The 2025 Nats trade deadline has come and gone, and I have to admit, I’m surprised at how “well” the team did in moving its assets. In five separate deals the team moved nearly every one of its expiring contracts or useful-but-spare parts pieces and netted a ton of actual prospect depth along the way.
Earlier this month I previewed what we had to offer teams, and I went over a rather pessimistic take on what I thought we’d get in return for players. As it turned out, of everyone discussed, the only three non-injured guys we didn’t manage to move were Salazar, Bell, and deJong (none really a surprise given their overall performance for the season), and then on top of that we managed to move an outfielder in Alex Call who, while we like him, was certainly spare parts given the massive amount of OF depth we have in the system (in no particular order, Wood, Crews, Young, Lile, Hassell, Pinckney all at AAA or higher).
Lets take a quick run through the moves and talk about the value of the prospects we got back, which now populate a big chunk of our top 30 on the MLBpipeline board. As the day progressed and as of right now, our Big Board is updated with all transactions, with all newly acquired players assigned to their new levels.
Executive Summary: we traded 6 guys off the active roster, got back 10 prospects, 6 of which now sit in our top 30 as per mlbpipeline’s rankings. As I list them below i’ll put their new spot in our top 30.
Trade #1: Amed Rosario traded to NYY for #24 RHP reliever Clayton Beeter, OF Browm Martinez. Beeter is a former 2nd rounder, setup type guy, 40-man roster already, and is in AAA now but may get called up since we suddenly have some bullpen spots open. Big arm, lots of Ks, lots of walks. Martinez is the proverbial lottery ticket, an 18yr old in DSL who we immediately put onto the 60-day DL upon acquisition.
Trade #2: Chafin & Garcia traded to LAA for LHP reliever Jake Eder, 1B Sam Brown. Neither Eder or Brown are top 30 prospects; Brown in AAA with some MLB time this year, while Brown is repeating AA this year. Still, not bad return for two guys we signed off the veteran/MLFA heap in May and July respectively.
Trade #3: Mike Soroka traded to CHC for #11 OF Christian Franklin, #13 SS Ronny Cruz. Franklin heads to AAA, is an undersized corner type (similar to Lile) and adds to our existing OF depth, kind of surprising acquisition given what we already have in that regard. Cruz seems to be the prize, a 3rd round prep kid drafted last year, given decent money and who has solid power grades despite being a SS.
Trade #4: Kyle Finnegan traded to Det for #23 RHP starter Josh Randall and RHP starter RJ Sales. Randall is the prize; a 3rd rounder starter who heads to High-A sinker/slider guy with a 4.18 ERA this year in Low-A and who had just been moved up to High-A (he was assigned to Wilmington for us). Sales was a 10th rounder last year who doesn’t have he same upside, though he has far better numbers in Low-A this year than Randall and reports to our Low-A directly.
Trade #5: Alex Call traded to LAD for RHP starter #10 Sean Paul Linan and RHP starter #12 Eriq Swan. Linan seems to be the prize here, a 20-yr old IFA with really good K numbers in High-A this year to go along with a 2.65ERA. They even called him up for 2 spot starts in AAA (he got shelled). But don’t sleep on former 4th rounder Swan, a strong arm type who’s relatively new to pitching but has effortless upper 90s velocity.
So, to summarize, here’s where these 10 guys are reporting:
- AAA: OF Franklin, RHP reliever Beeter, LHP reliever Eder
- AA: 1B Brown
- High-A: three new SPs Randall, Swan, Linan
- Low-A: new SP Sales
- FCL: SS Cruz
- DSL: OF Brown
Possible Minor League impacts:
AAA: Beeter and Eder are both 40-man guys and we’re suddenly down a bunch of players at the MLB level so they may get callups soon. With Call’s trade, Hassell likely gets called up so Franklin can go right into starting lineup in Rochester.
AA: Brown joins a team that just promoted 1B only Boissiere and who has 1B-only Naranjo on the roster as well; not too much playing time to split when you have three primary 1Bs. Naranjo may be odd-man out, either going back to High-A or getting released since he’s a MLFA with little investment.
High-A: Three new SPs, all of whom are decent prospects, will stress that rotation as it is made up right now, especially since the team just promoted both Tejada and Garcia. There’s just not enough innings to go around in Wilmington right now and something will have to give. Kent isn’t going anywhere, though he’s showing signs of fatigue. Tolman is kind of a swingman type but has great numbers. Sthele is a fan favorite but may be topped out and could move to the pen. They’ve already moved out Arias and Caceres. Should be interesting to see how this rotation shakes out.
Low-A: Also just added three new arms via promotion in Sullivan, Farias, and Feliz and now they have 8 starters for 5 spots. There’s not an obvious existing candidate to dump out of the rotation to make way necessarily.
FCL: well, we just assigned our $8.2M SS Willits to FCL; Cruz isn’t playing above him. We also have $2.5M SS Coy Jones there. Maybe Cruz and Jones become 2B and 3B and get SS time here and there.
DSL: Brown immediately to 60-day DL, a curious acquisition to get someone who’s hurt upon arrival.
Judgement: love the pouring in of arms. Six arms, some of whom immediately help in the bullpen, others who might stick as starters or who add to the roster of possible relievers. Why has our bullpen been so bad lately? Because we have not had the pipeline of starters-turned-relievers that we need from the last few drafts. Now we have a bunch more candidates for that.
All in all, a solid trade deadline haul.
Mostly agree with these takes. I hadn’t really thought about the roster crunches that these acquisitions will create, especially on that A+ rotation. The good news is that there’s plenty of room at AA. I bet we see Clemmey promoted soon and then maybe Sthele and/or Tolman in a sink-or-swim move before shifting them to the bullpen.
The FCL middle infield situation is trickier. The recently promoted Feliz is Angel not Jose, so you have him and Dickerson playing every day and neither is remotely ready for A+. So the team has Willits, James and now Cruz as legit prospects with no where to play. I hope I’m wrong, but I worry we won’t see any of those guys in A ball this year.
Question for the group – how do we think the Call return compares to what we got for Lane Thomas last year? I’ve been thinking of those two as similarly valuable. Lane had a bit more of a robust track record, but Call has more control. (His age means that you have to heavily discount the later years of that control, but he shouldn’t be any riskier than any other player for the next 2 or 3 seasons, and there’s a nonzero chance he’ll provide value after that.)
My sense is that Clemmey is a decent comp to Swan, and I’m pretty sure I’d rather have Liñan than Ramirez and Tena. But I’m curious what everyone else thinks.
(Regardless, getting 2 legit SP prospects for Call was a good move. As many of us have noted, we have a lot ML-ready OFers. As long as the return is at least approximately fair, it’s great to shift some of that surplus value to other aspects of the team.)
SMS
1 Aug 25 at 2:37 pm
@SMS: Call versus Thomas: Thomas is a starter, Call was a 4th OF. I think the returns have to be evaluated as such. So Thomas was always going to fetch more. Of course, Lane has fallen off a cliff this year production wise. I bet Cleveland wants that trade back.
Todd Boss
1 Aug 25 at 4:28 pm
Thomas was a starter and Call was a 4th OF largely because of the other players around them than anything else.
Call as a National: 102 wRC+
Thomas as a National: 107 wRC+
While Thomas was an average/slightly below average OF, and Call has been average/slightly above average OF.
I think the returns though were better for the Thomas trade. Clemmey is a better prospect than anyone. Yes, there’s comparisons to draw between Clemmey and Swan’s wildness, but Clemmey is almost 4 whole years younger than Swan. That’s a big difference. With that said, I’m not unhappy with who we got in return for Call. Swan and Linan have interesting upside, but both are still very much projects. Can the guys who worked wonders on Clemmey and Herz do it again with Swan, Linan, et al, or will the dreaded case of Nats-itis that has so often afflicted acquired bats, like Ruiz, Wallace, Hassell, Made, Casey, Ramirez, etc. strike?
On the roster issues, it will be interesting to see how it plays out, but it’s not a “problem” in the slightest. We’re talking about playing time of guys like Sthele, who is striking out 5 batters per 9 IP. Or Boissiere with a career SLG of .351 at age 25. Or Victor Farias, a 23 year old, who just reached low A with a career ERA of 6.65…. These guys wouldn’t still be in most other orgs.
The one exception, though, is the OF roster crunch at AAA. I’m perplexed why we acquired Franklin. Our OF depth it presently: Wood, Young, Lile, Hassell in DC with Crews returning in the next week or so. One of those 5 will get sent back to Rochester, where he will be competing with Pinckney, Franklin, and Schnell for playing time. All 3 of whom have very much earned a starting job. Franklin “looks” a lot like Pinckney for someone who is 7 inches and 25 lbs smaller… the key difference is Franklin walks a lot more than Pinckney.
Franklin’s career MILB line: .261/.395/.404, 26 HR, 63 SB, 4th rd pick out of SEC school
Pinckney’s career MILB line: .263/.342/.389, 27 HR, 63 SB, 4th rd pick out of SEC school
Franklin is also a year older, though, but missing all of 2022 to injury has basically put them on the same development timeline. It’ll be interesting to see if either of them can become the new Call/Thomas of the rebuild team, but I’m struggling to see how they’ll get the chance with so many more highly regarded OF prospects ahead of them in the pecking order.
On the whole, a surprisingly good trade window. We didn’t sell our most valuable asset, but still managed to get good value for some generally not very good players
Will
1 Aug 25 at 5:51 pm
Why Franklin? He was probably who the Nats thought was the “best” among who was being offered. If they thought the rest on the list were borderline dreck but this guy had a decent MLB chance, then take him. Picking up Franklin then allowed them to flip Call with a little more confidence. It wouldn’t be surprising if they flip at least one from among Lile, Hassell, Pinckney, Young, or Franklin over the offseason too.
It’s very hard to know what the Nats have or haven’t gotten here. At the time of the Candy Man trade, nearly everyone said that Made was the much better prospect and Herz was too wild and likely headed to be a reliever. Well, a couple of tweaks later and Herz was starting in the majors by the middle of the next season while Made scuffled in the lower minors. Last year when Cayden Wallace was acquired it seemed like he had a MLB ceiling, maybe even as a regular, but now he’s fighting just to stay in baseball.
As much as the Nat organization has (rightly) been criticized on development issues, there are some recent success stories in improving the strike-throwing, including Herz, Parker, and Clemmey. Beeter has the stuff to be an All-Star closer if he can hone in on the plate. Swan is another Nuke LaLoosh, plus 6-6, 240. (The cautionary tale is that the Dodgers failed to fix either of those guys.)
I agree with Todd that Sean Paul Linan has numbers that look really promising. Browm Martinez had a fantastic start to this season before getting hurt (.404/.507/.632). He’s not very big, though.
So we’ll see. All in all, it’s unlikely that any of these guys will really move the needle that much. But it doesn’t hurt to add some lottery tickets in exchange for expiring contracts.
Also, good for the guys lucky enough to get traded. They went from a sad-sack team to ones that likely will be playing in October (except the Angels). Call in particular may have won the lottery considering how badly Conforto and Kiki Hernandez have sucked.
KW
1 Aug 25 at 7:36 pm
Why Franklin? Because of the way these trades work. LA probably said, “ok we want Call and we’re willing to give you two players. One from list A and one from list B.” This is often how it goes; teams don’t have the resources to do advance scouting of every player on every team in the minors. So, the nats probably were like “ok we want someone closer to the majors/lower risk and someone further from the majors with more risk but more reward” and LA gave them a list of some AA/AAA types and then a list of some A-ball types.
Todd Boss
2 Aug 25 at 10:35 am