Nationals Arm Race

In the midst of a fun World Series, I took a quick peek at the Transactions pages for both the Major League team and the Farm system of the Nats today… not one transaction for the entire month, anywhere in the system. I suppose this isn’t too much of a surprise, given our new GM and the wholesale shakeup of the entire front office, but it is a little curious since smart GMs often use this period to try to sneak players off the 40-man to try to stash them back in the minors before the wave of MLFAs are declared right after the World Series ends.

Update: of course, the moment I publish the Nats do exactly what I said they should be doing, which is to try to “sneak” four guys off the roster and outright them. Salazar, Thompson, Ogasawara, and Stubbs were DFA’d, cleared waivers this week, and were all outrighted to AAA. Both Thompson and Salazar were out of MLB Options and thus could (and did) elect to refuse the outright and are thus now FAs. Ogasawara was a $3.5M IFA signing that hasn’t really panned out, but we’re lucky he sticks around. Stubbs probably took one look at our paltry C-depth and chose to stick around for the time being.

These four moves put the 40-man roster at 36 for the time being and clears the way for the eventual return of the 60-day DL guys, which happens almost immediately once the World Series ends. We have five on the 60-day DL (Grey, Herz, Williams, Millas, and Law) but Law is a FA so will also get cut loose once the WS ends. After that, we’ll have FAs get cut loose, further lowering our active 40-man count, and there’s still plenty of names who probably could/should get DFA’d themselves to make room for this off-seasons Rule5 and FA acquisitions (not the least of which is several from this list: Loutus, Alfaro, Brzycky, Lara, Tena, Pilkington, or even Nunez.

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Note: you can get quick links to Transaction pages, all the resources I maintain, and a slew of other baseball related links at my “Nats Quick Links Page” which I basically use as a bookmark manager for Nats and Baseball stuff at this point.

So, with very little to talk about, we’ve been quiet. Seaver King has come back down to earth; he’s now “only” slashing .354/.456/.583 in the AFL. Fun fact; the Scottsdale AFL team also has a player with both DC and personal ties; one Nick Morabito. Morabito is the son of Brian Morabito, who is the exact same age as I am, and who was a Little League legend growing up in the Vienna/McLean/Reston circles. You know you’re good when, in the 1980s pre social media you were a “known name” to rival little leagues. Brian ended up going to JMU (as I did) and played baseball all four years at JMU before heading back to the DC area to live. His eldest son Nick went to Gonzaga, and was a 2nd round pick, and has been moving up the chain, playing the entire 2025 season at AA Birmingham.

Anyway. once the WS ends, we’ll get all our MLB FAs declared (there’s only a few left: Bell, Law, deJong, and maybe a couple of these mid-season guys added), plus a slew of MLFAs who will have aged out of the system (all 2019 draftees and 2018 IFAs who weren’t older than 18). We don’t have too many of these guys left in the minors, but should include the likes of Cluff, Arruda, Shuman, Knowles, and Cuevas maybe (he was a prep draftee so he may have another year). 2018 IFAs include guys like Atencio, De La Rosa, Colomenares, Vasquez, Otanez, and Rivero. There’s a few more 19D/18IFAs on the roster who we acquired via MLFA already (Santos, Solesky, Narajo) who might be MLFAs again … or maybe they signed multi-year MLFA deals. Or perhaps they’ve already reupped for 2026; this is where tracking the Big Board sometimes gets a little murky. We also have all our 25MLFAs who may or may not be coming back, some of whom played pretty well this year (Schnell).

So, it’ll certainly be interesting when Baseball America lists their declared MLFAs in a few days. We’ll do the requisite XLS work online and then make the inevitable observations about what it means for (especially) the AAA roster, which looks to get gutted of a ton of org guys/MLFAs/4-A types.

So, we’ll be back in November with some of our favorite off-season things to write about: Rule-5 protection, non-tender analysis (both usually in the Mid-November timeframe). The other two main things to talk about in November are Awards Season and Qualifying Offers. Here’s the 2024 off-season Key Dates column for last year that helps drive this year’s schedule.

Happy Labor Day weekend!

We’ve touched on Expansion a couple times in the past few weeks in this space, and in the comments we’ve talked about a couple of interesting “what-ifs” related to the side effects of Expansion, namely:

• What happens if we put MLB teams into existing AAA markets?
• How would two new MLB teams build out their affiliate farm systems?

I’ve given these topics some thought in the past, but never put pen to paper in this space, so what better time than the present. First, I did a little XLS work to build what i’m calling the MLB Pyramid. I cross-referenced all full season minor league teams to their Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) to see where there’s under-served markets that might be suitable for eventual minor league team relocation.

Here’s that spreadsheet, and then here’s some quick macro market analysis.

First off, if you’re looking at the Google XLS link, here’s a guide to the color coding:

• i’ve got the markets that currently have a MLB team highlighted in Yellow.
• Then, I’ve highlighted the 6 leading expansion markets that keep getting bandied about in Green.
• lastly, i’ve highlighted in Red the Markets that either have NO baseball, or which clearly don’t have a big enough team right now.

You can filter on the level to find the 30 teams in each level if you want to see them in one place, which is a fun exercise. If you filter on MLB though the count isn’t 30 since several markets have 2 teams and I don’t have Canadian teams here.

So, what does this pyramid tell us? Some interesting information.

MLB Market Consideration Thoughts

• The largest area w/o a MLB team technically is Riverside, but as part of the larger LA market it won’t get a third team. Just like Brooklyn won’t get a 3rd team, despite NY being the largest MSA in the country.
• Orlando is thus the largest stand-alone MSA without a MLB team. And, it doesn’t have ANY organized full season baseball. It doesn’t even have a spring training facility. Is it fair to characterize Orlando as basically a city serving its two massive theme parks, and as such one that cant’ really support 80 home dates of a baseball team? Maybe, maybe not; it hosts an NBA team just fine.
• The two leading expansion cities per the tea leaves (Nashville and Salt Lake) trail a slew of other markets, and if a team went into SLC it’d immediately be the smallest market in the sport, well behind even Milwaukee. This is problematic, but unavoidable; no matter where you put a team it’s going to be a “small market” and not able to immediately compete with the Houstons and Philadelphias of the world.

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Ok, so lets assume Nashville and Salt Lake City get MLB teams. Guess what? Both cities have established AAA teams. So, what happens to them? Well, it depends.

• The team could just dissolve, though this seems highly unlikely given that AAA teams are worth around $50M right now.
• More likely, the AAA team would relocate. When the last round of expansion happened in 1998, both Denver and Phoenix had existing AAA teams. What happened to them? Well, initially the Denver Zephyrs moved to New Orleans and the Phoenix Firebirds moved to Tucson. Interestingly, both of those teams have since moved; New Orleans’ franchise is now in Wichita, while Tucson’s moved to Reno.
• Ironically, New Orleans and Tucson now are amongst the largest markets in the country without affiliated baseball of any sort, and could both be targets for a new AAA team if/when the existing teams have to relocate.

Where else would a new AAA team make sense? Well, scanning down the markets:

• If Orlando and Portland don’t get teams, they’d both make good AAA sites. Portland has had AAA baseball in the past, though area residents don’t speak fondly of the experience.
• San Jose remains a major, growing market that’s further from the San Francisco ballpark than Nationals park is from Camden Yards, yet the Giants maintain territorial control.
• Several AAA teams technically live in the same MSA as their MLB teams: Atlanta, Minnesota, Seattle, and Houston’s AAA teams play in Gwinnett, St. Paul, Tacoma, and Sugar Land respectively. However, neither Nashville or Salt Lake are “big” enough to have both a MLB and a AAA team in the same spot.

If, for some reason, MLB went into two totally blank markets instead (say, Orlando and Raleigh), then there’s zero impact to any existing AAA or other team, and you’d have to basically come up with brand new AAA teams from existing markets. What do you do then?

• If you wanted to “promote” an existing AA market to AAA, there’s a couple that make a lot of sense. San Antonio and Richmond both have AA teams now but are more than big enough to support AAA baseball. Richmond was a AAA affiliate for decades before the Braves bought the team and moved it to an Atlanta suburb, while San Antonio is technically in the market for a MLB team itself and could more than support AAA.
• However, if you made Both Richmond and San Antonio AAA markets, you’d screw up the AAA league structure, giving both the International and Pacific Coast league odd numbers of teams. PCL has two divisions of 5, while IL has two divisions of 10, so this might be problematic unless you moved one to the other. And there’s zero teams in either league who geographically make sense to move.
• If you wanted two to IL (which would give it 22 teams, and would make for more unbalanced divisions) you’d probably go Richmond and Hartford.
• If you wanted to go two to PCL markets you could probably promote San Antonio and one of Tulsa/Little Rock, which would give PCL two divisions of 6, which is nice and neat.

MLB teams want their AAA franchises to be somewhat close, and putting two teams in the Texas/Oklahoma area kind of splits the difference between an eastern and western team. So that works.

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If you displace two AA markets with AAA teams, then you’ve got further cascading franchise disposition to deal with. Here’s the fun part; we still have to “find” markets for two more AA, High-A, and Low-A teams, in addition to two more spring training facilities (one in Florida, one in Arizona). What would that look like? Lets take a look.

AA Minor league expansion

In the lower leagues, we get a lot more geographically focused. AA has three leagues: the Eastern League, the Southern League, and the Texas League. So, there’s really no west coast leagues out there. Furthermore, if you look at where the High-A leagues are (East Coast, Upper Midwest, and the Northwest), there’s really only one option: you have to move two High-A South Atlantic teams into the AA Eastern League:

• Wilmington and Brooklyn’s teams are in the biggest High-A markets and make the most sense given the geographic layout of the Eastern League. There’s AA teams that span from New Hampshire to Richmond, and putting these teams right in the middle makes sense.
• There’s North Carolina markets that are tempting, like Raleigh or Greensboro, but these teams are probably irked by the trip south to Richmond as it is.

High-A expansion

Again, since the three High-A leagues are so geographically clustered (Carolina, California, and Florida), the only real option is to take two Low-A teams in the Carolina League and move them into the South Atlantic league. There’s several decent options; two teams in the Charlotte suburbs, Charleston (which used to be High-A before the re-org), Myrtle Beach (same), Columbia, South Carolina, or even Fredericksburg. These were all solid High-A markets before getting “demoted” and some could get the call.

Low-A expansion and below

Because we’ve poached so many east coast teams, we’d have to basically “find” two new markets somewhere in the mid-Atlantic coast to replace the two lost Low-A franchises.

Both would make sense in Virginia; one in Charlottesville, one in Ashburn/Leesburg? Or, you could go find some closed Short-A teams that make sense (though many of them are now lost to time).

Lastly, some teams have rookie teams outside of their complexes; if these two teams wanted to go that route they could put teams in two non-served western markets Casper WY and Fort Collins.

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Anyway, this kind of empties the notebook on a text file I’ve had sitting around for a decade. Thoughts? Interesting?

We talked about Manfred’s expansion floating last week, and lots of pundits out there are doing the same thought exercises related to where two new teams might pop up (Salt Lake City and Nashville … or maybe Portland and Charlotte), and then how we’d realign to go to an NFL-style 8 division format.

However, I got fed a little interview with John Smoltz, hall of fame Braves pitcher and now excellent broadcaster, and he had some awesome ideas.

Here’s his proposal:

Fewer Divisions, not More.

Don’t go 8 divisions of 4 teams each … go 4 divisions of 8 teams each. Then, keep the divisional focus in scheduling and make the adjustments so you’re more geographically sound. So, borrowing from my previous post, we could combine some of my proposed divisions to look something like this

• AL East/Southeast: Boston, Toronto, New York, Baltimore plus Kansas City, Colorado, Houston, Texas
• AL Central/West: Minnesota, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Seattle, Salt Lake City, LA, Oakland/Las Vegas
• NL East/Southeast: Philly, Pittsburgh, New York, Washington and Miami, Tampa, Nashville, Atlanta
• NL Central/West: Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis and LA, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco

Honestly, i’d just abandon the geographical terms and go with some NHL-style division names. I’d probably pick four historical names for the divisions with ties to one of the teams in that division.

• the AL Ruth Division for the AL East
• the AL Cobb Division for the Central/West
• the NL Aaron Division for the NL East division
• the NL Mays Division for the NL Central/West

Each team in these divisions play each other in 3 home/away series (that makes for 18 games * 7 opponents = 126 games), then you get one 3-game set against each team in opposite AL division alternating home/away year by year (8*3 = 24 games), then that leaves 12 games/4 series that can either go against your designated NL rival or maybe like the NFL you rotate around chunks of the opposite league and play exactly 4 of them each year on a rotating basis. Something like this.

However, this isn’t the awesome part.

Declare First Half and Second half winners!

Brilliant. Winners of both halves get byes in the October playoffs, then are joined with Wild Cards determined somehow (that’s the hard part).

The real brilliance is this: by having a first half and a second half, you get stuff we don’t have now:

• A playoff race from Mid June to Mid July that we don’t have now with real implications.
• Another playoff race at the end of the year which we have now. We have a playoff race now of course in September, but this one won’t have the same feel since the first half winners won’t be part of it necessarily.
• Teams that finished dead last in the first half don’t have to “give up” at the trade deadline and can regroup. This is his big reason: he’s tired of seeing teams give up in July.
• If a team wins both halves, they get a playoff bye or some other incentive.
• Wild Cards can be given based on several factors; 2nd place teams in the races, or if a team manages to have the best overall record but doesn’t win either half they are guaranteed a playoff spot as well.

Let’s assume that we want the same number of playoff teams that the 32-team expansion/NFL style schedule dictates; that being 6 teams. Here’s how this could look:

• AL East 1st Half Winner
• AL East 2nd Half Winner
• AL West 1st Half Winner
• AL West 2nd Half Winner
• Two AL Wild Cards: the two teams with the best full season records, or perhaps the two teams with the best individual half records.

Playoffs could go like this

• Two best half records get byes. If they’re the same team, go to next best team.
• If same team wins both halves, you’d go with 2nd best team.
• Wild cards play into the two lowest ranked half winning teams.

It would take some noodling to figure out the wildcards honestly. Maybe you just go 1st half winner versus 2nd half winner and eliminate wildcards … though this is a revenue non-starter since playoffs generate so much cash for the owners.

Some thoughts.

what do you th ink? Do you like half winners?

MLB’s commissioner has long been on the record saying that, once the league resolved the two big stadium issues it has had (Oakland and Tampa Bay), that they’d pursue expansion. He’s been saying this for years, and as recently as mid-2023 intimated the same. In fact, I wrote a big chunk of this article in February of 2024, the last time Manfred really went off on this topic. However, His most recent comments on the topic, made this week at the LLWS, included another hyper-parsed comment related to expansion giving the league a chance to “geographically realign,” code-word for “big time changes” that has the industry buzzing … and not in a good way.

With Tampa Bay now having a $1.3B plan for a new stadium in St. Petersburg, and with Oakland’s move to Las Vegas approved and a $1.5b stadium approved, we’re getting really close to the point where all 30 existing teams play in “acceptable” stadiums (ignoring for the moment the fact that Kansas City and the White Sox are now both clamoring for new stadiums). Manfred just stated that he wants to retire in 2029 AND have expansion plans in place before he retires … so we kind of have a roadmap for expansion.

So lets talk about MLB expansion. The league has sat at 30 teams for decades, which has lead to weird divisional alignments for all this time, for unbalanced schedules where there’s interleague play every day, and for odd wild-card scenarios. The NFL has 32 teams and a very neat eight division structure that MLB seems to want to emulate. Furthermore, Manfred’s latest claims, coupled with some recent Media landscape changes, has another interesting wrinkle: the possible alteration of the league structure of Baseball to move more towards an “Eastern” and “Western” league structure. This is how the NBA and NHL do things, and it cuts down on cross-country travel significantly for teams. So, we’re now talking about the possible death of the American and National leagues, which have been around for 120+ and 140+ years respectively. This is no light talking point.

Why does a geographically balanced schedule appeal to Manfred and the owners? Well, it certainly could cut down on travel costs. Here’s a quick example of an NBA team’s schedule: They play 82 games a year (which you could neatly double to see what an MLB team might look like):

• You play the four teams in your division four times each: 16 games
• You play the other ten teams in your conference at least three times each 30 games
• You play a select few conferences teams one additional time: 6 more games.
• You play the opposite conference two times each: 30 games

So, out of the 82 games, teams only travel across the Mississippi river 15 times, and many of those trips are planned out so that teams hit multiple non-conference opponents in a row. For example, when looking at the Washington Wizards 2025-26 schedule, you’ll see trips like what they take between March 25th-March 30th, where they play at, in order, Utah, Golden State, Portland, and Los Angeles. On another trip in Jan 2026, they’ll play in order at Phoenix, at LA, at Sacramento, and at Denver in a row. That’s basically every West Coast game done in two 6-day trips. MLB would LOVE to be able to do this, instead of forcing the Nats to do what they do now: a 4-game trip just to Denver then home, then a week in Seattle & Arizona, then 9 days in California in June, then 3 days in San Francisco in August, etc.

I looked at the topic of expansion more than a decade ago in this space, noting that adding 2 teams made more sense than mass realignment. At the time, I noted that the two biggest markets without baseball were Portland and San Antonio/Austin, while pointing out the challenges that Montreal/Vancouver would face, and kind of passing over Charlotte/Research Triangle.

So, a decade later, who are the leading candidate cities? Things have changed. We now have some familiar names from consideration and a couple new ones. ESPN just did a very nice deep-dive into all these areas that’s worth reading, if you want to really hear the pros and cons of each market.

Here’s the list, in likely order of getting a team (Note: in a first draft of this article done several years ago, las Vegas was the #1 option … now they’ve gotten a team, so we’ve moved to the next two.

• Nashville
• Salt Lake City
• (seemingly a gap)
• Portland
• Austin/San Antonio
• Charlotte
• Raleigh/Durham
• Montreal
• Vancouver
• Orlando
• Sacramento
• San Jose
• Mexico City

So here’s some thoughts on each:

• It seems like the front runners are Nashville for sure and either Portland or Salt Lake City right now, altogether for a bunch of independent reasons. One in the East, one in the West. One in the kind-of-underserved NC/TN middle Atlantic area to serve the fan base between DC and Atlanta, and one in an underserved sports market Portland/SLC. Jeff Passan’s recent analysis gives a deep dive into why SLC is in the mix suddenly. Nashville and Salt Lake City are both ranked in the 20s in terms of MSA and TV markets, which makes them “small markets” if they get teams … but there are no big cities anymore.
• Portland could be the #1 alternative to SLC as the ‘west coast’ selection, and would solve a bunch of issues in that city … but there are ownership group concerns. It also barely has baseball now; it doens’t have a minor league team in the city itself, and the area only supports a High-A team and some wood-bat summer teams.
• Salt Lake, it should be noted, is smaller than Milwaukee, the current 30th ranked team in the sport. Would that be a factor?
• The San Antonio/Austin would seem like a shoe-in, given that its a huge market and in a baseball hotbed, but seems too close to Houston. Plus … is it in San Antonio or in Austin? You can’t stick a team in some dinky town like New Braunfels or San Marcos and cater to both markets … no a stadium has to be center-city to take advantage of the downtown culture in order to be successful in the modern game.
• Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham are great choices but seem to be “behind” Nashville for whatever reason. Charlotte has the NFL and NBA, has Nascar, has a ton of money. It’s also the biggest US market w/o baseball by population. Nobody would be surprised if it supplanted Nashville as the “east coast” expansion team.
• Montreal, for reasons I don’t really understand, continues to be thrown about as a possible location despite reams of evidence that it can’t/won’t support baseball. However, it remains in the discussion b/c it is, by far, the largest population market in the US or Canada without MLB baseball.
• Vancouver doesn’t really seem to be in the discussion right now but are listed as an option in some places. I’ve seen people push back on Portland in Quora answers … and every argument anti-Portland people make works for Vancouver as well.
• Tampa and Miami barely draw, and Orlando is primarily a tourist town, so i’m not sure who would want to put another team there.
• I just can’t imagine Sacramento supporting a team; California’s government has proven to be very anti-public stadium funding, and they’d have to build something out of scratch in a market that basically exists to support the state government. It is on this list though b/c Sacramento is the largest market by DMA (tv rankings) w/o the sport.
• San Jose is completely blocked by San Francisco’s territory rights, as the Supreme Court told us a decade ago before it got even more conservative in the last presidential term. Nevermind that downtown San Jose is more than 55 miles away from Oracle Park in Downtown San Francisco along a corridor that’s amongst the heaviest traveled in the US. Distance from Downtown Baltimore to Nats stadium? 38.3 miles.
• Lastly I laugh at anyone who thinks that Mexico City could support a team, given that the median income in Mexico is a 6th of what it is here (somehow I don’t think MLB players in Mexico are going to accept being paid in pesos).

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So, some navel gazing; what would 32 team divisions look like with two new teams in Nashville and Salt Lake City? It’d look pretty cool I think, if you’re not blowing up the leagues.

Current AL Divisional makeup:

• AL East: Boston, Toronto, New York, Baltimore, Tampa
• AL Central: Minnesota, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City
• AL West: Houston, Texas, Seattle, Los Angeles, Oakland/Las Vegas

So, you have to pull a team out of the East to make an “AL Southwest” division to go with Nashville. The obvious choice is Tampa. But, you also have two teams in the AL West that are in Texas while the rest are on the coast. That seems to imply that they’d make more sense to pair with this new group while Portland heads into a division with Seattle for rivalry purposes. But that leaves too many teams in the AL.

Meanwhile, here’s current NL Divisions:

• NL East: Philly, Atlanta, Washington, New York, Miami
• NL Central: Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis
• NL West: LA, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco, Colorado

Atlanta and Miami are kind of isolated from the Northeast corridor teams and make sense to yank out. Pittsburgh could move to create an in-division rivalry with fellow Pennsylvania state. But how do you balance this out?

Divisional Scenario #1: Here’s some proposed eight team divisions that prevents any teams from having to move from AL to NL:

• New AL East: Boston, Toronto, New York, Baltimore. Classic rivalries maintained, little impact.
• New AL Southeast: Tampa, Kansas City, Houston, Texas. You move KC to be closer to the Texas teams. Tampa the outlier, but this is least impact to the existing AL.
• New AL Central: Minnesota, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago. Minimal impact.
• New AL West: Seattle, Salt Lake City, LA Angels, Oakland/Las Vegas. You have your new Northwest rivalry and all the teams are in the same time-zone, which you can’t say now.
• New NL East: Philly, Pittsburgh, New York, Washington: you move Pittsburgh to create a new cool rivalry with Philadelphia and these teams can all take the train to play each other.
• New NL Central: Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis; minimal impact, keep century-old rivalries alive.
• New NL Southeast: Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, Colorado; this would be perfect except for Colorado, which is difficult to place anywhere.
• New NL West: LA, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco; all four now in the correct time zone

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Divisional Scenario #2: Now, if you weren’t opposed to having some AL->NL movement, you could put both new teams in the AL, move some teams to the NL, and create some better geographic divisions like this:

• New AL East: Boston, Toronto, New York, Baltimore.
• New AL Central: Minnesota, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago
• New AL Southwest: Kansas City, Colorado, Houston, Texas. Colorado is forced to move to the AL, but gets the best ever regional travel schedule its ever had.
• New AL West: Seattle, Salt Lake City, LA, Oakland/Las Vegas
• New NL East: Philly, Pittsburgh, New York, Washington
• New NL Southeast: Miami, Tampa, Nashville, Atlanta. Tampa is forced to move to the NL, but you get a division where all four teams are on the same Interstate (I-75).
• New NL Central: Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis
• New NL West: LA, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco

I love this second scenario honestly. Minimal teams changing leagues (just two newer teams in Tampa and Colorado having to move leagues) and a ton of improvements in geographic rivalries.

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Divisional Scenario #3: Manfred’s East/West conference layout, destroying current leagues, may look something like the following. First, we squint at the map of the teams to figure out the 16 teams in each conference:

• Eastern Conference: Boston, Toronto, NYY, Baltimore, Philly, Pittsburgh, NYM, Washington, Detroit, Cleveland, Miami, Tampa, Nashville, Atlanta, Cincy, Milwaukee
• Western Conference: LAA, LAD, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Salt Lake, Oakland/Las Vegas, Colorado, Houston, Texas, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minnesota, Chicago, Chicago

So, right off the bat, you have an issue here: The two Chicago teams in the “Western conference” seems silly. But, if you look at the distribution of teams geographically … you have to draw the line at Chicago. And, if you were giving up on leagues, might as well give up on divisional splits too:

• New Eastern Division 1: New York, New York, Boston, Toronto
• New Eastern Division 2: Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Philly
• New Eastern Division 3: Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Nashville
• New Eastern Division 4: Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cincinnati
• New Western Division 1: Houston, Texas, Colorado, Kansas City
• New Western Division 2: LA, LA, San Diego, Arizona
• New Western Division 3: SF, Oakland/Las Vegas, Seattle, Salt Lake City
• New Western Division 4: St. Louis, Minnesota, Chicago, Chicago

Can you imagine the two New York teams, or the two Chicago teams, playing each other 18 times a year? Can you imagine us playing Baltimore 18 times a year? Can you imagine having both NY teams, Boston, and Toronto in one division, ensuring that the likelihood of two of them missing the playoffs every year is high? Does this alignment ensure Atlanta wins the next 20 divisional titles out of that group?

A final thought; when MLB introduced simple rule changes to improve the sport’s presence on TV, purists lost their minds. Imagine the fight baseball will have with the soul of its purist fanbase if/when they push to eliminate divisions or leagues? I just can’t imagine the damage they’ll do to the fan base if they decided to blow up 140 years of history so the owners can save a few bucks on airline fuel.

Conclusions: Do I “want” expansion? Sure. Two more teams means more MLB opportunities for players plus another dozen minor league teams, which turns into hundreds more jobs for players. It also opens the door for new markets, more fans, better reach, etc. I have a whole detailed analysis of how we’d come up with two new sets of minor league teams for two expansion clubs that will wait until we’re closer to it.

Do I want the elimination of leagues to do “geographic realignment?” Of course not. We live in 2025, not 1925; these players travel on private jets, not coal-fired overnight trains. But I do think my #2 scenario above makes the most sense (moving Colorado and Tampa leagues and adding two new teams) is the best.

I wrote this post the day the event happened, but we’ve had one thing after another and now its 3 weeks on. None the less, it’s still a topic i’m pretty passionate about, so lets post this.

So, the MLB commissioner (who works for the owners, lest we forget) is apparently making the rounds of MLB clubhouses to start putting a little nugget into the players’ minds ahead of the next collective bargaining session, and that nugget is simple: the sport needs a Salary Cap. He’s doing this to provide “cover” for the high likelihood of a lockout at the end of the 2026 CBA, one which baseball insider Ken Rosenthal already puts as a 90% likelihood.

And, when Manfred went to the Phillies clubhouse, one filled with veterans and highly-paid superstars, Bryce Harper told him to get the f*ck out.

Now, Harper is a lightning rod in the sport, and has been since he was 16. He’s hot headed, he gets ejected a lot. He’s been in fights on the field. So, I can understand if you immediately thought it was one more example of him being a hot-head. But, in this instance Is Harper right?

Yeah he is, because as usual the commissioner being disingenuous and is selling something that the owners want, and which won’t help the players as much as he’s claiming.

First, lets lay down some basic Macro Economic facts about Baseball.

• MLB generated $12.1B in revenue last year
• The 30 team’s combined payroll for 2024 was $4.89B
• There’s a soft cap in place now, with no floor and specious penalties for teams who don’t spend enough.

So, the players are currently getting paid right around 40% of total revenues in combined salary. If you want to add in a few more million per team to cover its 150 or so minor leagues collectively, fine, but it doesn’t really change the overall economic argument.

The other three major leagues in North America all have salary caps (as the commissioner will remind you), but the other three also have defined percentages of revenues that go to the players AND they have salary floors. Lets go league by league:

The NBA has a soft cap with exceptions and taxes built in:

• their CBA calls for players to get 51% of “basketball related income” or BRI
• In 2024, the salary cap is $140M
• in 2024, the salary floor is $126M
• But, teams can go over the cap to sign their own players and are then taxed at differing levels going north at $170M and upwards in a very complex system that is covered well on this wiki page.

Not for nothing, but there’s a NBA salary FLOOR of $126m, for basically 12 active players a night. Meanwhile, there’s 12 of the 30 MLB teams that aren’t spending that much right now … for 26 guys.

The NFL has a hard cap system in place:

• The hard cap in 2024 was $255M, which is increasing to $279M for 2025.
• There is a defined salary cap floor; 89% of the cap over a rolling four year period.
• The split between owners and players is supposed to be 50/50, though tactics by the owners now have that at more like a 52/48% to the players. Still a lot more than 40%.

Lastly, the NHL also has a hard cap with a floor and a defined revenue split in place:

• The Hockey CBA calls for a 50/50 split of all “hockey related revenues” or HRR
• There’s an $88.5M cap and a $65M floor defined in the CBA for 2024

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So, Mr. Manfred, you want a salary cap in MLB? Fine. But it should come with two stipulations:

• if there’s a cap, there needs to be a floor.
• if there’s a cap, it needs to come with a defined percentage of revenues to the players that’s adjusted annually to league revenues.

Good luck pitching that to owners, because there’s no way they’ll agree to it. The Owners want to have their cake and eat it too, per normal. Which is why it’ll never happen voluntarily, and why we probably face a work stoppage after this CBA expires as the owners push for it.

Let’s say for sake of argument that the players demand 50% of revenues. Only seems fair right? Every other pro league in the continent basically has a 50/50 split, and without the players there’s no game. Lets forget for a moment that only 1 or 2 teams make their books public (Toronto and Atlanta as publicly traded teams); the rest have private books where they claim they’re losing millions while watching their franchise values grow exponentially over time. Some teams own their own RSNs and net hundreds of millions more in revenues that are completely off the books and out of the public eye. In all likelihood the quoted annual revenue figure is an estimate and is likely low, but for the sake of the rest of this article I’m going to trust the $12.1B revenue figure for the industry.

Lets do some simple arithmetic:

• 50% of $12.1B in revenues is $6.05B
• If the players were given 50% of revenues, then $6.05B split into 30 teams = an average payroll of $201M per team.
• Right now, the average payroll in the league is $163M. The median team income is even lower thanks to massive spending at the top; just $142M.
• Only 10 teams out of the 30 even hit $200M this year, and 5 teams don’t even hit $100M.

You want a salary cap? Fine: then basically every team needs to increase its payroll right now around $40M to make up for the missing money across the entire industry. That would instantly make up the $1.2B gap between a 40% revenue split and a 50% revenue split. Commit to an NFL-style rolling four-year salary floor structure where teams have to spend 89% of the salary cap over a rolling period; this would theoretically allow teams to purposely spend less to rebuild, but then would force them to catch back up and play by the rules. But, if the teams attempt to cheat (ahem Miami), then that money still has to be paid to the players somehow, and there needs to be enforced penalties that actually hurt the team.

Does anyone here think any small market team like Pittsburgh, or Miami, or Tampa, or wherever the Athletics are right now are onboard for an average payroll of $200M? Or, even to be forced to increase spending $40M right now? Of course not. Which is why a salary cap without a floor or a revenue split is NEVER going to be fair to the players.

By the way, none of this is news. This payroll discrepancy issue has been the case ever since the Luxury tax went into effect. An entire generation of middle-aged players on the wrong side of 30 suddenly disappeared out of the game once the luxury tax started because it gave cover to teams to basically stop spending. Multiple times there’s been grievances filed by the MLBPA against teams for not even spending their revenue sharing dollars, and one team (Miami) has been so audacious in their skirting of the rules that they don’t even bother to try to adhere to the guidelines. There’s basically no penalties being levied for teams that are cheating, and at the end of the day the collective payroll of the players takes the cut.

Meanwhile, every time a player actually gets paid … the next chorus of “players are overpaid” nonsense comes from a certain part of the fan base, who have been conditioned by ownership over decades of labor fights to look at these 8-figure deals (while simultaneously looking at their own 5-figure salaries) and blame players for being “greedy” every time this issue comes up. If you’ve ever said to yourself, “why does Juan Soto need $70M/year?” then you’re buying into the owner’s game as well. You can’t look at one individual player’s contract; you have to look at the industry as a whole, and owners have short-changed players billions of dollars of salary over the past decade. Billions and Billions of dollars.

(Also, if you want to complain about baseball players being “overpaid” just go take a look at the NBA per-season salaries … and take a look at the number of guys making $30M/year or more who literally you couldn’t pick out of a lineup. There’s 60 players in the NBA making $30M/year or more, which is more than double that of the current MLB despite having a fraction of the players. Except … this is what the players there deserve, since the league makes so much money. This is where dozens more baseball players should be).

So, when Manfred comes to peddle his nonsense, the players absolutely should tell him to “get the f*ck out” unless he wants to have a legitimate conversation about how a cap, and a floor, and a revenue split, would be discussed.

Filed away in the general category of, “providing a solution to a problem that didn’t exist before yesterday,” for reasons inexplicable yesterday the MLB commissioner announced that all players who are on the “permanently ineligible” list will exit said list upon death, and thus be eligible for consideration for the Hall of Fame by one of the various selection committees in place.

Since I write a baseball blog, I’ll put in my 2 cents for the record, and it kinda goes like this:

“While I have an opinion, that I’m about to state, this is not really the hill upon which I will choose to die. If you disagree with my take, i’m not gonna argue that you’re wrong and I’m right or vice versa.”

One of the dirty little secrets of every single Hall of Fame argument, whether its about Pete Rose or Shoeless Joe Jackson, or about the litany of PED-associated players (Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Clemens, A-Rod, Manny) is this: when you actually visit the Cooperstown museum and walk around it … guess what? ALL of these guys have memorabilia scattered amongst the exhibits, they have their pictures and stories and gear memorializing their play. So, like it or not, these guys are “in” the Hall of Fame already. They just don’t have their bronze bust hanging on the walls of the well-lit corridor at the end of the tour.

Is it amazingly important to withhold the creation of these bronze plaques in order to penalize players for past actions? For many, yes. For whiny, self-important BBWAA sports writers, apparently so. For me? Meh. I’m absolutely not someone who will gaslight you and claim that Jackson didn’t throw the 1919 series by quoting his slash line from the series (because I’ve played the game and absolutely know you can “throw” your ABs in key spots to help lose a game), and I’m not going to make some ridiculous argument that because MLB now partners with Fanduel that Rose’s betting transgressions should be expunged like a Catholic who ate meat on Fridays in the 1960s before the Pope said it was ok.

I’m on record supporting PED-players “for the hall” because … well they’re amongst the best who ever played, and what’s the point of a museum honoring the best who ever played if they’re not actually recognized?? I suppose you can make the same claim for Rose and Jackson, despite what they did. You have to ask yourself: is the purpose of that hall of plaques to be a museum or to be a political statement?

If it was me, I’d select them all and write it in clear text what they did and why they’re controversal. That’ll solve the problem in an instant. Here’s how i’d write Roses’ right now:

“Pete Rose is the all time MLB hits leader [of players who didn’t start their careers in Japan, ahem Ichiro Suzuki], won the ROY and an MVP, and was famous for his tough-nosed playing style, which earned him the nickname “Charlie Hustle.” He also was banned for life when found to have bet on baseball games while managing the Cincinnati Reds and refused to accept responsibility for his involvement for decades, dying while serving a lifetime ban from the sport.”

And then i’d go on with my life, because we spend an awful lot of time arguing about this stuff for what it really is: a dinky museum in upstate NY that’s super hard to get to and which most of us will never see.

Now that the 2025 Opening Day is past us, and I’ve updated the XLS for this year’s starters and done some housecleaning of now-retired starters, here’s some Opening day starter trivia for you.

Here’s a link to the Opening day starter xls, which is also updated along the right hand side in the Links section. It is also worth noting that Baseball Reference of course maintains similar information. Here for example is the canonical opening day list of lineups (pitchers and players) for the Washington Nationals franchise. And here’s the list of all 30 teams’ opening day lineups for the 2025 season, with similar data for all past seasons). I can’t quite find a similar resource to just the starters across all 30 teams, but I’m sure it’s there somewhere, so I continue to maintain this XLS.

Ok, that being said, here’s some useless trivia related to Opening Day Starters:

• First time Opening Day Starters for 2025: 12 of the 30, including our own MacKenzie Gore. It may be fair to say that, were there not an opening series in Japan, and were there not a couple of last minute scratches, this number should have been a lot lower, like maybe 8-9.
• Current active Leader of Opening Day Starts: still Justin Verlander, with 12. He did 9 in Detroit, then another 3 in Houston. Others in the conversation are Kershaw (9), and Scherzer (7), neither of which seems likely to extend this record before they’re out of the game.
• Current Active Consecutive streak: Logan Webb and Framber Valdez both now have 4 consecutive Opening day starts for San Francisco and Houston respectively.
• Current Leader of Consecutive Opening Day Starts: both Verlander and Kershaw at one point made 7 straight opening day starts for their teams, and are the current leaders in that category. We’ll need another four years of consistency from Webb/Valdez to catch them, which seems unlikely (see my commentary below).

Historical records:

• Most Opening Day Starts in History: Tom Seaver (16).  Tied for 2nd place with 14 is Jack Morris, Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton, Walter Johnson
• Most Consecutive Opening Day Starts in History: Jack Morris; all 14 of his starts were in a row, Mr. Durability, and Mr. Hall of Famer thanks to the Veteran’s committee.

Nats Records:

• Max Scherzer is the Nats franchise leader in Opening day starts with 6.
• Strasburg is 2nd with four: he took the ball opening day in the 3 seasons before the Scherzer acquisition, then got it in 2017 mid Scherzer contract.
• Gore with his 2025 start becomes just the 9th guy to get the ball opening day for Washington.
• Odalis Perez remains the most unlikely Opening Day starter, getting the ball in our bottoming-out year of 2008.

Lastly, here’s some interesting team observations for 2025’s Opening day Starters

• With Eovaldi getting the ball for the 2nd year in a row, Texas breaks a streak of having 8 different opening day starters in the 8 years prior to 2025. And it’s even crazier than that: They’ve had 15 different opening day starters in the last 16 seasons, dating to 2009! Only one guy has repeated: Cole Hamels in 2016 and 2018, and Now Eovaldi in 2024 and 2025.
• Los Angeles Dodgers, despite being probably the league’s best team over the past decade or so and your defending WS champs, now has had 7 different guys make their last 7 opening day starts. Yamamoto, Glasnow, Urias, Buehler, Kershaw, May, and Ryu.
• Urias, in case you didn’t remember, just was suspended a Half a Season for his SECOND domestic Violence arrest and has probably thrown his last MLB pitch. So, a 2nd DV arrest, charge, and pleading guilty = half a season suspension according to MLB. Meanwhile, Trevor Bauer, when he was accused of his first DV issue (but not charged, arrested, or guilty) was suspended for two full seasons and now cannot get a job in the Majors at a time when teams are begging for starters and is seemingly blacklisted by all 30 teams. Yes, Bauer comes across as opinionated and abrasive, but he was definitively cleared of charges AND pretty clearly demonstrated that his accusations were a complete setup by someone trying to catfish a major leaguer and who was subsequently indicted on felony fraud charges for filing false reports against Bauer … yet here we are. He’s missed out on literally hundreds of millions of dollars of salary because … why? Because he’s outspoken on Twitter?
• Other teams who have not really been able to find a consistent starter: NY Mets: 5 straight different opening day starters. Cincinnati: 10 different starters in the last 11 years. Pittsburgh: 9 different starters in last 10. Baltimore: 9 different starters in the last 10 years. Angels: 9 in the last 11. Some teams just can’t find Aces.

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Now for some random commentary on the state of Starting Pitching in the game. I write answers on Quora about Baseball all the time, and came across a question there asking whether recently inducted starters like CC Sabathia were “worthy” of the Hall b/c he “only” had 251 career wins. This in the context of the three aging star starters Verlander, Scherzer, and Kershaw who currently lead all active starters in Wins with (as of this writing on 3/28/25) 262, 216, and 212 respectively. They’re 42,40, and 37 respectively, meaning that the odds of them significantly adding to their current win totals seem slim.

But, I don’t think anyone would dispute that all three are no-doubt hall of famers, despite two of them not being close to even 250 wins, let alone 300 wins. Three major individual awards basically make a player a lock for the hall:

• Verlander: 3 Cy Youngs (9 seasons in the top 5), 1 MVP, 1 Rookie of the Year, 3400+ Ks
• Scherzer: 3 Cy Youngs (8 seasons in top 5), 3400+ Ks.
• Kershaw: 3 Cy Youngs (7 seasons in top 5), 1 MVP, and has 2968 Ks as we speak.

But….. what’s next? A quick perusal at the state of Starting Pitching in the league reveals that we may not see another 250 win pitcher…. ever? Here’s the rest of the current active top 10 of career Wins leaders with their ages and some context:

• Gerrit Cole: 153 wins at age 34; just blew out elbow so he’s missing all of 2025. Does he even get to 200 career wins now?
• Charlie Morton: 138 wins at age 41: he’s the #2 guy in Baltimore’s rotation but this may be his last season.
• Chris Sale: 138 wins at age 36; having a second-wind career moment, coming off of last year’s Cy Young, but he made just 11 starts in 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined thanks to injury. Does he get to 175 career wins?
• Kyle Gibson: 112 wins at age 37. Quick: what team does Kyle Gibson pitch for? I had to look it up; he signed with Baltimore a week ago and just got optioned to AAA. He’s 7th in the majors in career wins! And now he’s going to pitch in Norfolk for a bit.
• Sonny Grey: 111 wins at age 35. Ok, so he’s St. Louis’ #1 starter and has been relatively durable, but can you count on him getting even to 150 career wins? He has 36 wins in his last four seasons combined.
• Carlos Carrasco: 110 wins at age 38. He signed a MLFA/NRI deal with the Yankees and seems to have lucked his way into a rotation spot. In his last two combined seasons, he’s had a 6.00 ERA and a -2.6 bWAR, and it doesn’t seem like he’s long for the majors at this point.
• Yu Darvish; also 110 wins at age 38. He’s still under contract for 3 more years in San Diego, which may give him a shot at 150 career wins.

Where’s the sure-fire Hall of Fame starting pitcher with 250 wins and 3,000 Ks in this group?? Nowhere to be found. Would you even characterize the two best guys on this list (Cole and Sale) as hall of famers right now? I wouldn’t. Maybe Cole if he comes back and dominates, but that’s no sure thing.

Lets look a bit further down the list of active starting pitcher win leaders to see who looks like they’re putting together a career that, maybe possibly could turn into a HoFame career?

• The two best Age/Accumulated wins combos might be Aaron Nola (104 wins at age 32) and Jose Berrios (99 wins at age 31).
• Nola had one great 9.7 bWAR season in 2018, while Barrios has received Cy Young votes in exactly one season in his career (a 9th place finish, meaning he probably got like one home-town writer vote, in 2021).
• The highest career win total for a player who hasn’t turned 30 yet is Dylan Cease, who has 57 wins at age 29.
• the 50-career win range has a slew of other guys who are “known names,” guys like Logan Webb, Zac Gallen, Jack Flaherty, etc.
• Our former #1 draft pick Lucas Giolito? 61 wins at age 30, right in this same range.

I mean, do any of these guys sound like Hall of Famers to you?

What’s my point? Randy Johnson was elected to the hall in 2015, finishing off a 300-win career in 2010. That was a decade ago, but it might as well be a lifetime ago in terms of evolution of pitching in the game. Not only does it not look like we’ll see a 300 win pitcher ever again, after Justin Verlander I’m sure we’ll ever see a 250 game winner again. And, I’ll just go ahead and say it; after Scherzer and Kershaw i’m not sure we’ll ever see a 200 game winner again. Nobody except Gerrit Cole is projecting to be even close to 200 wins for his career.

A Decade from now, will the new standards for SPs in Cooperstown really be 175 wins and 2,500 Ks?

I do a lot of spreadsheet work when it comes to tracking Baseball stuff that I like to track. Some of those have turned into relatively well-known resources, while others are things I generally edit privately and post to Google Sheets sporadically.

First, some Housekeeping.

Frequent commenter Will pointed this out, and also pointed out that the links on the front page of NationalsArmRace.com were well out of date. What’s ironic is, I almost never go to the non-WordPress dashboard version of this page, so I hadn’t really looked at the mess of content that was along the right-hand side. In like 10 years. Most of the links there were for long-dead blogs, or spreadsheets I did in like 2015 or 2016. So, I cleaned them up drastically. I also got rid of several useless sections (the tag cloud) and now the right-side set of links is much more streamlined with content that’s actually up-to-date.

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Next, now that I’ve cleaned up the Link section called “NatArmRace Creations,” here’s a review of those links and some discussion/insight into them. I’ve got these sections organized in the order these links appear along the right-hand side.

If any of these links don’t work, please let me know. They should all be set to be viewable for those with the link.

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“a All Nats Links I use“

Direct Link: Nats Links: or https://www.nationalsarmrace.com/?page_id=16709

What is it? ALL the Nats/Baseball related links I’ve ever collected and/or use frequently. This is essentially my browser bookmark set for baseball and the Nats.

History/fun facts: I got tired of trying to use bookmarks to go to the pages I visit frequently, so initially this was a private HTML page, but eventually I migrated it to be a WordPress “page” within the nationalsarmrace.com blog site.

The links in the top few sections are mostly what I visit on a daily/weekly basis; for each of our minor league affiliates I have direct links to the Local paper for gamers (if one exists that covers the team), the milb.com home page, the roster, the stats, schedule, standings, and transactions.

If you scroll down you’ll see some out of date links for the Nats, and then you’ll see entire sections devoted to thinks like PEDs, Hall of Fame, stats, etc. I’ve recently put online all the CBA pdfs I have to have them all in one place, and all those links are on there.

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Minor League System Org Rankings

Direct Link: Minor League System Rankings or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ipxQoHgXrf0EDL0iMc2zqLu4rX7RbXani4nfY0RUJlw/edit?usp=sharing

What is it? This is a list of all the Minor League system rankings i’ve found over the years from various pundits. There are more than 175 at this point dating back to 2000 and with links to older Baseball America rankings from there. There are divider lines that denote breaks in the rankings. Yellow shaded ranks are outliers that seem to not comply with the general consensus.

History: this is an XLS i’ve maintained since the late 2000s as I started to get into tracking prospects for the team. I used to actually keep a narrative of why each teams’ ranking rose or fell, but that proved to be too difficult to maintain (its still at the far right side dating back to 2010).

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2025 MLB Draft Order

Direct Link: 2025 MLB Draft Order or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eOam8iWCo-n3BC9baIU06c7aBxvV9oKqANl7WDqUsys/edit?usp=sharing

What is it?. this is a working XLS that tracks the changes in the draft order as players with Qualifying Offers sign. Published/finalized with last QO-assigned signee once the last order-impacting event occurs.

History: I couldn’t find a resource elsewhere on the internet that kept the data in the way that I wanted to see it, which was driven initially by a desire to see what kind of draft picks teams were giving up when they signed QO-affiliated FAs. Other draft tracking sites (like MLB) just remove the picks as they’re lost without great detail as to what happened. I keep the team in place and adjust the number so you can see how many picks have been added or forfeited.

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MLB Qualifying Offer Disposition

Direct Link: Qualifying Offer Worksheet or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f9oJDRmCD0rH7zVj5FlcJ65YvPiuVvpFz3dkyUhHuaI/edit?usp=sharing

What is it? Every single QO player since the system was created is tracked in this XLS, with their new contract, draft picks given up, and a judgement whether the QO “screwed” the player or not.

History: when the QO system first was devised, I was fascinated to see if players were “screwing themselves” by taking a QO. So this spreadsheet was a way to kind of judge that, and to judge the effectiveness of the system.

Opinion: I can’t stand QOs. They are the epitome of a Union negotiating a “benefit” that impacts a tiny fraction of its member base instead of addressing larger concerns. Each year around 12-14 players get offered one and accept it. That’s around 1% of the union at any given time. Half those QOs offered are from teams who have no intention of re-signing the player; they’re just gambits to net an extra draft pick from a player already heading out the door. Plus, each year a chunk of the players just re-sign and it becomes moot. It also seems that every year one or two guys really mis-read the market and end up getting screwed by the QO. This past off-season, that screwed player was clearly Nick Pivetta, who took a 4yr/$55M deal and a huge decline in AAV.

The player who probably got the MOST screwed in the history of the QO system? It was either Mike Moustakas in 2017 or more likely our own Ian Desmond in 2015, who turned down a $100M contract from the Nats to play the market, found zero buyers, and ended up taking a 1 year $8M deal in which he moved to left field.

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The Big Board

Direct Link: The Big Board or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc/edit?usp=sharing

What is it? Updated rosters for every Nats major and minor league franchise, from the MLB all the way to the DSL. Each year has two tabs: one for the Rosters, one for the Releases.

History/fun facts: This document was the initial brainchild of an O.G. Natmosphere staple in Brian Oliver, who maintained the old Nationals Farm Authority site. From there, another big-time Nats fan named “SpringfieldFan” took over the XLS updating for a long time (the current online XLS dates from 2010, so we’ve lost the first few years of Oliver’s ownership). In Dec 2019 they transferred control to myself, and i’ve been updating it ever since.

Updates I’ve made since I took over:

• I’ve added milb.com/baseball-reference.com links for every player.
• I have added color coding for in-season promotions/demotions.
• I’ve added in current age columns for all players
• I added the XST section for players who seemed to be missing but not released but not assigned to a team.
• I add URLs documenting releases if I can.
• I try to keep the actual starters in the main positions they’re holding per team.
• I try to keep the rotations accurate, and in the synced order with the big team across the system.
• I mostly keep the bullpen roles accurate, especially in the upper levels, but in the lower levels it’s fluid.
• This year I just added a running count of the entire system, given MLB’s new 165-person limit.

On a daily/weekly basis I’m updating transactions (DL trips, promotions, demotions, releases, MLFA signings, etc), confirming the rotation order in each level, and adjusting the starters. To do this, I’m completely indebted to Luke Erickson and his daily work at NationalsProspects.com basically summarizing the same. If/when Luke decides to hang it up on this daily work, I’m not sure I’ll have the time to do it myself, but for now, Luke seems game to keep going.

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The Nats Draft Tracker

Direct Link: Draft Tracker or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY/edit?usp=sharing

What is it? A spreadsheet that has every single Nats draft pick since the team moved to DC in 2005, along with key information such as position, draft round, overall draft pick, their school, initial assignment, when they become Rule-5 eligible, and their bonus amount.

History/fun facts: I’m not sure who the original author was of this resource, but I do know that Erickson owned it for a time, as did SpringfieldFan. I’m also not sure exactly when I took over updating the data, but it was probably Dec 2019 as well.

Updates I’ve made since I took over:

• Added in milb.com links for every player
• Changed the color coding for readability; green means active in Nats system, blue means released from Nats sytem, etc.
• Did a ton of googling about players we drafted but who didn’t sign to put in the correct disposition from older drafts. This is easier for more recent drafts, but harder for older players.
• Began adding two draft artifacts I maintain every year: a Draft Signing worksheet with twitter links for the players, notes, and NDFAs. Plus I maintain a “Local Drafted Player worksheet” with every player drafted who has DC/MD/VA ties. These are all now in the Draft Tracker.

I’m not updating this on a daily basis, but do periodically go through and update for player releases, Rule-5 status in a class, etc. On a yearly basis i’m adding the new class details plus the two worksheets mentioned. And once in a blue moon i’ll google unsigned players from prior classes to see where they are and update the roster. I recently abandoned the “level” as impossible to maintain accurately and just turned it into “roster status” to track release dates for players.

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Nats IFA Tracker

Direct Link: IFA Tracker or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ksPorXhEHhtkNAGqxrJWqUFkvioMgoWhBU50uaZstc8/edit?usp=sharing

What is it? This is an emulation of the Draft Tracker, only for the International Free Agent classes. There’s a set of columns for each “class,” that includes Name, DOB, age at signing, position, country of origin, initial assignment (which is almost always the DSL), Rule5 eligibility date, and known signing bonus.

History/fun facts: I created this with the Jan 2023 class, then have been building it backwards one year at a time. I have it back to 2015 right now, but probably could continue to build it backwards by digging through draft class announcements and our big board releases over the years. However, much past the 2015 IFA class all it would be would be a cut-n-paste job of dozens of kids who got released before they turned 20, and the value doesn’t seem to be there.

The bonus pools are quite sketchy in the international market, but I’m pretty close to having the entire pool accounted for in the last few seasons. Well, not 2023, where i’m off more than $100k. I have no idea how bonus dollars work; can a team sign whoever it wants if the dollars are under a certain amount? Kind of like how you can sign NDFAs to your heart’s content for domestic players? Or does it all count towards the yearly dollar amount?

The IFA tracker also shows that we sign a slew of players each year and don’t announce the bonus amount, which I can only assume means its a nominal amount (like $2k or $5k). Also, we announce a “class” on January 15th each year (what used to be July 2nd until they pivoted the date thanks to Covid), but then they continue to sign IFAs throughout the year. If a player signs in a given year, I still call them part of that draft class.

MLB cancelled the July 2nd signing date in 2020 for Covid, hence no 2020 class, but they still managed to sign a couple guys in late 2020, who are now listed in that year’s class.

Should I build this backwards until we get closer to the “dark days” of Smiley Gonzalez and Jim Bowden? Maybe.

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Nationals Prospect Ranks

Direct Link: Nationals Prospect Rankings or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Dtx_W2CN19W2EyRyQ17iaSkoyc51u1qR/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=102402795225850924380&rtpof=true&sd=true

What is it? This is a canonical list of EVERY prospect ranking i’ve ever found for the Nats farm system, from the most recently announced (Fangraphs in early June), back to Baseball America in 2004. More than 260 lists, with direct links whenever I could provide it. This sheet also has some cool information per player: their position, the year by year starting level (with red shading that indicates they’re repeating a level), their signing bonus, acquisition method and their signing/draft year. I’ve recently added their milb.com links and an active flag for sorting.

History: i’ve privately maintained this XLS since the Nats moved to Washington and update it every time a new list is released. Periodically I’ll update/upload it to google for announcement.

Note: i’ver never paid for BaseballProspectus, so i’m missing most of their lists over the years. I do pay for the Athletic, BaseballAmerica, D1baseball.com, and ESPN+ so all of those are there.

I’ve taken to highlighting in yellow the “outlier” rankings per player as I ingest them, which helps when i do the writeups/reviews of prospect rankings in this space. So if you see a rank that’s highlighted in yellow it probably is an outlier as compared to the rest of the ranking for that player in that year.

Lastly, my personal rankings are in Green.

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Opening Day Starters

Direct link: Opening Day Starters or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Mv8gLgJOuJHEAf_pXNwPWGCNRL4RnYEyulH6rxMuudA/edit?usp=sharing

What is it?: just a list of the opening day starters for every team, dating back to 2000. I have always had a fascination with these guys, and there’s a bunch of trivia questions in there. Baseball-Reference now has the same data at their site per team, which is really cool.

I usually do a post the day after opening day and will update it then.

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Other random artifacts not always online: As alluded to above, I maintain a few other random spreadsheets and documents, mostly locally, but do periodically upload copies of them. But, if anyone is interested in these things I could throw them onto Google.

• Nationals 40-man Roster tracking document: maintained in a Text file locally. This is mostly useful to me because I keep track of major transactions here, and it’s a useful way for me to quickly grab acquisition dates for stuff.
• Top 100 prospect tracking: this used to be more comprehensive, but how basically just a collection of pundit top 100 prospect lists for the Minors with Nats guys highlighted. Maintained in a Text file locally. I update this every time someone publishes a “Top 100 prospects in the minors” link.
• Nats Minor League Rotations (now just season beginning and ending): maintained in a Text file locally. Only really updated a few times a year; opening day and closing day.
• Nats Trading Partners: Maintained in a text file locally, updated whenever we make a trade. Fun fact: this team has not made a SINGLE TRADE with Baltimore since 2001. We havn’t traded with Houston since 2007, Colorado since 2009. It’s crazy how we trade with some teams constantly but others almost never.
• Nats Catcher Depth Chart: Maintained in a text file locally, updated several times a year when we have Catcher movement/transactions.
• Nats Attendance and Home Opener stats: Maintained in a text file locally, used to do an annual post on the same topic.
• Nats Payroll worksheet: abandoned recently, Cots does a better job.
• Nats Options worksheet: abandonded recently, Roster Resource does a better job.

Plus for all of baseball i’ve got stuff like:

• MLB Franchise Financial Overview: this is an XLS I put together from some other sources I maintain to put all the core financial details of each MLB franchise in one place: It has the RSN revenue amounts and ranks, each team’s MSA rank and DMA rank for comparison, their Forbes valuation and 2023’s payroll to see who’s skimping and who is spending. It’s a subset of data on the Sports/Winner/City xls below but updated to 2023 figures.
• Sports/Winner/City: a huge spreadsheet that tracks all four major sports in the USA to track franchise movement, champions, most recent year each city won a title, who held multiple sports titles at once, etc.
• Manager roster: used to answer the question, “What percentage of managers were Catchers?” Answer, its not as many as you think. I updated it recently to support a Quora answer I was crafting.
• GM Rankings and Roster: difficult to keep updated, especially “ranking” GM/front offices, but its current to the latest moves.
• Player Demographics: annually updated when the opening day rosters are announced. When I get 2025’s figures i’ll do a quick post and throw it into Google Sheets.
• MLB Team Payroll worksheets: annually updated, then finds its way to other XLS here.
• Hall of Fame Roster: I manually maintain a HoF roster to be able to quickly filter by position.
• Sports Revenues Annually across major sports; updated when we get more macro level revenue figures for the sport.
• Realignment Scenario Worksheet: I did a post on this
• Verducci Effect worksheet: abandoned. In the macro his theory was disproven, though his point was not to apply his theory to every pitcher, just certain starters.
• Ball in Play Studies Worksheet: subject of a great 2012 post I did about the amount of time the ball is in play for major sports, probably needs updating.
• Opener Worksheet: a worksheet that attempts to show how a team could use a staff entirely made of relievers, to see if it could work. Short Answer: i don’t think it can work.
• MLB Team Playoff History: made up to show just how much parity there is in MLB. 66% of the teams in the league have made the playoffs in the last three years and every team in the league has made the playoffs in the last 8, as example stats.

If I was more diligent i’d have all these artifacts in the cloud instead of locally, so everyone could see. If anyone wants to see some of these artifacts I can always upload them somewhere.

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Anyway, hope you enjoy the main links above, which was the reason I posted this in the first place.

With the final two qualifying-offer attached FAs signing yesterday (Bregman and Pivetta), we’re doing a double duty post today; recapping the Qualifying Offer (QO hereafter) crop for this offseason, then publishing the now-finalized draft order for 2025.

First; QOs. We’ve come a long way since the first QO season, and we’ve come a long ways since the awful 2015 season when so many veteran FAs (our own Ian Desmond headlining) got royally screwed by the QO. So, how did the crop fare this year?

Here’s a link to my full QO worksheet with a lot more detail than the below table. It is in chronological order, so scroll to the bottom. But, here’s a summary table:

Year	Player	Old Team	New Team	Draft Pick Forfeited	Signing Date	New Contract	AAV change	Q.O. Screw the player?
2024	Juan Soto	New York Yankees	New York Mets	2-70,4S-143	12/9/2024	15yr/765M	29.95	No
2024	Corbin Burnes	Baltimore	Arizona	2-59	12/30/2024	6yr/$210M	13.95	No
2024	Alex Bregman	Houston	Boston	2-53	2/12/2025	3yr/$120M	18.95	Not really
2024	Max Fried	Atlanta	New York Yankees	2-71, 4S-144	12/10/2024	8yr/$218M	6.2	No
2024	Willy Adames	Milwaukee	San Francisco	2-54,5-155	12/9/2024	7yr/$182M	4.95	No
2024	Pete Alonso	New York Mets	New York Mets	none	2/5/2025	2yr/$54M	5.95	Sort of
2024	Anthony Santander	Baltimore	Toronto	2-49	1/20/2025	5yr/$92.5M	-2.55	Not really
2024	Teoscar Hernandez	Los Angeles Dodgers	Los Angeles Dodgers	none	12/30/2024	3yr/$66M	0.95	No
2024	Sean Manaea	New York Mets	New York Mets	none	12/23/2024	3yr/$75M	3.95	No
2024	Christian Walker	Arizona	Houston	2-63, 4S-142	12/20/2024	3yr/$60M	-1.05	Not really
2024	Nick Martinez	Cincinnati	Cincinnati	none	11/17/2024	1yr/21.05M	7.05	No
2024	Nick Pivetta	Boston	San Diego	2-63	2/12/2025	4yr/$55M	-7.3	Yes
2024	Luis Severino	New York Mets	Oakland	2-48	12/6/2024	3yr/$67M	1.25	No

So, what’s the breakdown of the 13 QO-attached Free Agents this year?

• 4 Resigned with their old team, negating the QO and draft pick loss
• 9 signed with new teams, thus triggering draft pick compensation and IFA money loss
• 5 of the 13 in my opinion had some level of “impact” to their Free Agency by virtue of the QO attachment, even if its arguable:
• Nick Pivetta was probably the most impacted; he took $7.3M less in AAV than if he’d just signed the one year deal.
• One QO attached signing was ludicrous: Oakland/Sacramento signed a reliever Luis Severino to a 3yr/$67M basically to get the union off their backs for hoarding money. Honestly; someone needs to divest this team from its ownership.
• The Rich get richer: four of the signing teams were so far over payroll that they gave up two draft picks (Mets, Yankees, SF, Houston)
• 13 total draft picks were surrendered, which we’ll talk about in a bit in how it impacts a team like the Nationals.
• Boras represented 6 of the 13 players: 2 of the re-signed, 2 got the expected massive deals (Soto and Burns), but if i’m his remaining two clients (Alonso and Bregman) I’d be pretty underwhelmed by what happened this off-season. Alonso got just a 2year deal, Bregman a 3-year deal (albeit with opt outs each year). At least both can go back to FA soon w/ zero attachment.
• CAA Sports represented 4 of the 13: Fried and Adams did well, Walker got less in AAV than the QO but signed early so you can’t say the market played him. But they also represent Pivetta, who signed a deal worth $13.75/year AAV when he could have gotten a $21M QO for 2025. A mis-read by the player and the agent.

I continue to not be a fan of the QO system. I believe it artificially suppresses salaries for veteran FAs. I also believe FAs generally speaking are morons and continually misread their markets. Year after year we see players get screwed by this system.

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So, now that all the QO assigned players are signed, there’s no more draft pick gains and losses, and we now have a basically finalized 2025 draft order. I believe I have this correct and updated for all the moves, but here’s my working XLS of all the drops and adds for the first five rounds due to draft pick comp, comp picks, etc.

As it stands now, here’s how the Nats will be picking:

• 1st round: #1 overall
• 2nd round: #49 overall
• 3rd round: #80 overall: this moved up 9 spots thanks to lost picks
• 4th round: #111 overall:
• 5th round: #142 overall
• 6th round: #171 overall
• +30 every round subsequent

So, we’ll get three picks in the top 80 in 2025, which should add nicely to our existing slate of prospects.

Some random thoughts today on the Juan Soto deal.

15 years, $765million.

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.