Nationals Arm Race

The next stop on the off-season transaction bus is the “Non Tender Deadline,” by where players under club control (whether it be pre-arbitration or arbitration-eligible) need to be offered contracts (tendered) by 11/21/25 or else they officially get cut-loose and become free agents. The players don’t have to SIGN said contracts, just be offered one.

Its the same and DFA’ing a guy, of which we’ve already done a ton of so far this off-season. In fact, technically every single pre-Arb player is a tender decision this week as well, though only the Arb-eligible guys are being analyzed here.

So, do we actually have any non-tender candidates on the roster at this point? Yeah we do.

Lets run through the arbitration-eligible players from high-to-low 2025 salary and make some guesses.

Resouces in use to write this:

• Cots for 2025 salaries
• MLBTraderumors for 2026 arbitration estimates.
• Also, since this is the first time we really start talking about Options w/r/t player roster flexibility, here’s Roster Resource and the list of players’ options.
• Here’s the Big Board for depth chart squinting

Like last year, we had 9 arb-eligible candidates to discuss heading into the off-season. The team DFA’d a couple of non-tender candidates early in Alfaro and Thompson, both of whom refused outright and are on the open market. Of the remaining seven, here’s some thoughts (they’re listed in order of 2025 salary):

• Luis Garcia: $4.5M in 2025, projected for $7M in 2026 and still has a 4th Arb year thanks to just hitting the Super-2 cutoff. RJ Anderson at CBSsports listed Garcia as one of the 10 biggest non-tender decisions any team faces, and for good reason. $7M for what he gives us seems like a lot. He’s barely league average in OPS+, had a .289 OBP last year, gives us really, really bad defense (-17 DRS in 2025 … as a 2nd baseman?!), and has had “challenges” on the base paths and showing hustle. He’s probably more suited to play 1B … but you don’t put a guy with a .701 OPS figure at 1B. Another wrinkle: Garcia has zero options remaining, which doesn’t really mean that much since he’s clearly entrenched in the lineup, but it does remove any 26-man roster flexibility. However, if you cut Garcia, who are you replacing him with? Tena? Nunez? We have three guys at AA who could have stepped up in 2025 (Made, King, Wallace) and made a play for 2B, but all three need more minor league time. So, for me, for the time being I think he gets tendered and 2026 turns into his make or break season, unless the FO is committed to buying a replacement.
• MacKenzie Gore: $2.89M in 2025, projected for $4.7M in 2026. I’m slightly surprised Gore’s projected arb salary is this low; ask yourself what he’d get on the open market, right now. He’s our most valuable trade chip, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him part of a big GM-meeting bonanza trade. The 2025 all star is a lock to be tendered.
• Josiah Gray: $1.35M in 2025, projected for $1.35M again in 2026. Miss a year, pick right back up where you were. I guess Gray has no real recourse to demand more than $1.35M in salary after a year where he was paid that to basically recover from surgery. No real discussion here; obviously a 2nd or 3rd starter for $1.35M is a bargain, even if he ends up doing a 95 ERA+.
• Riley Adams: $850k in 2025, projected for $1.5M in 2026. There’s certainly a lot of animosity amongst some readers here towards Adams and his 59 OPS+ given that we have Millas, and have had Millas, waiting in AAA for years. Certainly Adams did himself no favors when he couldn’t step up and take the catcher job upon Ruiz’ concussion issues last year. Instead, Millas came up and slugged to a 127 OPS+ figure before breaking his index finger in mid August, ending his 2025 season. However, the truth is that we can’t depend on Ruiz right now, and it seems short-sighted to cut one of the only 3 catchers you have on the 40-man roster and the next closest legitimate catching prospect is a 2024 draftee in Lomavita, even if he was decent in AA. If you cut Adams, you’re basically guaranteed to be shopping for a backup Catcher on the FA market, and can you get something better than Adams there? I think you tender him for insurance, and if you find a better insurance policy who you can option to AAA as needed, you cut him at that point.
• CJ Abrams: $780k in 2025, projecting to $5.6M in 1st year of Arb. No surprise here; he basically had an identical year at the plate in 2025 as he had in 2024 when he was an All Star, only this year he didn’t manage to get himself sent home from school for misbehavior at season’s end. Like his double play partner Garcia, he’s awful defensively (-6 DRS, -11 total zone) with a slew of throwing errors, and it seems like it’s just a matter of time before he moves to 2B (though it may take a couple years, since all our best SS prospects are in Low-A). In the meantime, obviously you tender the guy.
• Cade Cavalli: $760k in 2025, projecting to $1.3M in 2026 first year of arb. Hard to believe, but he’s already arbitration eligible. This is what happens when you let a guy do all his injury rehab on the60-day DL. As for tendering, no argument here; he’s going to be in the rotation, he’s a 1st rounder, and he’s a huge part of the future.
• Jake Irvin. $774k in 2025, projecting to $3.3M in 2026. Ouch; $3.3M for one of the worst starters in the league? $3.3M projection seems high; how did Gore only get $2.89M in his first Arb year with far better 2024 numbers? I dunno; this seems like its a high projection. Nonetheless, some are calling this a clear non-tender. Ok sure, but what choice does the team have? Yes he had awful numbers, but he took the ball every 5 days and ate up the innings. His first two seasons in the Majors weren’t half bad: 92 ERA+ and in 2024 a 1.19 WHIP in 33 starts. One would think he could get back to that level of performance, which would be a bargain at $3.3M. Personally I think the team should eventually put him in the bullpen if he can’t get back to a 4th starter level, and would a $3M middle reliever be too much? Perhaps. But, if you non-tender the guy you’re telling me that one of these healthy current 40-man arms is taking his place: Lord, Williams, Lao, Eder. Not seeing it. Unless the new GM is planning on a big FA splash, but then the team still needs relievers. I’d tender him.

So, of the 7 guys:

• Locks to tender: Gore, Gray, Abrams, Cavalli
• No good reason not to tender right now: Garcia, Irvin
• In jeopardy of being Non-Tendered: Adams

Conclusions: Honestly, for the arguments made above, I’d tender all seven right now, and if you can find a replacement for Adams or Irvin, so be it. I can’t see cutting loose all three of Garcia, Irvin, and Adams.

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Post non-tender deadline update: On 5pm on 11/21, the Nats announced they tendered all seven candidates. So, nobody cut loose yet.

Post Publishing updates: corrected Josiah Gray’s name per JohnC comment.;

Here’s a complete history of my predicted Rule-5 additions (with links to each prediction piece), along with the Actual players the team protected (with links as well), to show my (lack of) predictive powers. It’s updated for 2025 and has narratives about each class and how the players turned out later on with updates for the last year of performance.

• 2025: Predicted: Bennett, Franklin. maybe on Cornelio, weak maybe on Wallace. Actual: Bennett, Franklin, Cornelio
• 2024: Predicted: Lara, Hassell, maybes on Alvarez, Cronin. Actual: Lara, Hassell
• 2023: Predicted: Parker, Lara, and Herz (maybe on Henry) Actual: Parker, Herz, Henry, and Brzycky.
• 2022: Predicted: Cronin, maybes on Alu, Millas, Rutledge, Ferrer. Actual:  Cronin, Alu, De La Rosa, Rutledge, Ferrer, Irvin.
• 2021: Predicted Cate, Casey. Actual: Casey and Lee.
• 2020: Predicted Pineda, Adon. Actual Adon, Antuna.
• 2019: Predicted Braymer, Sharp.  Actual: just Braymer.  And…. Sharp got picked in the Rule-5 draft by Miami.
• 2018: Predicted: Bourque, Mills, Istler.  Actual: just Bourque.
• 2017: Predicted: Gutierrez, Gushue, Ward, Baez.  Actual: Gutierrez and Jefry Rodriguez.
• 2016: Predicted Voth, Bautista.  Actual: Voth, Bautista, Marmolejos, Read and Skole.
• 2015: Predicted Kieboom, Bostick, Marmolejos-Diaz.  Actual: Kieboom, Bostick, Lee
• 2014: Predicted Cole, Skole, Goodwin.  Hedged on Grace, Martin and Difo.  Actual: Cole, Goodwin, Difo, Grace.
• 2013: Predicted Solis as the only lock.  Possibles mentioned in order Barrett, Taylor, Grace, Holland.  Actual: Solis, Barrett, Taylor.
• 2012: Predicted Karns and McCoy, with Hood and Rosenbaum as maybes.  Actual: Karns and Davis.  I think we were all surprised by Davis’ inclusion, despite his good AA numbers that year.
• 2011: Predicted Norris as a lock, guessed strongly on Moore, Meyers and Komatsu.  Actual: Norris, Moore, Solano, Perez.    This was poor analysis on my part; I did not consider the IFAs newly eligible.
• 2010: Predicted Marrero, Meyers and Mandel.  Actual: Marrero, Carr and Kimball.
• 2009: pre-dates my blog and thus no predictions, but Actual was Jaime, Thompson and Severino.
• 2008: I might be wrong, but I don’t see any evidence of the team protecting *anyone* prior to the Rule-5 draft.  A bit of an indictment of the farm system at the time, I’d say 🙂

How many of the above players who were added to “save” them from the Rule-5 draft actually turned into impactful players for the Nationals? Lets work backwards:

• 2025: Bennett, Franklin, Cornelio: too early, we’ll revisit next November.
• 2024: Lara, Hassell. both made it to the majors in 2025; Hassell ended up sticking on the roster for a while as basically an extra outfielder covering for injury, but struggled at the plate. Lara got absolutely shelled in the majors, and didn’t do much better in AAA, and I’m not sure what the plan is for him going forward.
• 2023: Parker, Herz, Henry, and Brzycky. The fact that we got two MLB SPs the next year makes this the greatest Nats Rule5 draft ever, by a sizeable margin, even if neither Parker or Herz turned into awesome starters. A huge portion of these Rule-5 addition guys sit on the 40-man for 2-3 years, stalled out in the minors, but not this year. Parker got called up to cover for Grey and did spectacularly, giving the team 29 starts at a 94 ERA+ figure in 2024. He stepped back a bit in 2025, but may be a decent bullpen option going forward. Herz did something similar, coming up to cover for Williams and giving the team 19 starts with a 97 ERA+ figure, but blew out his elbow in ST 2025. Both were fantastic rule-5 additions and are solid candidates for the rotation for years to come. Henry converted to relief and looked for a while like a decent 7th/8th inning guy, but still has some room to grow. Meanwhile, Brzycky came back from injury and pitched his way up to AAA, but curiously his K/9 was way down and he wasn’t nearly as impactful as one thought; the team tried to sneak him off the 40-man in Nov 2025 and he got claimed.
• 2022: Cronin, Alu, De La Rosa, Rutledge, Ferrer, Irvin. Some good, some bad so far out of this crew. The Good: Irvin spent most of the last three years in the rotation, even if he struggled in 2025. Ferrer has turned into a critical bullpen arm, taking over the closer role after we traded away other candidates. The replacement level: Rutledge pitched great all year in 2023 to rocket up the system and even get some MLB cycles, but has tanked as a starter all year in 2024. Finally converted to relief, he stuck in teh MLB bullpen all of 2025 but had awful numbers. Alu looked ok as a bench guy in the MLB, but went back down and got outrighted back to AAA, where he went back to being “org guy” and ended up playing out the MLFA string. Cronin got DFA’d rather quickly, but had really solid 2024 stats. He may be a change-of-scenery guy. The bad: De La Rosa did little, was probably way too young to protect, and has got outrighted right back off the 40-man, where he played out the MLFA string.
• 2021: Casey and Lee: Casey was DFA’d mid 2022, outrighted, then demoted to AA for most of 2023 before hitting MLFA. He never once played in the majors for us. Lee got hurt in 2022, made a few starts in AA, got outrighted (ironically to make room for the 2022 Rule5 guys) then was converted to relief for 2023 where he struggled badly in 2023. He was a bad rule5 protection selection; someone who was “good” for a brief second and had crazy K/9 numbers but who couldn’t come close to sustaining it at the higher levels of the minors.
• 2020: Adon, Antuna: Adon toiled in the lower minors for most of 2021, made it to the majors for a spot start and looked solid. His performance since? Absolutely abhorrent: 1-12 with a 7.10 ERA in 2022 before mercifully being sent down. 2023 was not much better. His final option year in 2024? Another 7+ ERA year in AAA. Meanwhile, Antuna was a disaster, had to move off of SS and hit .230 in High-A with none of the power he’d need to present with his move to a corner OF position. The team seems to be clinging to the guy simply based on his massive signing bonus. Finally at the end of 2023 he hit MLFA; final career minor league totals: .224/.326/.675 and the only level where he even came close to an .800 was rookie ball.
• 2019: Braymer; got DFA’d mid-season 2021 and outrighted after struggling in both seasons. Never amounted to much after that.
• 2018: Bourque: got shelled in AAA in 2019, waived in 2020, then left the team as a MLFA.
• 2017: Gutierrez, Jefry Rodriguez. Gutierrez never really did anything for us and was traded to KC in the Kelvin Herrera deal. Rodriguez threw a bunch of mediocre starts and was flipped to Cleveland in the Yan Gomes deal; he’s now back with us as a MLFA for 2022.
• 2016: Voth, Bautista, Marmolejos, Read and Skole. A ton of guys; anyone impactful? Voth has competed for the 5th starter job for years but has a career 83 ERA+ and was waived; he then went on to Baltimore to succeed, a pretty black mark for this team’s usage of him (since Baltimore ins’t exactly known for being a pitching development team). Bautista never did much for us: 33 career MLB plate appearances. Read had a PED suspension and a handful of MLB games. Marmolejos was a 1B-only guy who showed some gap power in AA but never above it. Skole was inexplicably protected as an age 26 corner infield guy whose profile seemed to mirror dozens of veteran free agents readily available on the market; he hit .222 in 2017 and then hit MLFA.
• 2015: Kieboom, Bostick, Lee: This was Spencer Kieboom, the catcher, not his younger brother Carter. S.Kieboom was a AAA catcher who was worth protecting but he played just a handful of games in his MLB career. Chris Bostick didn’t last the full 2016 season before being DFA’d. Nick Lee lasted even less, getting DFA’d in July.
• 2014: Cole, Goodwin, Difo, Grace. All four players ended up playing in the majors for various lengths … but all four were role players for this team. AJ Cole was tried out as a 5th starter season after season, finally flipped to the Yankees when he ran out of options. Goodwin was another guy who couldn’t seem to break our outfield, but who has had spells of starting with some success elsewhere. Difo was our backup IF for years, and Matt Grace pitched in the Washington bullpen for years before getting outrighted and leaving via MLFA in 2019.
• 2013: Solis, Barrett, Taylor. Sammy was good until he wasn’t, and his time with the 2018 Nats was his last. Barrett remains with the team after multiple surgeries, but is a MLFA this off-season and may be forced into retirement after so many injuries. Michael A. Taylor is an interesting one; he had a 2.7 bWAR season for the Nats in 2017, nearly a 20/20 season when he finally got full time playing time in CF. He won a Gold Glove this year for Kansas City, one season after we DFA’d him because we all thought Victor Robles was a better option.
• 2012: Karns and Davis.  Karns had one good year as a starter in the majors … for Tampa. Career bWAR: 3.0. Davis pitched a little for the team in 2013, then got hurt, then never made it back to the majors.
• 2011: Norris, Moore, Solano, Perez.  This was a big year; Norris was a big part of the Gio Gonzalez trade and made the all star team in 2014 for Oakland, but didn’t play much afterwards. Tyler Moore was great in his first year as our backup 1B/bench bat type, but never replicated his 2012 season. Jhonathan Solano was always our 3rd catcher and saw sparing duty until he got cut loose. Eury Perez played in just a handful of games for us before getting DFA’d and claimed by the Yankees in Sept 2014.
• 2010: Marrero, Carr and Kimball. Marrero was a 1st rounder who “had” to get protected to protect the team’s investiment; he just never could get above AAA. Adam Carr and Cole Kimball were both relievers who looked promising after their 2010 minor league seasons but did relatively little afterwards: Cole never made the majors, while Kimball hurt his shoulder and never recovered.
• 2009: Jaime, Thompson and Severino. three pitchers, none of whom did much. Jaime was a 2004 IFA who has a grand total of 13 MLB innings. Thompson was waived a year after being protected. Severino got a cup of coffee in 2011 then hit MLFA.
• 2008: Nobody added. Not one eligible pick or signing from the 2004/2005 draft was considered worthy of protecting.

Conclusion: So, after more than a decade of rule-5 additions, who would you say is the most impactful player we’ve ever added? Candidates:

• Brian Goodwin: career bWAR for the Nats: 0.0 (across 3 seasons)
• Michael A. Taylor: career bWAR for the Nats: 3.5 across 7 seasons, with one 2.7 win season
• Sammy Solis: career bWAR for Nats: 0.2 across 4 seasons
• Jake Irvin: career bWAR: 3.0 for 2023 and 2024, gave some of that bWAR back in 2025.
• Mitchell Parker: bWAR of 0.7 for 2024 but -1.2 in 2025
• DJ Herz: bWAR of 0.7 for 2024, missed all of 2025 with TJ.

I’m tempted to say Irvin despite having slightly less bWAR than Taylor, if only because I expected Irvin to be a rotation guy for us for several more years. However, his 2025 performance gives me pause, so now I’m thinking Taylor is the answer.

It’s that time of year. Its “Rule-5 time!” November 18th 2025 is the official “Deadline to File Reserve Lists” on the off-season calendar, which is a fancy way of saying the deadline to add certain minor leaguers to the active 40-man roster to protect them from the Rule-5 draft, which occurs in a few weeks at the December annual meetings.

We do this post every year, and it’s now perhaps our longest running post topic. Its our annual deep dive into our older prospects to see who the team may be thinking about protecting. Here’s links to past years posts on this topic: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010. I also publish a post-Rule5 compilation post with all the prior selectees and draftees after we see what the team does on the 18th.

Many people think Rule-5 is a waste of time for fringe prospects who don’t matter. For those of us who pore over minor league box scores, hoping to find a diamond in the rough of our 160+ minor leaguers who might some day be wearing red and white Nationals home jerseys, its a deep-dive into what might be for these players and an always-fun exercise looking at what may be the edges of our farm system.

As a reminder, Rule 5 eligibility is as follows for any player not on a 40-man roster:

• Signed at 18-years-old or younger, has been in the organization for five seasons post draft/signing
• Signed at 19-years-old or older, has been in the organization for four seasons post draft/signing

So, generally speaking this translates to for 2025:

• College players drafted/signed in 2022 or before
• High Schoolers drafted in 2021 or before
• IFAs signed in 2021 or before unless they were already 18 at signing, then 2022 or before.

(I say generally speaking because there are some IFAs who get signed later in the year, or who might have turned 19 by the time they sign and turn Rule-5 one year earlier than we thought. This hasn’t happened with us for a few years).

Heading into this year’s Rule-5 selection piece, the Nats have quite a bit of room on the 40-man, thanks to a slew of DFAs and a few FAs who expired off the roster. As of this writing, we’re at 34/40 on the 40-man roster. I don’t think that means we’re adding 6 guys at this deadline, but I don’t sense this front office cleared that much room for the heck of it this early in the off-season. We also have a brand new GM and front office, who brings a new approach to the Rule-5 Process. Boston has not been very active ahead of the Rule-5 deadlines; 2 protected last year, 2 the year before, none in 2022. So I’m not expecting a massive set of additions.

Important Links for Rule-5 consideration:

• Nats Draft Tracker looking at the 2022 class and older
• Nats IFA Tracker; looking at the 2021 class and older
• Nats Big Board: you can search for “22D” or “21IFA” to quickly find the players in that class
• Roster Resource: the Options/R5 column has a red “R5” for all Rule-5 candidates; I use this to cross-reference my work to make sure we’re both in sync, though they sometimes have errors.
• 2025 MLFA List from Baseball America: 34 MLFAs for us this year
• 2025 Nov 2025 Minor league Transactions, which shows the 34 MLFAs we had along with all the other 11/6/25 transactions
• 2025 AFL Rosters, since we usually send a couple R5 candidates there. This year the R5 guys were Bennett, Aldonis.

Here we go. There’s several categories of players to consider; we’ll go one by one.

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Group 1: Newly Eligible 2022 draft College Players this year. Holy cow there’s a lot; we’ve still essentially have our entire 2022 draft class still playing, so there’s lots to discuss.

• Trey Lipscomb (AAA): well, the first player to cover is … a weird one. Lipscomb just got outrighted off the 40-man roster, and he immediately becomes Rule-5 eligible. Clearly the Nats won’t be protecting him, so there’s no point in analyzing him. Per my contact at Fangraphs, this is a rarity but does happen, and such a player has gotten plucked in Rule-5 before, which seems odd b/c the exact same team that picked him could have just put in a waiver claim on him a couple weeks ago and retained the flexibility of optioning him all next year instead of the Rule-5 limitations. So, odds are he doesn’t get picked in rule-5 either.
• Kyle Luckham (AAA): 5.46 ERA in 7 AAA appearances this year, and has very little prospect cred. I think he’s likely a AAA ceiling guy, and I can’t see him as a Rule-5 drafting prospect since he’s not tooled up.
• Riley Cornelio (AAA): had a great 2025, solving High-A and AA and ending the year in AAA with similar numbers there to Luckham. What makes him different is the fact that the organization has continued to promote him year after year, and the industry has taken note of his progress. However, I admit that I’m “higher” on Cornelio than others in the industry. BA has zero professional scouting reports on him, but did note he added 2-3 mph from 2024-2025 on his fastball. At the very least I think someone would risk picking him as someone who could deal out of the bullpen. I think we’d be fools not to protect him, and I’d bet he’s pushing for a MLB rotation spot by mid 2026.
• Marquis Grissom (AAA) briefly was looking like a solid RP prospect, but then proved to be pretty hittable in AAA this season. Might still be someone who can grow into a middle reliever in the bigs, but he didn’t show enough this year for a team to think about carrying him all 2026.
• Jake Bennett (AA): one of our top 3-4 prospects right now, was unhittable for the entirety of 2025 after missing a year with TJ, and he’s a big part of the future. He’s going to be the #1 protection name submitted.
• Tyler Stuart (AA): solid prospect, out for all of 2026 with TJ, thus no chance he’s picked. If he had an injury-free 2026, he probably would have made it to AAA and we’d be protecting him.
• Chance Huff (AA); bonus-limited 8th rounder who was workable in AA this year, but who has no chance of getting picked because he’s not a prospect arm.
• Cayden Wallace (AA): he was the marquee prospect who we got for Hunter Harvey and was immediately in our system top 10, getting a NRI to spring training and having some talking about him possibly being better than House. An up-and-down AA season in 2025 pinched a lot of that talk, but this is still a 2nd rounder who can play on the dirt and can hit. He could be a backup infielder for a bad team’s MLB roster today. I think he is protection material.
• Johnathon Thomas (AA): a backup undersized 19th round outfielder in AA who’s behind nearly a dozen other outfielders on the depth chart isn’t a threat to get protected. I don’t think he’s getting picked either.
• Max Romero (AA): even in a catcher-thin system, you can’t protect a guy unless he can at least hit .200 right?
• Murphy Stehly (AA): the 10th rounder in 2022 is actually now 27 yrs old and he hit the crap out of the ball this year in AA. Great story, but not likely to get plucked just based on his drafting pedigree and age.
• Luke Young (AA) a middle relief RHP in AA with mediocre numbers; that just screams “org arm.”
• Courtland Lawson (High-A), Jared McKenzie (High-A): bench bats in High-A aren’t candidates. Somewhat surprised they’re still in the system.

Summary: Bennett a lock. Cornelio a strong candidate. Wallace a maybe.

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Group 1-A: 2022 NDFAs

• Matt Suggs (AA): the sole 22 NDFA we have remaining of nine we signed. He was the 3rd backup in AA this year and seems like he’s hanging around until he hits 6yr MLFA.

Summary: no candidates in this section.

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Group 2: Newly Eligible 2021 High School-age drafted players under consideration for protection

• TJ White (High-A): just finished his 3rd straight year in High A and still doesn’t have an OPS above .650. Not a candidate.

Summary: no candidates in this section

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Group 3: Newly Eligible 2021 signed IFAs under consideration for protection

• Armando Cruz (High-A): you can’t possibly think of protecting a guy who just hit .177 in High-A because he had a $3.9M bonus investment, could you? Well, we’ve done it in the past; Yasel Antuna was almost in the identical situation here. Luckily we have a new GM who could probably care less about these kinds of prior investments.
• Guys still in Low-A or Rookie Ball: Emmanuel Ramirez, Gabriel Agostini, Brayan Romero, Brian Polanco (who might have actually been eligible last year b/c he signed at 19), and Angel Roman: not candidates.

Summary: Cruz, if they’re fools.

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Group 4: Rule-5 Eligible Drafted/Domestic hold-overs of note from prior years

• Christian Franklin (AAA): solid 800+ OPS for us after being acquired in trade for Soroka. Most shops have him ranked in the 11-15 range of prospects for the system, and he’s a good OF depth piece. I think he’s a lock to get protected b/c he could be a backup OF for a slew of teams right now, and at the very least he’s someone the team could be looking to use in trade given our logjam of outfielders.
• Brad Lindsly (AAA): He got 58 ABs in 2025 as the 2nd or 3rd C on the AAA roster and probably made half a dozen trips to the “Developmental List.” He’s basically a bullpen catcher with a playing contract.
• Holden Powell (AAA): made it to AAA and then walked a guy an inning.
• Seth Shuman (AAA): got shelled in AAA, lost his rotation spot. He was a 2019 draftee but somehow didn’t get MLFA declared.
• Brandon Boissiere (AA): had a nice year in AA at age 25; probably not enough to be protected.
• Erik Tolman (AA): developmentally behind after missing a year with injury, mostly succeeded in High-A this year. Not a candidate, despite being lefty. Perhaps if he was closer to the majors.
• Jack Sinclair (AA): 5+ era as a 26yr old in AA: he may have hit his ceiling.
• Dustin Saenz (AA): lost his rotation spot, might be converted to lefty reliever, but not terribly impressive this year.
• Brendan Collins (High-A): kind of like Tolman in that he basically missed a whole year. Side-arming middle reliever seems like AA may be his limit.

Fun fact; Jake Irvin (2018 4th rounder) is now our oldest remaining originally drafted player. He’s the sole player remaining from the 2018 draft active for the Nats; nobody older. For almost the entire life of this team, the answer to this question was either Ryan Zimmerman or Stephen Strasburg.

Summary: Franklin a lock.

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Group 4A: 2021 and older NDFAs,

• Tyler Schoff (AAA): spent most of the season on the 60-day DL, seems like he’ll get another year with us.
• Peyton Glavine (High-A): missed all of 2024, decent in 2025 but a year behind developmentally.

Summary: no candidates here

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Group 5: IFAs: 2019 and older (we didn’t really have a 2020 IFA class)

• Kevin Made (AA): lots of promise, little delivery. We’ve talked about him ad nauseum in the comments. If he was a more consistent bat, he’d be a top 10 prospect, in AAA and probably pushing the likes of Tena and Nunez off the 40-man roster to be our go-to backup middle infielder. But he’s not, so he’s not.
• Pablo Aldonis (High-A): stellar numbers in High-A as a lefty reliever, after missing all of 2024 due to injury. This is an interesting one; great numbers and clearly good stuff, but hasn’t ever gotten out of A-ball. I’d think he is safe from being drafted in the major league phase for sure, but the Nats sending him to the AFL also put a big shiny target on his back. His AFL numbers werne’t too bad: 11ip, 6 games 2 “starts,” 14/5 K/BB and a 1.33 whip. It seems nonsensical for a team to pick him and think he’s gonna stick in their bullpen for an entire year, especially since we’re not talking about a well known MLBpipeline top30 guy.
• guys in Low-A or Rookie ball: Victor Farias, Andy Luis, Juan Abreu

Summary: Aldonis a maybe.

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So, where does that leave us? Summarizing the Groups:

• Group 1 Protection Candidates: Bennett a lock. Cornelio a strong maybe, Wallace a maybe.
• Group 1A Protection Candidates: none
• Group 2 Protection Candidates: none
• Group 3 Protection Candidates: Cruz, if they’re fools
• Group 4 Protection Candidates: Franklin a lock
• Group 4a Protection Candidates: none
• Group 5 Protection Candidates: Aldonis a maybe

My Prediction: Team protects Bennet, Franklin.

If it was Todd Boss the GM, i’d go four: Bennett Franklin, Cornelio, and Wallace.

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Two things I’ll update to this post when they happen:

• Nats Actual Rule-5 protection results: on 11/18/25, the Nats added three: Bennett, Franklin, and Cornelio. So, they added Cornelio in a surprise to this observer, but didn’t add Wallace, which was always going to be a stretch.

• Actual Rule-5 draft results in Dec: will be added later, likely in a new post.

11/6/25 was a big moving day in baseball: its 5 days after the World Series ended, and on the same day all 60-day DL guys (in the majors and minors) have to be returned to active roster status, and all free agents are declared. In the majors, that means the “exclusive” bargaining period ends (which is almost never used anymore), but more importantly to this site and this audience, it means that dozens of prospects that we’ve sometimes tracked for 6-7 years are now cut loose.

Here’s a look at the churn at both the 40-man level and in the minors. All these moves are now updated on the Big Board, as well as the Draft Tracker and the IFA tracker and my internal Nats Prospect Rankings page, which saw a slew of guys I had ranked just a few weeks ago get cut loose. I’ll talk about them below in a bit.

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Major League Free Agents

• Josh Bell 1b/DH 11/2/25: FA
• Paul deJong 2b/3b 11/2/25: FA
• Derek Law rhp 11/2/25: FA

In other words, the three guys the team couldn’t even trade for a bag of balls at the trade deadline.

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40-man DFA’s

• CJ Stubbs c 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA
• Ogasawara, Shinnosuki rhp 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA
• Mason Thompson rhp 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA, refused assignment, FA
• Eduardo Salazar rhp 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA, refused assignment, FA
• Jorge Alfaro c 10/31/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA, refused assignment, FA
• Zach Brzycky rhp 11/6/25: DFA’d, claimed by Miami, gone
• Ryan Loutos rhp 11/6/25: DFA’d, claimed by Seattle, gone
• Trey Lipscomb 3b 11/6/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA

So, that’s 11 total guys removed from the 40-man with FAs and DFAs. We added back our four 60-day DL guys (Grey, Herz, Williams, Millas), which puts us at exactly 34/40 as of this writing. That’s a ton of room for the next phase of the off-season (Rule5 and Free Agency).

Most surprising out of this list? Probably Brzycky, who was a NDFA and kind of “found gold” for the player dev staff. He didn’t get a ton of MLB time and I’m surprised they cut him and kept other relievers for the time being. It’s no surprise to me he got claimed.

There’s not a ton of “fat” left on the roster now; most of the guys I had listed early on my “next guys to cut” are now gone. I could still see the team part ways with a couple of waiver claim/MLFA relievers that made their way onto the active roster (Fernandez, Pilkington), but the next cuts after that will be deep.

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MLFAs declared

Here’s the meat of this post. As of 11/6/25, all 6-year MLFAs were declared. Generally speaking, this means the following are now declared MLFAs:

• anyone drafted in 2019
• Most IFAs signed in 2018 under a certain age.
• Some older IFAs signed in 2019: if you were already 18 you’re like a draftee.
• Furthermore, anyone we’ve signed as a MLFA along the way one a one-year deal, or who hasn’t already resigned on some other deal we’re unaware of, is also newly declared.

So, from the massive list of 11/6/25 minor league transactions, here’s what that looks like. We’ll go level by level:

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From AAA: no fewer than 16 guys hitting MLFA.

2B	Arruda, JT#
CA	Stubbs, C.J.
DH	Yepez ,Juan
SP	Solesky, Chase
LF	De La Cruz, Carlos
SU	Cuevas, Michael
LR	Conley, Bryce
MID	Adon, Joan
SP	Sampson, Adrian
MID	Dunshee, Parker
MID	Acosta, Daison
SS	Cluff, Jackson*
MID	Davila, Garrrett*
MID	Mejia, Erick#
CF	Schnell, Nick
CA	Mejia, Francisco

Some of these guys I absolutely had ranked in my end of year ranking. The highest was Schnell, who I had just outside my top 30. I had Acosta and Davila in the 50-60 range, Erick Mejia in the 70s, and then a few more in the 80-90 range. Only four of these MLFAs from AAA were home grown (Arruda, Cuevas, Adon, and Cluff). Nonetheless, 16 guys off a 31 player roster is a huge number gone.

AAA now has 15 players remaining; and basically the entire 2025 pitching staff is gone. Interestingly, there are a couple names who seem like they should have been declared MLFAs but who remain; Pena (an 17IFA, Orelvis Martinez (just signed as a 26 MLFA), and Seth Shuman (a 19Draftee who should have been declared). I don’t entirely trust these rosters or milb.com transactions, so its possible these guys were also declared MLFAs and missed the announcement, or its possible they’ve already re-signed for 2026. Especially with Shuman, I hope he’s back in the fold.

Also worth mentioning here, a shoutout to Darren Baker, who was released a bit earlier in the off-season to pursue other opportunities.

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From AA: 8 guys

SP	Atencio, Jose
CF	Williams, Donta’ *
CL	Santos, Junior
CF	DeShields, Delino
MID	Vasquez, Samuel
LR	Knowles, Lucas*
1B	Naranjo, Joe
LR	Choi, Hyun-Il

Just two of these 8 were home grown (Knowles and Atencio). I had Atencio ranked relatively high on my end of season ranks (#47) and I had high hopes that the team might retain his services. I had a couple of these guys in the 100+ range (Vasquez, Knowles, Naranjo). Lastly I thought the team could hold onto Choi a bit longer, but perhaps not.

I don’t see any players remaining on the AA roster who seem like they should have been declared. The oldest draftee/signee is Kevin Made, a 19IFA who was young and retains one more year of control.

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From High-A: Six guys.

SU	Otanez, Johan
CA	Colmenares, Jose
LR	Caceres, Bryan
LR	Arias, Wander
SU	Montero, Euri
DH/CF	De La Rosa, Jeremy*

I think it goes without saying that, if you’re not out of A-ball by the time you’ve had 6 seasons in the minors, you’re not really a prospect. And, true to form, the only one of these six guys who I even mentioned in my rankings was De la Rosa, and that’s only because at one point a couple years ago he was in the top 30 range.

Wilmington still has a couple of rostered guys who seem like they should have been declared MLFAs: setup man Yeuris Jimenez and maybe Adam Bloebaum, who was signed as a “MLFA” in 2025 but may really be an “NDFA” for eligibility purposes. Pablo Aldonis (currently in the AFL) was a 19IFA but was young and gets one more year.

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Low-A: just 3 guys

2B	Rivero, Yoander
MID	Dowdell, Kevin*
SU	Kane, Tommy*

Rivero was home grown, the other two were 2025MLFAs. Rivero, coincidentally, was the last remaining 2018IFA player we had, closing the books on what turned out to be a really awful IFA class. The most accomplished player out of the 2018 IFA class was either Rodney Theophile (MLFA last year after getting to AA) or oft-injured Jose Atencio, who made it to AA but missed all of 2025.

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Nobody was cut loose from the FCL team, and just one name from DSL who, frankly, I didn’t even realize was rostered. Sometimes the team sneaks these signings without much in the way of announcement.

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All in all, 34 MLFAs declared on 11/6/25. With all the outrights and MLFAs, the domestic system is now down to 139 players.

Of the 125 players that I ranked at year’s end, 16 of them are now MLFAs.

I think the biggest “shock” to the system is just how much of this year’s AAA squad is now gone. There’s not nearly enough players set to rise up from AA, and there’s not enough guys who would be dropping down from MLB right now (34 on the 40-man, meaning just 8 would move down not including known DL guys). This spells a ton of new MLFAs set to come into the fold this coming spring.

Baseball America is always one of the first (if not the first) shops to put out an early top 10 for teams In November. They then follow it up with their more comprehensive Handbook and top 30 towards the end of January. But, it’s good to get a read on where they think things are at the top. For what its worth, last year BA did not change its top 10 rankings from Nov 2024 to its eventual release in Jan 2025, so it seems likely this is their top 10 for us.

Here’s their top 10 for 2026, and where BA had these players ranked in Mid August, after all the trades and drafting had settled.

Current Rank	8/13/25 Rank	First Name	Last Name	Position
1	1	Eli	Willits	SS
2	2	Jarlin	Susana	RHP (Starter)
3	3	Travis	Sykora	RHP (Starter)
4	4	Alex	Clemmey	LHP (Starter)
5	9	Seaver	King	SS
6	15	Jake	Bennett	LHP (Starter)
7	5	Luke	Dickerson	SS/CF
8	7	Coy	James	SS
9	16	Angel	Feliz	3B/SS
10	11	Landon	Harmon	RHP (Starter)

Here’s some quick observations of this top 10.

• This seems like a very “conservative” top 10, one that’s mostly based on youth, ceiling, and promise. Four of these 10 guys didn’t play above rookie ball, if at all, in 2025.
• A reminder: doing a top 10 is easy. Doing a top 30 is harder.
• BA has no changes to its top four players from mid August, despite a year gone for Sykora and a likely delay in the start of his 2026 season for Susana. I’m not sure I agree with this honestly, especially since Susana was hurt more than once in 2025.
• They elevated Seaver King to #5, despite his season-long malaise, but perhaps with the benefit of seeing his performance in Arizona. Interesting. Is it fair to just “throw out” his entire 2026 at this point thanks to some ill-advised piece of advice from an unnamed Nats player development staffer? My ranking him at #16 just after the season is looking like a take that won’t age well, and I will be putting him back into the top 10 with my own pre-2026 ranking at some point next spring.
• Bennett gets the expected bump well back into the top 10.
• Despite major struggles, Dickerson only drops a couple spots. His ranking is going to be a point of discussion with all these shops this off-season: i’ve seen him as high as #3, and as low as #27, on lists so far this off-season.
• Our two 2025 draft $2M+ bonus prep kids James and Harmon are 8 and 10
• Feliz continues to march up the boards, now inside the top 10 of a major ranking for the first time.