The 2025 minor league seasons may not entirely be over, but the Arizona Fall League rosters have been released, so let’s take a quick peek at who in the Nationals system has been sent.
Typically, the Nats send a hodgepodge of players who fit into one of three categories:
- Pitchers who were injured for a lot of 2025 and who need innings
- Pending Rule-5 guys who they want to see challenged against the AFL’s best
- Seemingly lesser so; our top prospects.
So of the 8 guys announced so far, what are we seeing?
Pitchers
- Aldonis, Pablo, lefty reliever who dominated in both Low-A and High-A this year in a setup reliever capacity. He’s a 19IFA so he’s been Rule5 eligible for years, but got a late start to his career so he’s now pushing up on 6yrs MLFA. Is he in the “pending Rule5 guy” category? Probably: he got plenty of innings this year.
- Amaral, Austin, He’s had a really nice season, first as the High-A closer and lately as a AA setup guy. Not a ton of K/9 but a lot of weak contact, getting BAA .216 for the season. He’s a 23 draftee so not yet rule-5, and seemed to get plenty of innings this year (69ip), so an interesting pick.
- Bennett, Jake, who finally came of the DL after missing half of 2023 and all of 2024; he’s been excellent all year as they ramp him back up. He’s in the “injured guy who needs more innings” category, in that he only got 70 for the year as a starter. He’s also newly Rule5 eligible this coming off season and is a pretty obvious protection candidate.
- Linan, Sean Paul: he only threw 3 innings for Wilmington before he hit the D/L, and thus only has 77 IP for the season as a starter. He’s in AFL to get some more work. Glad to see he’s not seriously injured; usually these “one start and DL” types are more serious.
- Simpson, Jared*, lefty reliever with weird numbers this year: 6+ era, 64/57 K/BB in 52ip. Got lots of work this year, clearly needs to work on his command; why is he in AFL? He’s a 2023 drafee and thus not Rule5 eligible til next off-season. Weird pick.
Batters
- King, Seaver. Our 1st round 2024 pick struggled all year, likely over promoted to AA, and certainly could use more work. He does check the one box of the team sending a “top prospect,” though King’s prospect ranking is sure to take a hit after his 2025 season.
- Petersen, Sam, who had a brilliant season at the plate and now holds a career slash line in the minors north of the vaunted .300/.400/.500 marker. This is probably a “show me” AFL challenge posting to see if Peterson can cut it against the top talent there.
- Petry, Ethan, our 2nd rounder from this year who many think will be a fast mover. This might be an aggressive AFL posting for a kid who was hitting aluminum bats a couple months ago, but he’s considered to be a mature hitter. Classifies as the top prospect category.
Who could make sense for an AFL stint this year:
Potential Rule5 guys to consider: there’s a few players who have taken steps up this year who are newly rule5 eligible, but none seem immediately to be an obvious protection candidate. Bennet and Cornelio are the pretty clear newly-eligible Rule5 guys who could have gotten plucked. Luckham in the same boat, ending the year in the AAA rotation. On the IFA side, the 2021 class is now coming due and even tough there’s a couple of important names on that list (Polanco and Romero, both in the Low-A rotation all year), the biggest money guy is Armando Cruz, who hit .177 this year in High-A and isn’t a candidate to get picked.
There’s some Rule5 holdovers who also might now make sense to look at: Boissiere, Tolman, Powell, Sinclair, etc. But no one really pressing. Kevin Made?
Injury guys who could use the work: scouring the AA and High-A roster, I don’t see any names that pop out as players who knowingly missed a ton of time.
Show-Me popup prospects: we’ve already talked about Peterson in this category. Our Low-A stars are too young (Willits, Dickerson, Feliz), Bazzell didn’t perform well enough.
So, that’s the 2025 slate.
Nice rundown, Todd.
Just want to point out that Bazzell has had a better year than it seems. After a crazy ice cold April (though anecdotally he was making decent contact even then), he’s been comfortably above league average. All in all, I think he “met expectations” this year and I expect to see him in start in A+ next spring.
Oh, and one other name that likely needs R5 protection is Franklin, though I’m not sure he (or Bennett for that matter) are borderline decisions that require AFL time for evaluation.
Cornelio, as you mention, would make sense in that regard, but they probably only got two SP slots and figured it was more important to build up Bennett and Liñan. I’ll be curious to see if Cornelio gets added to the 40. After Alvarez last year, who I had as a pretty similar level of prospect, my bet is they take their chances and leave him off.
SMS
10 Sep 25 at 6:25 pm
Hi,Todd. I remember when you posted two years ago on those late round pitchers. If I recall correctly,you mentioned if only one of those selections made AA ball,that would be a bargain.Remember, Stetson breeds Cy Young winners.Ask Jacob de Grom. IMO,Amaral is the one to watch.
Scott
11 Sep 25 at 7:17 am
On Bazzell; A 3rd rounder from Texas Tech should have done better in Low-A than .239/.340/.267 with zero homers. .267 as a Slugging percentage?? He had 8 XBH in 80 games. Nasim Nunez had a higher slugging pct. I’m concerned. Maybe I should have paid more attention to his college stats: just 6 homers his junior year and an .874 OPS with metal.
R5 analysis takes more time than the 5 minutes i gave it for this post … we have so many trade acquisitions that it’ll take a much more comprehensive run through. I just wanted to throw out the AFL reactions.
Todd Boss
11 Sep 25 at 10:25 am
Agree that Bennett is in AZ to get more innings. He seems like a slam-dunk 40-man addition. Good chance he will make his MLB debut in 2026, all the more if the Nats don’t do what they need to do and sign more starting pitching.
It’s a small “wow” that they think enough of Petry to toss him into this pool, which is typically AA level players, although if they think he can hang at that level, it makes sense. The lack of the post-draft short-season leagues leaves the draftees basically wasting their draft summers.
Folks at Nats Prospects have pointed out a couple of disappointments on the King front. One is that he will be teammates on Scottsdale with Kevin McGonigle, one of the top prospects in baseball, so King likely won’t get much time at SS. The other is that the Scottsdale hitting coach will come from . . . the Harrisburg Senators, so he won’t benefit from new advice.
King certainly hasn’t set things on fire in his first pro season. Will he learn what he needs to learn to come back much better in 2026? Was his projected ceiling too high? Both? He’s having a good September so far so hopefully is gaining some momentum.
KW
12 Sep 25 at 6:04 pm
My 2 cents on King: he was an overdraft in a draft where the team kind of got squeezed out of the top tier of players, and we’re seeing the results. The narrative at the time was simple: this was a 9-man draft, and we pitcked 10th. He was a slot-savings overdraft who took 800k less at the #10 overall pick, money used basically to buy Luke Dickerson. While he came from a big baseball conference (ACC) he didn’t have a 3 year run there and his production seems now to be a big of smoke and mirrors of a former D2 guy who had a hot season.
https://www.nationalsarmrace.com/?p=18550
Most of the final Mocks had us taking Griffen, Yesevage, Montgomery, or Rainer. Those guys ended up going 9th, 20th, 12th, 11th respectively, so the mocks were mostly right about these guys in the right area. Unfortunately, the Nats picked the wrong guy out of that slew of players; per mlbpipeline’s latest top 100 ranks here’s where those same four guys now rank: Griffen=#1, Yesevage=25, Montgomery=32, Rainer=34. So, yeah, its hard not to conclude that the Nats blew this pick. Griffen and Rainer were prep kids, so understandable if they didn’t want them. Yesevage ended up going #20, so maybe they were looking at him but he wouldn’t take the haircut. But big one I’m most pissed about is Montgomery, who was a for-real stud at TAMU but who suffered a pretty gruesome looking broken leg in the CWS playoffs … they got scared off of him. Now he’s mashing.
Not so worried about King not playing SS; frankly, who cares what position he’s playing. His development is bat-related. Have him play 2B, or 3B, or CF; he was listed as a multi-position player coming out of college. I think he’ll be invited to spring training next spring, will have the MLB hitting coaches eyes on him, and that’ll be what counts.
Todd Boss
15 Sep 25 at 9:02 am
You can’t blame them for missing Griffin; he was off the board. But I’m with you on the others.
And what galls me is that it wasn’t even that much slot savings. They could have given Rainer or Yesavage full slot (and Yesavage signed for $1M less than King – so I doubt he’d have even required it) and still signed Dickerson by forgoing Randall Diaz and Davin Garcia.
Honestly, I think King is the 2nd worst Nats pick I can think of after Romero. On the other busts, like Green and Denaburg, I could kind of see the logic, even if it wasn’t the choice I’d have made. But this feels like being clever for clever’s sake and if you do that, it’s a bad look when your guy is behind all of the more obvious players that were available at that pick.
Which isn’t to say that he’s a bust, of course. He had a bad year, but he’s young and is absolutely still a prospect. But I’d much rather have one of those three guys that everyone was expecting them to take.
SMS
16 Sep 25 at 12:08 pm
@SMS on Griffen yea sorry i didn’t meant to imply that we missed … was just mentioning his name came up a lot in the final mocks going to nats. Missed him by one pick. However, last year’s regime wouldn’t have picked him … we weren’t yet in the Prep draftee business like we seem to be now.
I think i was most disappointed that the team passed on Montgomery last year, though in my post at the time I thought they’d go Rainey.
Todd Boss
16 Sep 25 at 1:25 pm
Yesavage very successfully debuted last night with the Blue Jays and may be pitching in the playoffs. I didn’t understand at draft time why so many teams were passing on him. The Nats weren’t the only ones who missed on that one.
King seemed like a bit of a reach at draft time, yet several of the gurus really liked him. Where they wrong? Or did life as a pro player just come at him fast?
The biggest offseason for any pro player is the one after his first full pro season. His weaknesses have been exposed. How hard and how well one works in that first offseason tells you a lot about that player. It’s time for King to put in that work.
I think King will bounce back. The question will still remain, however, whether he actually has the ceiling of an MLB regular.
The much more damaging miss for the Nats remains the #5 overall pick in 2022. But man, there have been a lot of turkeys from that draft. Green has been awful, but the other guys who might have been on the Nats’ list — Lee, Berry, Parada — don’t seem to have much ceiling.
KW
16 Sep 25 at 4:41 pm
FYI i’ve fixed the performance issues we were having: I had a couple of bot servers creating dozens of connections to my servers, which was swamping performance. Should be better now.
Todd Boss
16 Sep 25 at 5:28 pm
@KW – We’ll have to agree to disagree on Green vs King.
The team doesn’t care how good the player is in the minors if he busts as a major league player. So Green failing in A ball isn’t a worse outcome than a player who almost makes it but falls short in the end. And in fact, that latter player probably clogs up a 40 man spot for a couple years and inflicts negative WAR during a cup of coffee.
Here’s a thought experiment: let’s say we were forced to draft either another Green or another Kieboom with 1-11 next year. And let’s further assume that neither player is tradable. Who would you pick? I’d argue that the team mostly wouldn’t care, but actually might prefer Green because that kind of failure costs them less.
Yes, peak-Green is a much worse baseball player than peak-Kieboom, but I fail to see how that matters to the team.
The case for Green was that his swing might improve and then he’d be a star. His swing has not improved, but that was never the most likely outcome, so we really haven’t learned anything new about the logic of the pick since draft day. If you draw a card hoping to make a flush, whether you hit it or not is a terrible way to evaluate your strategy.
SMS
16 Sep 25 at 6:11 pm
Interesting thought experiment, SMS. But you can’t just exclude trades. That’s a huge piece of the equation.
A long time ago, the Nationals turned top 100 prospects like Alex Meyer into Denard Span, and AJ Cole in Gio Gonzalez. Both Meyer and Cole ended up being bad major leaguers. If you draft a player who immediately and catastrophically busts like Green, you immediately lose that possibility. Kieboom, meanwhile, elevated himself to a top 20 prospect, before busting. If, via your internal analytics, coaching and other evaluation techniques, catch onto an un-coachable/fixable flaw, then you always have the opportunity to try to trade that player and extract some value. Perhaps this is what the Nats were doing in the early 2010s? And I think the Dodgers have been excellent at this in recent years too, trading elite prospects, like Gray, Ruiz, Verdugo, Jeter Downs, Yusniel Diaz, etc., who quickly turned into pumpkins in return for elite major league players like Turner, Scherzer, Betts and Machado.
Also, the process matters a lot! And how far a player advances is an indicator of good/bad player development and scouting. If your prospects routinely bust in their first season, or show no signs of progress or development, it means your player dev is fundamentally broken, or your scouting is horrific. Or both. But if you routinely have players dominate lower levels, and bust at the highest levels or fail to adapt to the majors, it suggests your player dev system isn’t comprehensively broken, but that there is a problem. The Orioles are a fantastic example of this. The number of elite prospects, absolutely destroying AA and AAA, but massively struggling in Baltimore (or performing well upon leaving) is startling. That suggests there’s something fixable, albeit extremely problematic. And even if you can’t fix it, then you could adopt a Dodgers approach and try and extract value from your prospects before they bust and convert them into big league talent. If your guys stink from the get-go, then you probably just need to tear it all down and start over.
For this reason, I’d much rather have Kiebooms than Greens, because ultimately you can trade players, and Kieboom, for at least some time, suggested he was benefiting from good coaching/advice, and ended up reaching a much higher peak value and for a much longer time than Green ever did.
Will
17 Sep 25 at 6:28 am
On King: I was cautiously optimistic about the pick, until his signing bonus came through. I’d hoped King’s savings would allow us to have signed Colby Shelton (our 20th rounder) and we’d get some pretty big underslot savings, and in the end we didn’t. We got some savings ($600k), but as others pointed out, my preferred pick, Yesavage, ended up signing for $1m less than King, and Braden Montgomery, universally considered superior to King signed for $150k less. So there were better, cheaper players still on the board.
So if you’re going to go against basically all conventional wisdom, you’d better get it right. King, to date, doesn’t just look like an overdraft, he looks like one of the worst college bats picked in the first round.
I won’t dwell on who went ahead of us (ROY, Nick Kurtz, for example). But these guys were still on the board and went in the 1st round:
10. King, between A+ and AA, .631 OPS
12. Montgomery, #32 overall
13. Tibbs, .801 OPS across A+ and AA, traded for Rafael Devers
14. Cam Smith, in majors worth almost 2 WAR
19. Benge (#20 overall)
21. Culpepper #72 overall
22. Honeycutt, in A+, .559 OPS (obviously worst on the list)
28. Janek, in A+, .766 OPS as a catcher
30. Moore, in A+, .564 OPS, also a catcher, but not good
31. Waldschmidt, #65 overall
32. O’Ferrall, between A+ and AA a .626 OPS
33. DeBarge, .709 OPS in A+
34. Burke, between A+ and AA, .832 OPS
39. Lomavita, between A+ and AA, .714 OPS as a catcher
Will
17 Sep 25 at 7:03 am
Green vs Kieboom. Well, Kieboom just got called up, so he still theoretically has time to shed the “bust” narrative. Green finished his 4th pro season in low-A on the DL with a 40% K rate, in a season where he was demoted all the way to FCL and STILL doesn’t seem to have things figured out.
https://www.fantasyalarm.com/player-news/3695762/angels-call-up-former-top-prospect-inf-kieboom/
Which do you want? I mean, it’s not that simple of an answer. It’s like asking a money manager if they prefer ultra high risk Bitcoin or super conservative Ford motor as an investment; there’s pros and cons to both. Both have value in a well balanced portfolio. And, if you “hit” on one super-speculative stock it makes up for losses on others. So honestly, you need/want both. Same goes for rolling the dice on low-floor/high-ceiling Green versus the steadier higher-floor/lower-ceiling prospect like Kieboom.
Todd Boss
17 Sep 25 at 8:46 am
@Will –
I take you point about trades offering more opportunities to realize value, but I didn’t want to allow greater-fool trades like you describe, because then it’s obvious the optimal strategy would be to pick Kieboom and trade him at peak value. And that strategy would depend entirely on the unrealistically complete certainty inherent in the thought experiment – in practice, teams don’t know any pre-ordained outcome and accordingly increase their expectations and trade demands as the prospect climbs the rankings.
Certainly teams have some proprietary information on their own prospects, so it’s not impossible that some teams are able advantageously flip some prospects they’ve lost faith in but still have widespread demand. But other teams can and do scout prospects pretty heavily. Everything is on video and almost all the data is shared among teams. Given that, and I recognize that this is an assumption I’m making, but I have to believe those kind of trades are isolated exceptions rather than the rule.
And I’m with you on process mattering, though I don’t think I understand why failing at the first hurdle is more damning than failing at the last, if the rate of success in the majors is the same. The meta-game is different in A ball and the upper levels (and both are different from the majors). There are all kinds of skillsets that succeed in A ball without being positive development practices at all. Punishing slow fastballs. Passivity leading to high walk rates when pitchers can’t find the zone. BABIPs inflated by bad defense leaguewide. Future development isn’t the only probably with scouting the statline. Even if the player is finished product, you can’t just reduce expected production by XYZ per level – certain kinds of production translates better than others.
(Finally, yes, I would not be anywhere near as negative on the King pick if he’d signed for $1M less and we could have grabbed another overslot talent. Given reasonable doubts about Montgomery and Rainer etc, that’s a tradeoff I can understand, even if I’d still likely be a little disappointed in King at this point.)
SMS
17 Sep 25 at 1:21 pm