huge chunk of our projected AAA roster: i’d say of the 16 NRIs listed here, 14 of them will be in AAA to start the year. In fact, the only ones who won’t be in AAA are Susana and Romero, both probably heading to AA.
NRIs are important. Believe it or not, more than a dozen of 2024’s NRIs eventually played in the majors last year, some with pretty significant roles. So this group collectively will play a big role for the 2025 team. Traditionally 3-4 will make the team out of ST to open the season, while others get called up.
NRIs generally fall into several categories:
Top Prospects getting their first shot with the big boys: this describes at least Susana, Lomavita, House, Morales, Wallace, and Lile. I suppose Pinckney is here as well since he doesn’t qualify for any of the other categories.
Starters to eat split squad innings: I would throw Lord and Stuart in this bucket, along with Adon.
Catchers, because we need people to catch all these ST bullpen sessions: Knizner, Romero, Lindsley
Veteran MLFAs who were promised the NRI as a condition of signing: Helvey, Plington, Cordero
Under-the-Radar relievers who might be useful middle relievers: Acosta, Grissom, Sinclair
Is Adon still a prospect? After four option years, what exactly does the team need to see here? Perhaps they’re planning on converting him to relief, so he’d fall into category #4.
The team has already signed a dozen MLFAs for 2025, but only a couple have NRIs. This in and among itself is a message, but some of the non-NRIs are surprising.
We have a MLFA 28yr old catcher CJ Stubbs on the AAA roster right now: no NRI.
Andrew Alvarez is slated to be in the AAA rotation; no NRI.
We’ve heard people rave about reliever Carlos Romero: no NRI.
The only lefty reliever in AAA Garvin Alston? no NRI.
We’ve signed several aged 28-30 MLFAs who got assigned to AA straight away, an indication they’re just org arms.
We’ve also signed several younger relief arms this month, all in the 23-25 range, newly 6-year FAs after being young IFA signings; these kind of guys may need more seasoning and aren’t candidates to join the bullpen.
A few rule-5 candidates we talked about at length but no NRI include Solesky, De la Rosa, Made, and Shuman, which probably tells us what we need to know about the organization’s thought about these guys.
Who’s likely to make the team out of this list? Probably a bit early to predict, but I only count 9 total relievers on the entire 40-man right now, one of whom is out with TJ. So, there’s opportunities here for especially the arms who can slot into bullpen spots.
We didn’t really talk about the top prospects in camp. Of them, House seems the most likely to win a starting job, based on the lack of a FA 3b signing. We’ve litigated him to death; no he’s not ready, he probably needs to prove himself for a half season in AAA. The rest of the prospects all seem slated for either AA or AAA to get more time in the minors. I’m intrigued by Morales’ potential … but the team has basically bought itself enough 1B/DH cover that it seems unlikely for him to break camp.
Lets hope we get 2024 Trevor and not 2023 Trevor. Photo a via usatoday
We had some pretty clear cut needs heading into the off-season. Starter depth, a power-hitting 1B/DH option, maybe a 3B, and some bullpen help. In order to fill these spots, the team has turned to some familiar faces.
The Nats have announced a couple of veteran player signings in the past couple of days, both with very recent ties:
So, what do these moves tell us? In no particular order:
Pitching prognosis with moves so far:
With both Williams and Soroka signed, not only do the Nats not trust that Cavalli is ready to go to start 2025 … they think he may not becoming back for a while.
They now have 7 healthy starters for 5 spots to open the season, and Herz in particular may have just lost his starter role. We’ll have a good old 5th starter competition all spring.
No, I don’t see them doing a 6-man rotation.
I’m guessing we go Gore, Williams, Irvin, Parker, Soroka as the rotation to open the season, with Herz in AAA and Cavalli either on the DL or in AAA himself.
Yes, Soroka was in the bullpen last year; they didn’t spend $9M to have a middle reliever; he’s gonna be tested as a starter to see if he can reclaim his prior starting glory.
No, I don’t believe they’ll put Williams in the bullpen; not on a 2yr deal and not after his all-star level performance to open last season. They’re going to see if he can repeat his performance of 2024. And if he can, he’ll be trade bait unless this team is in the Wild Card race in July. He should be the #2 starter of this squad behind Gore going opening day.
Bats prognosis with moves so far:
Lowe for a reliever we got off the garbage heap is found money (Robert Garcia == waiver claim in August 2023 from Miami). Fantastic trade. I don’t care if Lowe isn’t a long term solution at 1B; we can replace Garcia easily enough (he had a negative bWAR in 2024).
Bell clearly will be the primary DH, and since he’s a switch hitter he could slot in at 1B when the team faces a lefty and put a RH bat like Chapparo or Yepez in the DH slot for the day.
Bell was a solid 3-win player for us a couple years ago but has now played for 5 teams in 3 years and i’m sure wouldn’t mind some stability. But, he also has to know exactly what he’s signed up for with a one year deal; a chance to shine first half and earn a trade to a contender.
These two moves probably dump Chapparo or Yepez to AAA; neither should start at 3B (Tena for now) and there’s not enough bench bats to go around. Assuming we’re looking at Adams as the backup C (no options), Baker as one utility infielder (Nunez can go hit .200 in AAA), either Garrett or Call as the 4th OF, and then either Chapparo or Yepez as that 1B/DH bench bat, there’s just one bench spot left, and we havn’t talked about House winning the opening day 3B job and/or acquiring a veteran 3B.
Do these moves make us better in 2025?
Williams alone should be a 6-win player if he pitches as he did last year. But that’s rare air; lets assume he regresses from his 2.03 ERA of last year but still gives us 5-win pace performance all year.
Soroka would replace Corbin’s -0.9 bWAR season with something positive; even his 4.74 ERA season was positive on the bWAR stable, and if he falters we replace him with Herz (who put up a near-1 win season in his 19 starts).
So that’s a swing of at least 4 full wins just in the rotation, before considering expected incremental improvements from guys like Gore and Irvin, who were improving all year.
Meanwhile on the bat side; we got negative bWAR out of both 1B and 3B, two of your most important bats on the field. We should get something positive out of what we have now for 3B, and we’re clearly improving 1B so that’s a 2-3 win swing right there as well.
This is how you go from 71 wins to 77 wins without much fanfare. Then you count full seasons and growth from Wood and Crews and suddenly you’re a .500 team.
Lastly…
As much as I don’t want to admit it, the signings of Bell, Williams, Soroka, the acquisition of Lowe … these are not “we’re competing in 2025” moves. These are “i’m acquiring flippable assets for the 2025 trade deadline” moves once again. There does not seem to be a 9-figure FA signing in the cards to shake things up, because .. well why would we at this point? There’s no reason to spend money unless you can see the target in sight. That’s what we learned in 2011, the last time Rizzo was architecting a dynasty.
I suppose it is only fitting that, one year after we “won” the 2024 draft lottery (but were ineligible because of being classified a “big market team” despite the fact that we get the exact same amount of RSN revenue as the Baltimore Orioles by rule, and they’re considered a “small market team” that literally gets Competitive Balance picks every year … but I digress), the Nats “won” the 2025 Draft Lottery and will pick 1st overall in the 2025 draft. We had the 4th best chance (around 10% overall) of getting picked, and we got lucky for the 2nd year in a row.
We’ll now have the 3rd #1 overall pick in the history of the franchise. The first two worked out pretty well … so expectations are pretty high. Based on the current state of the qualifying offer and other comp picks, the Nats will pick 1st overall, then have the 49th pick overall in the 2nd round, the 87th overall pick in the third round, and then roughly every 30 picks there on out (some teams are already forfeiting 5th rounders with QO-assigned FA signings, so we won’t know the exact draft order for the top 5 rounds for a while).
Bonus pools will be announced later, but by virtue of having #1 overall, we’ll have a massive pool to work with. The first pick alone will probably be worth close to $11M (last year’s #1 overall draft slot was worth $10.5m), which is important because the #1 overall pick will not sign for anywhere close to that figure (Travis Bazzana, last year’s 1-1 pick, signed for $8.95M, which gave Cleveland an extra $1.5M to work with), which means the Nats may have some major flexibility to sign another Luke Dickerson-type in the upper rounds and essentially get an additional 1st-round quality guy.
So, all that said, who is in the mix right now for 1-1 overall in 2025? Here’s a few names that have been in play since I started tracking the 2025 draft class. Remember, lots can change in a draft class once the baseball season starts next spring, but for now, there’s two HS guys and a handful of college guys at the top of most draft boards.
Prep guys:
Ethan Holliday, SS, Stillwater HS, Oklahoma. The brother of 2022 1-1 overall pick Jackson Holliday, son of Matt Holliday. Ok State commit. Consensus 1-1 pick as of Dec 2024 pre 2025 season on several draft boards.
Seth Hernandez, RHP, Elite Charter Academy HS, Temecula, Calif. Vanderbilt commit. 90-93, reaching 95 as HS sophomore. Top prep arm on board, projecting top 10 of 1st round, improving late 2024.
College guys:
Jace Laviolette, RF TAMU. D1 Fresh AA. 20/20 season as a freshman. Risen to be 2025 1-1 candidate with 29-HR sophomore season.
Jamie Arnold, LHP Starter from Florida State. 11-3, 2.98 ERA as sophomore in ACC.
Tyler Bremner, RHP UC Santa Barbara. blew up in 2024, going 11-1 with 2.54 ERA and 104/21 K/BB in 88 IP. Top RHP on board.
Cam Cannarella, SS/CF Clemson. D1 fresh AA, ACC Fresh of the year. slashed .388/.462/.560, Team Usa. Took a small step back sophomore year, went from 24SBs to zero (why?) but power stayed put.
Caden Bodine, C, Coastal Carolina. slashed .367/.456/.609 with 17 homers, Sun Belt Fresh of year, then continued in Cape with Wood to vault to top 10 status. Numbers fell across the board soph season, dinging prospect status.
One last comment. I’ve already seen some comments about Laviolette in particular, which are along the lines of, “well we already have plenty of outfielders, we should draft for need.” YOU DO NOT DRAFT FOR NEED IN BASEBALL. This isn’t the NBA, where you draft someone to immediately go into the 5-man starting lineup and you have to consider who you have in your current point guard position and how long they’re signed for; this is baseball, where players move around positions, where they may look great now but hit a plateau at AA or AAA, or get hurt and miss two seasons (ahem Cavalli). You draft the Best Player Available and if/when that player starts to push an existing veteran, so be it; you cross that bridge when you get there.
Right now, on December 11th, 2024, the #1 pick projection is absolutely Ethan Holliday. His brother destroyed the minor leagues, was the #1 prospect in baseball for most of 2024 and debuted as a 20yr old. Ethan is not his brother: he’s 4-inches taller and projects more like a corner bat/corner outfielder like his father versus a 6-0″ agile defender like his brother. If you told me Ethan would have his dad’s career right now, I’d take it (44 bWAR, 300homers, career .300 hitter with power). Sign me up.
It’s great to dream on a player … but you just never know what can happen in a spring baseball season. The #1 overall pick we get may be someone we’ve never heard of. Paul Skenes went from a decent Air Force hurler in a nothing conference to a guy putting up circus strikeout numbers at LSU in a year, to being the All Star Game starter and nearly winning the Cy Young in his rookie season … so we’ll see what happens as the spring season unfolds.
All that said, this is a great event for the franchise and could absolutely help lead the team back to a decade of prosperity.
Just putting that out there. $51M/year AAV. If a WAR on the FA market is worth $9M (that’s the going rate from a few years back, i’ll bet its more now), then Soto will have to put up about 80 WAR in the next 15 years to “earn” this contract. Or maybe you can’t think about this contract in those terms, because he’ll sell a million jerseys in the next decade, and he’ll be the cornerstone of a franchise that should be able to buy its way to the playoffs each year. Or, perhaps in about 12 years time when Soto has around 700 career homers … the media blitz alone will be worth the money (he just finished his age 25 season and already has 200 homers, and he averages 35/year … do some quick math and factor in that he’s not even in peak slugging years yet and look out).
Honestly, i’m surprised he went with the Mets. He was such a perfect fit in the Bronx. Right attitude, perfect field, all the history, the pipeline of prospects in the DR, etc. But you don’t hire Scott Boras to take the second best offer (reportedly 16yrs, $760M).
I know we’ve made comments about how the Nats 2025 payroll could have absorbed all these contracts and still have room to spare. I think i’m more irritated they let a core of players go that could have carried the team into the next rebuild; Turner ($27M/year), Harper ($26M/year), Schwarber ($20M/year), basically the Phillies 1-2-3 hitters, all Ex nats. But, you take the good with the bad. We gambled on Strasburg and lost, but cut bait on Rendon and won. Nobody has a crystal ball. Was letting Harper go the right move? We offered Soto $440m, he said no, so we traded him for a cache of players that are (or are projecting to be) crucial to us being relevant again (MacKenzie Gore, Robert Hassell III, C.J. Abrams, James Wood, Jarlin Susana). Was that a good trade? Absolutely. Should this team have committed $51M/year to Soto? Hard to say, given the fact that we were competing against two teams that print money (NYY and LAD) and another team owned by a profligate hedge fund billionaire who could give a sh*t about the luxury Tax.
Draft lottery tomorrow; we project to pick 4th, could move up, will pick no worse than 10th I believe. There’s some decent names in the top 10 projecting already; once we know where we’re picking i’ll throw up a 2025 draft proffer to show what’s likely to be in the mix at our slot.
Kieboom set to leave the org as a 6year MLFA after hitting a AAA ceiling.
Photo via Federal Baseball
A critical day in the off-season calendar of baseball every year happened earlier this week; five days after the end of the World Series (11/4/24) all “6-year minor league free agents” get cut loose. The Universal Player Contracts (UPCs) that players sign upon turning pro allow for six “renewals” before players must be either put on the 40-man roster or are declared free agents. This means that every player who:
was Drafted in 2018 or before
was an IFA signing in 2018 or before
was a 2024 MLFA signing
… and who didn’t sign a multi-year deal of some sort already this off-season or earlier this year
I count 27 players cut loose, including these notable names to long-time Nats farm watchers:
Technically Meneses and Rucker were on the 40-man, were outrighted, and by virtue of their signing dates were immediately declared MLFAs.
Reid Schaller: 3rd round pick who just never was healthy. Had higher hopes for this guy.
Tim Cate: 2nd rounder who spent time on the 40-man but just couldn’t solve AAA.
Mason Denaburg: 1st rounder and one of our team’s biggest 1st round busts in terms of accomplishments. Stuck around for years after he should have been cut loose based on performance in a blatant example of the team not wanting to “waste” its signing bonus.
Carter Kieboom: 1st round pick, former top 20 prospect in all of baseball, who mystified the industry by not being able to convert fantastic batted-ball skills in AAA to the majors.
Israel Pineda; long considered an heir apparent catching prospect but who ended up bouncing around the minor leagues in 2024.
Trey Harris, trade bounty for Ehire Adrianza in 2022 but who never really did much for us.
Aldo Ramirez, trade bounty for Kyle Schwarber in 2021 and who was supposed to be a decent SP prospect. Blew out his arm, missed two years, never really pitched again. Too bad; Schwarber was a solid trade prospect and should have fetched something of value for us longer term.
Rodney Theophile, who looks like he could be a promising SP prospect (2.33 ERA in 9 AA starts to close out 2024). Surprised the team didn’t try to resign him before hitting MLFA.
As far as I can tell, the team has already done some re-signing of a few of its MLFAs; the following should be listed as FAs based on their draft/signing status but are still listed as active:
Daison Acosta: AAA Middle Reliever, a 2023 minor league rule-5 pickup but a 2016 IFA signing initially
Erick Mejia, AAA utility infielder, who was a 2022 MLFA signing/2012 IFA signing.
Viandel Pena High-A backup SS, a 2017 IFA signing but who is just 23.
Bryan Caceres, High-A starter who was a 2017 IFA signing out of Panama
Yoander Rivero, High-A backup middle infielder, also a 2017 IFA signing.
Jose Colmenares, Low-A backup Catcher (2018 IFA)
Jeremy De La Rosa, just promoted AA outfielder (2018 IFA)
Jose Atencio, High-A starter (2018 IFA)
Joan Otanez, Low-A middle reliever and 2018 IFA
Bryan Sanchez, also a Low-A middle reliever and 2018 IFA
Samuel Vasquez, High-A middle reliever and 2023 rule-5 guy
Kevin Dowdel, a 2024MLFA but a 2023NDFA so he probably falls under the UPC for a while despite being a MLFA.
I’m not a complete expert on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, but I do find it interesting that many of these are 2018 IFAs: is there an additional year offered to these players b/c of Covid? Do they get an extra year of control b/c they were so young when they signed? Did all these 2018 IFAs not eve play in 2018 so therefore their UPC renewals started in 2019?
Furthermore, two minor league rule-5 guys seemingly should have been cut loose but who are still present; is there a different guideline for rule-5 pickups? Nonetheless, even if all of these players just simply signed new deals to stay with the club one more year, there’s definitely a few that i’m glad are still here. Acosta could be a decent lefty option for the MLB pen, De La Rosa was once a higher ranked prospect who is at least in AA, and Atencio was a very solid starter in Wilmington and i’d like to see where he goes.
The system/big board now shows 147 players under contract in the Minor leagues, including a complete gutting of the AAA pitching staff. Just five arms sit on the AAA roster right now; the rest were 40-man backups for MLFAs. We only have 11 relievers in total on the 40-man right now, which implies to me that we’ll be signing a slew of veteran relievers this off-season, and that we’ll have a cattle-call of 1yr/MLFA/NRIs this coming spring to make up the bulk of the AAA staff.
Year four of the rebuild is complete. The team was flirting with .500 well into June but just couldn’t hold it together once they lost their best starter. From the trade-deadline forward they went 22-30 to end the season at 71-91, a .438 winning percentage.
Here’s a quick summary of where we are in the rebuild:
Year 1: 2021: moved Turner, Scherzer, Schwarber, et al. Finished 65-97. Earned 5th overall pick in 2022 draft (Elijah Green)
Year 2: 2022: moved Soto and Bell, finished 55-107, Earned 2nd overall pick in 2023 draft after losing lottery, got Dylan Crews.
Year 3: 2023: Improved to 71-91, dropped to 10th in 2024 draft thanks to new CBA rules despite winning lottery, got Seaver King
Year 4: 2024: Finished 71-91 again.
Our 71-91 finish, combined with the White Sox getting the same treatment we got last year (i.e., being a big market team that is bad two years in a row getting kicked out of the top 10) and Oakland getting kicked out of the lottery as well (they’re a revenue recipient that’s been in the lottery two years in a row), we stand to benefit by moving up a couple of slots of lottery odds.
Tankathon.com has the current reverse order of draft standings, showing us in 4th place/4th best lottery odds. We can pick no worse than 7th, but can move up to pick #1. (all the draft rules are at the bottom of the tankathon page).
We’re a ways off of from the 2025 draft, but we are starting to see some commonality for the names at the 2025 draft boards. Its looking like a college-heavy first round right now, even though a prep kid could go 1-1 overall. If we’re in the top 7 though, we’re in line to get one of these names right now:
Ethan Holliday, SS, Stillwater (Okla.) HS. Brother of Jackson Holliday, son of Matt Holliday
Caden Bodine, C, Coastal Carolina; .347/.432/.564 first two years at CCU as a plus defensive Catcher.
Jamie Arnold, LHP, Florida State. 1st team AA, Friday starter for FSU. 159 Ks in 102ip in 2024, co-ace for US Collegiate National Team this summer with Bremner.
Cam Cannarella, OF, Clemson Freshman ACC POTY, .363/.440/.560 first two college seasons while playing with injury.
Devin Taylor, OF (CF), Indiana. .357/.449/.660 with 20HRs his sophomore season.
Nolan Schubart, OF Oklahoma State. Ridiculous 1.351 OPS in 2024. Huge slugger potential.
There’s also a couple of other prep kids in the mix for the top 10, but something tells me we’ll be taking a college player this time around and not a project. We don’t “need” Bodine or an outfielder necessarily, would love to get one of these two college arms. The top of the class certainly is looking outfielder heavy right now. I like the connection to Schubart, an Oklahoma kid (we seem to take a lot of players from that region) who could mash his way up, but BA has him slipping into the 20s for the class so he may not really be in the conversation for the top 6-7 of the draft. I like a slugger outfielder who could project as a 1B/LF/DH rotation kind of guy, but it has to be a major slugger.
Anyway, lots to discuss this off-season. I’m not sure how much i’ll “cover” the playoffs this year due to other writing commitments, but we have options, rule5, and other fun stuff to cover coming up.
