Nick Schnell, who bashed for us in AAA this year, is probably the highest profile MLFA we had declared in this period, and the one main MLFA player I hope we can retain. Photo via IndianaRBI.com
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Angel Feliz keeps moving on up the ranks. Photo Nats IG
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.
Shinnosuke Ogasawara became one of the first significant moves of the off-season. Photo via MLB
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.
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.
Seaver King back in College, is now putting up college-like numbers in the AFL. Photo via opendorse
Most of us have labeled Seaver King at best a disappointment so far in his career, and at worst a failed pick, after getting picked 10th a couple years ago, having now seen the glittering debut performance of possible Nats picks Trey Yesevage or the high prospect ranks of the likes of Braden Montgomery.
But, he’s destroying the ball in the AFL, a league that’s “supposed” to basically be like playing in a AA-level all star game every day.
What’s going on in Arizona?
MLB.com’s Sam Dykstra had the following to say in today’s “Early Standouts from the AFL” email newsletter about King:
Seaver King peaking late: Few Fall Leaguers needed a good autumn as much as the Nationals’ 2024 first-rounder and No. 7-ranked prospect.
While other members of his Draft class surged to the Majors this summer, King hit just .244/.294/.337 with six homers in 125 games between High-A Wilmington and Double-A Harrisburg — two notably pitcher-friendly ballparks. Here in the desert, the right-handed-hitting shortstop has looked much more like his Wake Forest self. He’s 13-for-31 (.419) with two homers, five doubles and only three strikeouts through seven games.
King has been routinely on fastballs, batting .533 against them in the early going while he shoots balls to the gaps. He could stand to pull the ball a little better with his homers going to right-center and right, but with an early hard-hit rate of 71.4 percent and three barrels in 14 batted balls, he is finding the right part of the bat generally in the early small sample. Add in good speed — he has two recorded Sprint Speeds above 30 ft/sec — and King is pushing his stock back up headed into his second offseason.
A discussion about Park Factors in our Minor League system
We know Wilmington is a super pitcher’s park .. I’m not sure I realized that Harrisburg was as well. I went digging for Park factors; here’s Baseball America’s 2024 Minor League Park factor data. Here’s all our parks in one spot:
Team
Level
Org
Runs PF
Runs Mult
HR PF
HR Mult
wOBA PF
wOBA Mult
Rochester
AAA
WSH
86
0.931
75
0.873
93
0.963
Harrisburg
AAA
WSH
88
0.939
107
1.037
95
0.974
Wilmington
High-A
WSH
93
0.965
84
0.922
98
0.988
Fredericksburg
Low-A
WSH
97
0.984
104
1.018
100
1.001
So, basically, every one of our full season parks is a pitcher’s park. And, as you move up the chain, each higher level’s park is actually harder from a wOBA perspective than the last. Wilmington, which we keep hearing is a death valley for hitters … is really just death for homers (which explains why our team leader in high-A for homers was just 7 this year). It’s 98 for wOBA in general. Harrisburg is actually worse for Runs and wOBA; it just has a spike for HRs due to its pretty easy pull power alleys (325 down the lines, 350 to LCF and RCF).
Aside: When looking at this HR park factor for AAA, by the way, it definitely puts a different spin on the 2025 HR production of the likes of Schnell (21 hrs in 95 AAA games) or Pinckney (20 hrs in 125 AAA games).
Anyway, back to King; We also read in another blog a quote from King from a fellow draftee prospect about approach and patience, something that my fellow Nats bloggers have used to basically draw the conclusion that the entire Nats player development staff is incompetent because King got a tip from a buddy and has had a nice first week in the AFL.
I like that he’s showing power to the opposite field, AND he’s showing speed to the point where a prospect maven is pointing it out. I’m not going to suddenly jump the guy 10 spots in my prospect rankings … but something tells me MLBpipeline may, based on this report.
Can’t wait to see where he goes from here. But i’ll ask this question tot he group? If he finishes the AFL with his current slash line (.419/.486/.774) will it change your mind on his prognosis? He’s only about 7 games through a 30 game season.
Is Gore staying or going this off-season? Photo wikipedia
One of my favorite posts every off-season is to try to guess what the 2026 rotations might look like, based on 2025 performance, who’s coming back from injury, who the team may or may not pursue in FA, and how many veteran MLFAs the teams needs to fill out our perennially empty AAA rotation. Here’s that off-season thought piece, which of course takes zero FA acquisitions or trades into account as of this date, and makes some strong assumptions on the health of some arms (as noted as we go).
So, Here’s a quick analysis of where we ended 2025 and where we might start 2026 for our entire system. In each section, i’ve got the “candidates” lined up roughly from most to least-likely to be on that team, and then those that make sense to do so are pushed down to the next level.
Yes, it’s way too early to do this. I can revisit this next Spring with updated information/transactions, then use it in early April 2026 posts when we see who the rotations are, to see how decent a job we did predicting. I’m always up for proving how bad I am at player evaluation 🙂
MLB
In House 40-man Candidates: Gore, Grey, Cavalli, Lord, Alvarez, Irvin, Parker, Ogasawara, Lao, Eder (Herz, Williams)
Thoughts: Gore, assuming he doesn’t get traded, should be next year’s Opening Day starter. I’m assuming Grey is ready to go for opening day; he’ll have the entire off-season to prepare, and I can’t see any reason why he’d be delayed, even though he only got a few rehab starts in 2025. Cavalli gave the team 10 starts at a near-league average ERA+ after a long time away and had peripherals that give some hope (velocity up from 2022, Babip of .327 meaning he was a bit unlucky, etc). So, if we got Grey back to 2023 numbers when he was an All-Star, and if Gore and Cavalli pitched to their capabilities consistently, that’s a nice little 1-2-3 start to your rotation with some upside. At worse case all three are hovering around a 95-98 ERA+ as they did this year, which are all typical 3rd-4th starters. That’s the good news.
Here’s the bad news: Irvin led the league in Earned Runs and Homers allowed, and finished dead last amongst qualified starters in FIP, fWAR, and a couple other categories. Parker would have been right there with him in dead last had he gotten a few more innings. What should you do with a guy who’s the worst starter in the league? Well duh, you should put him in the bullpen. Lord’s splits as a starter were not good: his ERA was 2 full “points” higher than as a reliever, and I think he needs to go back to the pen, as much as I like his ascension story to the majors. Alvarez’s debut couldn’t have gone better, but is he a MLB starter? Nobody seems thinks so; he got almost zero prospect love in his career, and I sense he’ll be a rotation placeholder, morphing into the classical 4-A rubber-armed multi-role lefty for this team for the next few years until he runs out of minor league options, but he held his own and (for now) is probably the 4th or 5th starter in 2026.
I don’t buy Ogasawara as a MLB-capable starter; I sense he’s heading to AAA to prove (or disprove) my theory in 2026. Waiver pickup Lao actually had great AAA numbers this year as a starter and was only up in the MLB bullpen to fill a hole at the end of the season; maybe he competes for the 5th starter job next year. Same with trade acquisition Eder, though his AAA numbers weren’t nearly as good. I don’t sense Herz or Williams will be ready to go for opening day 2026; certainly not Herz, but Williams’ “brace” surgery may get him back quicker. Even if he was 100% healthy, he was abhorrent as a starter in 2025 despite his near all-star performance the first half of 2024, and I sense he should be in the bullpen going forward. So, for now they’re all out of the running.
So, what does that leave us with? Three acceptable starters and a bunch of question marks. How much is this team willing to spend on the open market? A 66-96 team is more than one Starting Pitcher away from competing, so my guess is, another mid-level $10M/year starter, open competition for the 5th starter job, hope for incremental improvements from Gore/Grey/Cavalli, and hope for some help coming up from guys who are in AA or AAA right now.
Prediction for 2026:
Rotation: Gore, Grey, Cavalli, a Free Agent, Alvarez or a spring training competition for 5th.
Thoughts: First off, we have four guys likely out the door here as being one year MLFAs (Sampson, Conley) who never earned their way up, and another couple guys (Solesky and Shuman) who I believe are be at the end of their 6year runs with us (both will be 28 this offseason, both had 5+ ERAs in AAA, and both seem like they’ve done all they can done in the game). So, I’m assuming these four are gone for consideration next year, at least as starters. The whole Covid year and what it did to FAs still confuses me, so I may have it wrong here, but even if they’re still under contract, neither merits another year in the rotation based on 2025 performance.
Despite being in the MLB bullpen for most of September, Lao, Eder, and Ogasawara have been primarily starters for their minor league careers and one would think the team would want to see if they can continue. Especially Lao, who had really good AAA starting numbers in Seattle’s system before inexplicably getting waived in September. However, I could also see the argument (especially for Eder) of trying them in the bullpen. I’m not sure Luckham has what it takes to succeed as a starter, so I can see him moving into the Shuman role for next year (LR/SS).
So that leaves Lao, Cornelio, and Ogasawara returning to the AAA rotation for another year, joined by Bennett rising up, and then filled out with a MLFA signing. I can’t really see the team dumping the three vanquished starters (Lord, Parker, Irvin) to AAA. We might see Susana back earlier than expected and he could fit in here relatively soon. But opening day 2026, this makes sense.
The team also still has Lara and Adon, both former starters, and one (Lara) still with some prospect love, who pitched their way out of starter roles and who both had abhorrent numbers in the pen in 2025. Could the team return to them as starters? I don’t think so, even if we need them. We need to see if they can contribute at the MLB level out of the bullpen.
Thoughts: The Nats late-season promotions of basically the entire season-ending AA rotation was the latest demonstration of their typical pattern of starter handling: they like to get starters’ feet wet in the new level before the new season, so we basically already know what most of the opening day AA rotation will look like. Kent, Clemmey, and Tolman all excelled in High-A this year, earned promotions, and struggled in short AA stints. They make perfect sense to start in AA, though Tolman seems to be more suited at this point as a multi-role reliever, so I’m projecting him to the pen. Atencio sat the entire 2025 season on the AA D/L: He was assigned to Harrisburg on Opening Day, then hit the DL before he could make a start. If he’s ready to go for opening day 2026, then he’s here. He was already planned on being part of the 2025 AA rotation, so I’d imagine he’ll come right back here when healthy. If not, maybe we’re pushing Tolman back into the rotation.
Choi, the 2024 minor league rule5 pickup, was up and back from AAA without holding onto his spot and makes sense to start in AA again. I’d imagine he’d make sense to start in the rotation until Susana is ready to go: if Susana is ready opening day, then we have to make a decision on one of Choi, Sthele, or Atencio.
When Susana is ready to go, you either push Choi to bullpen, demote Atencio, or send Susana straight to AAA. I mean, why not? He had 11 AA starts this year and struck out 70 in 47 innings; what exactly does he have left to prove there? I’m sure AAA could find room (Ogasawara to bullpen, or something).
Thoughts: Last year it seemed like Low-A was the place where we’d have a traffic jam; 2026 will be High-A. I count 9-10 legitimate candidates for the High-A roster next year. Lets talk about them.
Randall only had 16 low-A starts before getting pushed up to High-A and traded to us, but was also a 2024 3rd rounder from a decent baseball school (San Diego), so I can’t see him going back down; he will be in High-A for sure. Garcia got solid 2024 draft bonus and dominated Low-A before his promotion: he’s guaranteed to be in this rotation again in 2026 based on his “investment.” Meckley is kind of like Garcia but lesser on all counts; less draft bonus, lesser performance; I think he’s a victim of numbers and heads to the bullpen. Swan started this season in LA’s High-A team, finished it in ours, and showed basically the same stuff year long: good arm but wild. I think he repeats High-A but could also get socially promoted if a need arises given. He could also go into the pen and transition to a high K reliever.
Linan only gave us one High-A start before hitting the DL: he had the best numbers of the three trade acquisitions for their prior teams and probably will be one of the first to move up. But what was his injury? I’m putting either Linan on the opening-day DL, based on ending 2025 on the DL. Post publish update: Thanks to commenter Will for pointing this out: Linan has been put on the AFL roster and is pitching in Arizona, so therefore we can assume his injury was minor. I’m revamping the below prediction as a result.
Polanco just turned 24 and just finished a full season making 23 starts for Low-A; he’s moving up, with nothing left to prove in Low-A. He’s gonna either sink or swim in High-A. Tepper spent entire 2025 on the DL and his usage has been all over the road; I’m not sure he’s ready to be a starter, so I’m guessing he goes to the pen. Tejeda suddenly stopped pitching on August 3rd, but was a gun-slinging 6′ 8″ effective starter before that; i’m hoping nothing bad happened, and with Linan confirmed healthy i’ll hedge and start Tejeda on the DL. Trade acquisition Sales finished off a great year in Low-A, pitching well for both his old and new teams despite being “just” a 10th rounder; he’s solved Low-A and has to be here.
I could make the argument that Randall is less effective than Swan and those two switch places. Or, you could look at Swan’s K/9 rate and think ‘high end closer’ and put him in the pen.
If Linan is healthy, what happens? He’s a bit young yet for AA and definitely needs more High-A time, so perhaps he pushes Tejeda to the bullpen. Or, perhaps Tejeda is still hurt from whatever injury he sustained on or about August 3rd. But for now, here’s what i’m thinking:
With Linan confirmed healthy, but Tejeda not necessarily, I’m putting Linan in rotation and Tejeda on DL to start 2026. If Tejeda is indeed healthy … then someone has to head to the pen, because I think Tejeda needs to start for now. I think if this comes to pass, you’re moving Polanco to the bullpen.
Prediction for 2026:
Rotation: Randall, Garcia, Polanco, Linan, Sales
D/L: Tejeda
To the Bullpen: Meckley, Tepper, Swan
Low-A
Candidates: Sullivan, Romero, Johnson, Agostini, Farias, Feliz plus 2026 college draftees Tonghini, Maddox, Moore, Biven, Huesman, Puk
Thoughts:
Sullivan, the 2023 draftee, missed basically a year and a half, but has more or less dominated Low-A in the 9 cumulative starts he’s made there. He’ll turn 24 in May of next year and really does no good in Low-A, but there’s just too many arms so he starts in Low-A again. He returns. Same with Johnson, who made 8 low-A starts with a 5-something ERA this year as a very old 2025 draft signing. Romero made 14 Low-A starts, missing a month or so of time, with middling results; he’s heading to the bullpen. Agostini missed most of 2025 with injury but is a solid prospect; he should return if healthy.
Two new names moving up from FCL for next year should be Feliz and Farias. Feliz is looking like a solid prospect and is starting to get top-20 prospect love; he had a 2.20 ERA in the FCL this year after posting a 2.96 ERA in the DSL last year. He moves up and is an important young arm for us. Farias wasn’t great in the FCL this year but is already 23 and kind of has to move up; i’m putting him as the 5th starter in 2026 unless the team wants to compete him with one of the 2025 college guys.
All six college 2025 draftees are mentioned in Low-A to begin 2026, but I think all of them will go straight to the bullpen based on their college usage and pro potential. We’ll summarize our 2025 draft day posts here briefly; Tonghini was a setup-guy at Arizona. Maddox was a college SEC starter but a senior sign/5.56 ERA guy. Moore was a bullpen guy his first two years in college and pitched his way out of ODU’s bullpen before getting drafted, but wasn’t great as a starter. Biven was a swingman at Louisville. Huesman barely pitched at all at Vanderbilt, and Puk was a multi-inning Opener for FIU. None of our drafted college arms really project to be useful rotation pieces. The best option to start would be either Maddox or Moore if they need an arm.
Thoughts: Harmon and Sime are our two big bonus prep arms from the 2025 draft: I suppose its possible they start in Low-A in 2026, but that typically hasn’t been the MO of this team with its high school draftees. I’m guessing they do XST, ease into pitching, start in FCL and then maybe move up to Low-A later in the summer if they blow away their fellow teenagers in the complex league.
Lunar and Portorreal repeat FCL after middling 2025 results. Both are still relatively young as a 24IFA and 23IFA respectively. I’m guessing they make way for the three more promising arms coming up from the DSL and move to the bullen.
Moving up from the DSL are the three best starter prospects from the island this year in Reyes, Carela, and Gimenez. All three pitched solidly and it will be interesting to see how they fare. Reyes is a bit older as a 23IFA, while the other two didn’t start the year in the DSL rotation but pitched their way there as 24IFAs. None of these three were big money IFA signings, so they’ll be on a short leash.
One thing to keep in mind: the team loves using the FCL as a rehab weigh-station, so it’s entirely possible the “rotation” ends up being 4 guys and a rotation rehab start; they did this for a while this year.
Prediction for 2026:
Rotation: Harmon, Sime, Reyes, Carela, Gimenez
D/L:
To the Bullpen: Portorreal, Lunar
DSL
Candidates: Torrellas, De La Cruz, Robles, Mejia, Carrasco, Reynoso, plus 26IFA class
Thoughts: Torrellas, De La Cruz, and Robles finished 2025 in the rotation. Mejia and Carrasco were in the rotation to start 2025 but pitched their way out; they could get another shot but seem more likely to head to the pen. Reynoso is an unknown, having pitched in 2024 then missed all of 2025; i’d guess he’s bullpen bound.
The team signed 6 arms last January; not one of them featured in the 2025 rotation. Perhaps we’ll see some of them step up, but it doesn’t seem likely. Not one 25IFA arm had decent numbers this season. However, they also didn’t feature a single 24IFA signing in the 2024 rotation, preferring to bring them onboard a bit more slowly. The Nats havn’t really focused big bonus dollars on arms lately; just one non-trivial bonus amount in the last several drafts (Jose Feliz for $120k in 2023, then several guys in the 2021 class who are already gone), so it’s little surprise they struggle to find competent starters in the DSL.
Prediction for 2026:
Rotation: Torrellas, De La Cruz, Robles, plus two 25IFA or 26IFAs.
D/L:
To the Bullpen: Mejia, Carrasco, Reynoso
Ok, so that’s what we’re looking at. This may change as we do MLFA releases and signings this coming off-season, or if we add/remove players via trade.
I hope I didn’t miss anyone, but let me know if i’m missing someone obvious and/or if you think i’m crazy.
Bennett was just named our MLBPipeline Minor League Pitcher of the year. Photo from OSU
This is the 6th and last monthly review of all our rotations for the 2025, checking in on the latest month’s worth of production and doing some analysis. For this final post, instead of isolating September’s performance (since the Minor teams only played part of the month), we’ll look at these pitchers’ season-long performance and give the beginnings of some 2026 thoughts as to what next year might look like (a post I like writing a bit later, but which i’ll start the leg work on here).
Each team section analysis will have the same items: current rotation, changes in the last month, observations, next guy to get promoted (if its in the minors), next guy to get cut, and then a few comments about relievers.
Opening Day 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Soroka, TWilliams
End of April 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, TWilliams, Lord
End of May 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Soroka, TWilliams (back to the original)
End of June 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Soroka, TWilliams
End of July 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Lord, Ogasawara
End of Aug 2025: Irvin, Parker, Lord, Cavalli, Alvarez
End of Season 2025: Irvin, Lord, Cavalli, Alvarez, Parker/Gore
Changes in last Month: Gore returned from a late August DL trip and the team did a couple of weeks of 6-man rotation. Then they dumped Parker to the bullpen to go back to a 5-man plan when it was clear Alvarez’ debut wasn’t entirely a gimmick. Then Gore hit the DL again, pulling Parker back into the rotation to finish off the season.
Rotation Observations: The team finished 66-96, third worst in the league (though it won’t matter for the 2026 draft, as the Nats will pick 11th no matter what happens in the lottery thanks to being a revenue payor and participating in the 2025 lottery). A big reason for this record is the rotation; they ranked collectively 27th in total fWAR and 29th in ERA (ahead of only the 43-119 Colorado Rockies, who also get kicked out of the 2026 lottery despite the 3rd worst record in the modern age). Parker was demoted to the bullpen, laying the likely groundwork of being replaced in the 2026 rotation. But Irvin was just as bad, finishing dead last in several categories for qualified starters this year.
For the year, Gore had the best ERA+ of the group at 98, but seemed to tail off as the year went on. Physical Fatigue wearing down as a long season went on? Mental Fatigue of playing for a crap team? Lord’s splits as a starter were pretty bad all in all; he was 2 full ERA points better as a reliever. Cavalli’s return was on a par with Gore’s from a performance perspective, a good starting point for 2026. Alvarez had a 2.31 ERA and a 3.39 FIP in his five September starts: that’s something that clearly earns him a shot at next year’s rotation, even if most would think its unsustainable.
Bullpen comments: For the season, most of our existing bullpen was either mediocre/league average, or god-awful. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of cattle call we’ll have for replacements. Or if we have one at all: maybe its just a Rizzo thing to try to build bullpens that way. However (and this kind of buries the lead of my 2026 rotation prediction piece), I feel like 3/5ths of the rotation at the end of this year heads to the 2026 bullpen, perhaps buttressing it and giving us some performance next year.
AAA Rochester
Opening Day 2025: Alvarez, Lara, Ogasawara, Choi, Solesky
End of April 2025: Alvarez, Lara, Solesky, Shuman, Cavalli (rehab)
End of May 2025: Alvarez, Solesky, Shuman, Cavalli, Sampson
End of June 2025: Alvarez, Solesky, Shuman, Cavalli, Sampson
End of July 2025: Alvarez, Solesky, Cavalli, Conley, Ogasawara
End of Aug 2025: Alvarez, Conley, Luckham, Sampson, Cornelio
End of Season 2025: Sokesky, Sampson, Shuman, Eder (Luckham DL, Conley and Cornelio restricted)
Changes since end of last month: The last month of AAA was chaotic, with lots of last minute paper moves to move guys on and off the restricted list or the DL to finish the season. Alvarez got deservedly called up, he was replaced by Eder coming off the DL (which he hit almost as soon as we traded for him). Then, Luckham hit the DL, replaced by Shuman. Cornelio and Conley got stashed on the restricted list at season’s end: they were replaced by Solesky coming back off the DL briefly and then the end of the season hitting before they could return Cornelio. So, really, the “rotation” for Sept was primarily Sampson, Conley, Cornelio, Luckham, and a grab bag of starts from a slew of others.
Rotation Observations: 18 guys got starts in AAA this year, 12 of which were actual AAA starters (3 were rehab starts, 3 more were “Openers” in bullpen games). Of those 12, I’d only categories a couple as even being competent in terms of performance: Alvarez and Ogasawara (not surprisingly, both ending the season in the majors). The rest were a slew of ERAs in the 5’s and 6s (if not higher). I’d be expecting a wholesale reshuffle of AAA next season. We’ll likely we’ll be seeing a big contingent of 40-man arms pushed down to AAA in 2026 combined with the typical Nats cattle call of veteran 30-something MLFAs like this year’s Pilkington, Sampson, and Conley.
Next guy to get Promoted: Nobody on this list pitched well enough in aggregate to push for even a shot at the 2026 MLB rotation via a ST invite, though (again, burying the lead on a future post) Cornelio likely is getting added to the 40-man to avoid Rule-5 and may be in MLB camp. But, his 8-game stint wasn’t fantastic to finish out 2025 and will start 2026 in AAA.
Next guy to get cut/demoted: I’m guessing 2025 MLFA Sampson and Conley’s time here is done. Solesky may be at MLFA as well, depending on the deal he signed before last season. Shuman turns 28 in December and was a 2019 draftee, which I believe means 6-years MLFA for him as well, so we should see lots of churn in this rotation next year.
Bullpen comments: There were a slew of Sept callups from the bullpen, but perhaps more notably is which 40-man arms the team left in AAA to finish out the season. Salazar (Waiver claim), Loutus (waiver claim), Brzycky (NDFA), and Lara (19IFA) all had relatively awful AAA numbers this season, and one has to think they’re amongst the first guys to get DFA’d when the team needs to find its first four slots for its 60-day DL guys in the off-season moves coming up (which happens right after the World Series concludes). Of the rest, only Davila had anywhere close to decent numbers.
But, this is more of an indication of just how much the AAA team has fed the MLB bullpen this year: 8 of the 9 guys in the MLB bullpen at year’s end was promoted up this season. So, bravo for the production.
AA Harrisburg
Opening Day 2025: Shuman, Luckham, Saenz, Susana, Atencio
End of April 2025: Luckham, Saenz, Susana, Choi, Soroka (rehab)
End of May 2025: Luckham, Saenz, Choi, Cornelio, Conley (with multiple Gomez openers)
End of June 2025: Luckham, Choi, Cornelio, Conley, Stuart with Lara, Sykora at end of month.
End of July 2025: Luckham, Choi, Cornelio, Bennett, Huff/Schultz openers (with Sampson, Sykora, Lara each getting 1 start)
End of Aug 2025: Bennett, Susana, Tolman, Kent, Clemmey
End of Season 2025: Bennett, Tolman, Kent, Clemmey, Choi
Changes since end of last month: The only move of September was to put Susana on the DL with thankfully a non-arm injury, and replace him with Choi.
Rotation Observations: The performance of the guys in the Harrisburg rotation was awesome this year, with stellar season-long performances from Bennett, Cornelio, Susana, and Luckham for big chunks of the year. Clemmey and Kent’s promotions didn’t go very well for the last 5-6 turns of the season, but they both more than earned their spot and will be 1A and 1B in next year’s rotation. I would imagine that Susana misses the first part of the 2026 season with his Lat surgery and will get a month in AA once he’s going before heading to AAA next year where he belongs. Sykora and Stuart are both likely out for the entirety of 2026. Tolman (like Bennett) missed huge chunks of the last few years and had a rough debut in AA, but should be there to start 2026.
Next guy to get Promoted: Bennett likely has done “enough” to start next year in AAA; he turns 25 in December, lost all of 2024 and a huge chunk of 2025 to injury, barely pitched in 2023 as well, and its time for him to get a full season in.
Next guy to get cut/demoted: Choi was demoted out of the rotation and only put back thanks to injuries, but his overall numbers really weren’t that bad on the season.
Bullpen comments: there’s definitely some promising arms in the AA bullpen; Schultz, Huff, Vasquez, and Amaral all were promoted up from High-A this season. Schultz and Huff made spot starts and threw a ton of multi-inning appearances.
High-A Wilmington
Opening Day 2025: Clemmey, Cornelio, Kent, Sthele, Tepper
End of April 2025: Clemmey, Cornelio, Kent, Sthele, Arias
End of May 2025: Clemmey, Kent, Sthele, Sykora, Bennett, Stuart (rehab) plus a bunch of spot starts
End of June 2025: Clemmey, Kent, Sthele, Bennett, and four rehab stars from Ogasawara/Lara
End of July 2025: Clemmey, Kent, Sthele, Tolman, Susana rehab starts plus Tejeda and Garcia late.
End of Aug 2025: Sthele, Garcia, Meckley, Randall, Swan plus a slew of spot starts
End of Season 2025: Sthele, Garcia, Meckley, Randall, Swan
Changes since end of last month: None; the last month was very stable.
Rotation Observations: Sthele was the only guy to go the whole season in the rotation: 7-7, 4.22 ERA, 1.11 whip, and a 82/24 K/BB in 138IP. Is that enough to get promoted? Probably not, but do you have him repeat High-A? Two of our three High-A starter acquisitions (Randall, Swan) finish off their seasons on our High-A team giving the Nats mediocre-to-bad stints. Garcia & Meckley were both Nats 2024 draftees; Garcia a bit more heralded (6th rounder $425k bonus) than Meckley (12th rounder, $150k bonus), but both finished off with middling High-A numbers after good (Garcia) to mediocre (Meckley) Low-A numbers.
Next guy to get Promoted: Sthele could get socially promoted; not sure what he’s got left to prove in High-A, even if he may not cut it in AA.
Next guy to get cut/demoted: None of these guys are getting sent back down; its either the rotation or the bullpen at this level
Bullpen comments: I have two main comments about the High-A bullpen: first, we know Wilmington is a pitcher’s park in a relative pitcher’s league, so there’s lots of guys in Wilmington with decent numbers (most of them already promoted to AA). Of those ending the year on the roster, Shout-out to Aldonis, Arguelles, and Glavine perhaps as having halfway decent seasons.
Low-A/Fredericksburg
Opening Day 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia
End of April 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia with Bennett making his 2025 debut
End of May 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia with two “rehab” starts from Bennett/Sykora
End of June 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia, Romero
End of July 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Romero, Sullivan, Johnson
End of August 2025: Polanco, Romero, Sullivan, Johnson, Sales
End of Season 2025: Polanco, Romero, Sullivan, Johnson, Sales
Changes since end of last month: None.
Rotation Observations: Polanco was the sole guy to make it the entire season in the Low-A rotation, turning 24 at season’s end. He was good but not great; 3.71 ERA, 1.25 whip, .225 BAA, but got passed over several times to get moved up. Romero came off the DL and then proceeded to walk more guys than he struck-out for the season; he turns 24 before next season and is at a cross-roads. Sullivan finished the season healthy and with a 3.23 ERA in 7 starts. Our 2024 draftee Johnson is a super interesting case, getting just $2k to sign out of UMBC and dominating (as he probably should have) in the FCL, but struggled in a month or so in the Low-A rotation to finish out the season. Lastly trade acquisition Sales finished off a great year in Low-A, pitching well for both his old and new teams.
Next guy to get Promoted: Sales by performance, Polanco and Johnson by age.
Next guy to get cut/demoted: Romero probably has pitched himself into a corner.
Bullpen comments: By Season’s end, the “bullpen” in Fredericksburg was pretty bloated, with 12 bullpen arms to go with the 5 rotation guys. When FCL ended, the team called up a slew of guys from the affiliate team to go along with a handful of the 2025 draftees. None really got any semblances of useful stats.
End of May 2025: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Johnson, Lunar
End of June 2025: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Lunar, Sullivan (rehab)
End of Season/End of July 2025: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Lunar, Johnson
Changes since end of last month: none; season ended in July.
Rotation Observations: The team moved up Johnson and Farias, left the other three guys in the FCL once the season ended, which is as good of an indication of what those guys did this year.
DSL/Rookie
Opening day: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Carrasco, Mejia
End of June 2025: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Carrasco, Torrellas
End of July 2025: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Torrellas, Carela
End of Season/End of Aug 2025: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Torrellas, Carela with Gimenez
Changes since end of last month: none; Season ended in August.
Rotation Observations: Basically, there’s 3 good starter prospects here (Reyes, Carela, Gimenez) and three who’ll be back next year (De la Cruz, Robles, Torrellas). Reyes looked the most promising, but all three solid starters should come stateside for 2026. Depending on how many IFA arms we sign next January, Robles is probably the first to go.
That’s it for 2025 Rotation reviews.
Next up (and I was kind of writing it as I did this piece, which is why this one is so late) I’ll do a too-early glance at what the 2026 rotations might look like.
I’m going to use this opportunity to give some incremental updates and call out some improvements I’ve made to a couple of the main online Nats Data Resources I maintain. Just in case you hadn’t been to these resources in a while.
As always, any suggestions for improvements or errors noticed are always appreciated.
The Big Board shows our entire system, from MLB to DSL, with players generally in their starting spots at any given time, rotations kept in the order they appear, and bullpen arms kept roughly in their roles. The 2025 Rosters are now frozen for the end of the season, and I’ve created the 2026 Roster and 2026 Release page to start keeping track of player transactions (first one for the new tab was Darren Baker’s requested release).
MLB has recalled all 40-man players, and restored all 7 and 15-day DL players to the active roster, so MLB shows at 40/40 right now. The five 60-day DL guys won’t be returned until the World Series is over; that will correspond with the technical separation of these FAs to be: Bell, Law (who himself is on the 60-day), deJong, Alfaro, 25MLFA Pilkington, and 24MLFA Stubbs, so I don’t imagine we’ll have any DFA’s to return the 60-day DL guys at the onset. However, the exact terms of these MLFA deals can vary, so they actually may be multi-year deals. AAA also cleared up all its DL and Restricted list in late September, but the lower leagues have not, so there’s still a slew of DL and Restricted names on those rosters.
There’s a small number at the top of the Big Board, which keeps track of the total number of players under contract in the four domestic minor leagues. It attempts to keep track of this number to see how it compares to the 165 total system limit, which the team flirted with a couple times this season. That’s the main improvement I’ve added to the Big Board lately, in addition to the color coding of Promotions and Demotions throughout the season. Each player is also a link to their milb.com page (for minor leaguers) or their baseball-reference.com page (if they’re primarily MLBers).
I made a relatively large addition to the Draft Tracker this year: I added the “High Level” column to each player. I did this because I have dreams of doing a massive analysis trying to quantify what makes for a “good draft” by looking at the lower rounds to see what expectations are for these players. For example: if you draft a college guy in the 15th, where do you “expect” that player to get to? If they never get out of Low-A, that seems to have “met expectations” for that player, but if they get to AA is that a win?
Anyway, this analysis stalled once I started getting into the 2019 and prior drafts, where we went to 40 rounds instead of the current 20. I’ve been critical of the sport for cutting these 20 rounds (and cutting the entire Short-A level), but must admit it was kind of shocked at how many of our draftees never got out of Short-A. For example; in 2017 we drafted 33 players; here was the high-level breakdown:
A slew of the Low-A top-outs were in Short-A in the draft year of 2017, got assigned to Low-A to start 2018, and were released directly out of that league. So, the question is, is this a typical distribution expectation for a 40-round draft? Was this generally speaking a good or bad draft (hint: this was an awful draft, even with 6 guys getting to the majors, since 3 of them made the majors for other teams and the other three combined gave us a career -1.0 bWAR).
I initially replaced the Rule5 Eligible column with this high level, thinking that Rule5 eligible was a useless field, but then immediately returned it. Thank god for backups.
My big “value add” to the Draft Tracker generally is to have year-specific Draft worksheets where I keep track of the exact Bonus dollars as they’re announced, which gives us some insight into the negotiations for later-signing guys. I also have schools, commits, social media links, NDFAs, etc. I have done this same analysis for “local draft guys” (i.e. DC/MD/VA players) in the past, but kind of have petered out on tracking local players in general over the past few years. Also of note; the player names are links to milb.com pages/baseball-reference.com pages for convenience as with the Big Board.
A couple years ago I had the brilliant notion to create an IFA tracker in the same format as the Draft Tracker, because, well, why not; its an important way we ingest talent and we sign 20+ players a year.
My big value add to the IFA tracker this year was to add in High Level, as I did with the Draft tracker. This analysis led to a pretty obvious observation; a huge majority of these players never get out of the DSL. Like, a massive percentage. Take our 2018 class; we had 38 signees. here’s their highest levels:
DSL: 16
FCL: 13
Low-A: 3
High-A: 4
AA: 2
None higher
Five of these guys are still active, having resigned after their initial 7year stint expired after 2024, but who may be re-hitting MLFA this off-season. One may still pan out; Atencio, who was solid for us as a AA starter in 2025 then missed the entirety of 2025 with injury but who is still just 24. But, will he re-sign? did he already? The Covid year throws all this analysis into doubt.
Nonetheless, this is a lot of players churned through DSL and FCL for very little payoff.
The last time we even got a MLB player out of an IFA draft was in 2019 (Andry Lara), before that 2017 (Ferrer). There were more in 2016 and prior, but I havn’t gone back to do “high level” analysis that far back because it becomes pretty difficult to track down these players at some point: the DSL rosters aren’t nearly as comprehensively kept as the domestic rosters. Also, bonus dollar figures are incredibly tough to come by, even in recent years. For example, I know that our IFA 2025 pool was $6.2M, but I could only account for about $4.9M of bonus dollars being spent. We had 10 signees with no dollar amounts announced; were they all $10k? More? Less? Did we really leave $1.3M of bonus dollars on the table? I certainly hope not.
This is more of a collection of Prospect ranks, but I also publish my own ranks (recently discussed here with my post-season 125 rank). It’s a good place to kind of see the trends of other sites and how they’re ranking our guys. I also do a ton of value add here, putting in starting levels each year, bonus amounts,
There’s now 270 ranks dating back to pre Washington Nationals days. We’ll get a slew of updated ranks over the course of the off-season, with the major pundits mostly publishing in Jan/Feb of next year. I’ll re-do my top 125 at that time, add in the missing 2025 with non-trivial bonus dollars plus the 2026 IFA class, remove MLFAs and other releases we make this coming off-season, and (maybe) will even attempt to do the impossible: rank all 150+ minor leaguers in one spot.
You can see i’ve already highlighted in my recent 125 rank the players who I need to revisit, who might be too high or too low. I’ve also added in placeholders for another 10 players who probably all slot into the 80-90 range (those being the rest of the 2025 class plus some of the higher-bonus dollar 2025 IFAs).
Anyway, happy off-season. Can’t wait to see what the new regime has in mind.
Next big update to these docs will come at the end of the World Series, where all MLB and MLFAs are declared. I’ll try to keep up with the releases and the signings as best that I can, with the caveat that milb.com doesn’t always have the best record keeping.
As far as I can tell, anyone who we drafted in 2019 should become a new 6-year MLFA, and 2018IFAs also should hit MLFA unless they’ve agreed to some extension. We have a slew of 2019 draftees and 2018IFAs on our rosters who probably become new MLFAs on 11/1 or thereabouts.
Stehly continues to hang in there. I can’t even find a Nats picture of him. Photo via UTexas
Here’s Part 2 of My end of 2025 look at our system; the prospects ranked 61-125. Thanks for the feedback on the first 60 (Part 1 was here) … I’ve highlighted a few players that I may have too low (Glasser,Bazzell, Vaquero) and/or too high (Schnell, Lao) and that’ll help make this list next spring a lot tighter.
So here’s part 2: the guys ranked 61st to 125th. Yes I realize ranking prospects outside a certain threshold (top 50?) becomes kind of ridiculous. Certainly you’re splitting hairs as to whether a 23yr old hitting .210 in Low-A is even a “prospect” or not. But, with just 160 or so players in the whole domestic system, you’re getting dangerously close to attempting to just rank every single player we have under contract. Maybe I’ll get there at some point, but for now, I’ve gone from ranking 100 or so in March to 125 now, basically by just pushing down everyone who had a ranking earlier this year who got “layered” by one of the 15-20 or so guys we drafted or acquired in June and July. It probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to literally add all the AAA org guys, all the bullpen arms in A-ball, and the DSL guys to the bottom of this list and have a completely comprehensive ranking of every minor leaguer.
That being said, I’m super curious to hear from those who might think I’m way off on some of these 60+ guys and why. And, am I completely missing someone at this point? Still possible; there’s probably a couple of DSL guys or FCL players who had better than I noticed numbers who should be here. Looking forward to a crowd-sourced improvement on this data.
OK here we go. We’ll go groupings of 10 players at a time:
61 (nr) Murphy Stehly 3B 62 (nr) Garrett Davila RHP (Reliever) 63 (nr) Jake Eder LHP (Starter) 64 (101) Branden Boissiere OF (Corner) 65 (25) Kevin Made SS 66 (41) Marquis Grissom RHP (Reliever) 67 (46) Brayan Romero RHP (Starter) 68 (94) Elijah Nunez OF (CF) 69 (48) Tyler Schoff RHP (Reliever) 70 (nr) Enmanuel Carela RHP (Starter)
Discussion: I threw some more relievers in here; Davila is a 28yr old AAA reliever MLFA who probably “shouldn’t” be a “prospect” but who had good enough numbers this year to possibly warrant a late season call-up. I wonder if he re-ups with the team for2026. Marquis Grissom slots in here, having a bit of tarnish on his previous rank despite getting to AAA. Lastly Schoff is here despite previously better rankings on account of having season-ending back muscle surgery in May.
We’ve also got some interesting starters in this group; We got Eder in the same deal as the aforementioned Sam Brown; he’s on the 40-man and has been a starter his whole career; not great career minor league numbers but as a lefty he seems like a future reliever. Romero spent nearly the whole season in the Low-A rotation with middling numbers. Carela was a mid-season rotation replacement in the DSL and had a 2.01 ERA for the season across 12 appearances and a slew of starts; he’s a 2025 IFA for the minimum bonus amount, the kind of “found gold” guy who would be amazing if he developed into anything of use.
There’s four positional players in here: Kevin Made takes a huge tumble from being a top-30 guy to this mid 60-s range: guy just can’t hit. Stehly meanwhile gets plopped into the rankings despite being a 2022 10th round senior sign, a 5th year senior out of Texas who nobody thought would go anywhere. Instead, he was the starting 3B in AA this year, with an OPS north of .900 and moving a top-10 prospect Wallace to 2B before getting a season-ending injury. Bravo; he’s the kind of prospect you root for. Lastly we have Boissiere, who was one step from a release in spring training but instead found some power this year and slugged his way to be the starting 1B in Harrisburg, holding a .810 OPS there. Lastly there’s Nunez, who didn’t necessarily merit a move to High-A but who hit decently once he got there: .808 OPS with speed and the ability to play center. He may still be too high, but once you get to the 60s it’s splitting hairs.
Here’s the section where I threw in a bunch of relievers with solid numbers. Bloebaum was an Indy league signing last May; he had a 0.67 ERA this season; you read that right. He gave up just 2 earned runs in 27 IP across low and high-A, and one of them was on a solo HR he gave up in his last appearance in June before hitting the season-ending DL trip. I can’t find any injury announcement, even on his twitter, but interestingly Bloebaum is a big Driveline pitching guy, which I didn’t necessarily know before. Is a 30yr old converted infielder a “prospect?” If you can answer that, then you have Erick Mejia here. He got a ton of work this year, and moved all the way up to AAA but is a MLFA this off-season unless he re-ups with teh team. Schultz was a multi-role guy for Harrisburg all year with solid numbers, getting several “opening” starts while the AA rotation was in flux mid season. Agostini has made it back from a major arm issue last year and is here based on potential he showed in 2022 as a starter. Amaral had sneaky good numbers for a 2023 16th rounder in AA all year and could be a big find for the team. Beeker absolutely dominated Low-A this year, to the point where I have little understanding why he wasn’t promoted up; 1.85 ERA and 78 Ks in 63 relief innings.
This also seemed like a great area to put some of our remaining full-season rotation guys, namely Sthele, Meckley, and Sullivan. Sthele has become something of a punchline at Luke’s site; he just keeps on throwing. Two straight seasons where he’s been in the rotation the entire season despite middling ERA and ancillary numbers. You know who else that sounds like? Riley Cornelio. Meckley was a relatively unheralded starter picked up in the 12th round of the 2024 draft out of Coastal Carolina; he was a mainstay in the High-A rotation all year alongside Sthele. Lastly we have Sullivan, who was dominant in Low-A but was too old for the level, being on the comeback trail from injury. I like Sullivan’s chances the best of these three going forward.
Lunar is one of just three 2024 IFAs to make it stateside so far (along with previously mentioned Feliz and backup outfielder Tavarez); he pitched in the rotation for the FCL the entire season with middling results, but is mentioned here basically because he’s here ahead of the rest of his IFA class. If you wanted to argue he should be lower, i’d probably not argue.
81 (nr) Bryan Polanco RHP (Starter) 82 (49) Carlos Tavares 1B/OF (Corner) 83 (nr) Greyson Gimenez RHP (Reliever) 84 (nr) Victor Farias RHP (Starter) 85 (57) Kyle Luckham RHP (Starter) 86 (83) Michael Cuevas RHP (Starter) 87 (51) Brenner Cox OF (CF) 88 (nr) Luke Johnson RHP (Starter) 89 (56) Chase Solesky RHP (Starter) 90 (nr) Erik Tolman LHP (Starter)
Here’s another section where we threw a bunch of starters in with various levels of success this year. Polanco somehow survived an entire year in the Low-A rotation despite turning 24 at the end of the season. Farias spent time in the FCL rotation and was moved up to be a Long Reliever in Low-A. Luckham probably has shown himself to be a AA-ceiling starter, now having two straight years of solid AA numbers but getting hit hard when moved to AAA. He doesn’t have the K/9 right now to be an effective reliever either, so I’m not sure what to do with him. Luke Johnson had great numbers as a way-too-old FCL and Low-A starter, as a 2024 senior sign for almost no money; hopefully he gets a shot in Wilmington next year. Solesky drops down after an excellent 2024 that even saw him sent to the AFL; in 2025 he was a starter for the entire year in AAA with a 5.00 ERA and perhaps has hit a plateau in terms of his progression. Tolman looked great coming off the loss of the entire 2024 season to injury, dominating High-A .. as she should have as someone who turned 26 this year. He needs more AA time to see if he’s a player we use going forward at the higher levels. He is lefty, which goes to his benefit, and perhaps his 2025 should have him slightly higher, but he’s in this range b/c he did it against kids 3-4 years younger.
Greyson Gimenez had fantastic numbers in the DSL … as a 21yr old. So, he needs to come stateside in 2026 to see if this was for real. Cuevas finally was taken out of the rotation this year and was a decent AA setup guy; can he do more?
We have a couple of outfielders in here on different trajectories: Brenner Cox was socially promoted to High-A, couldn’t hit there, went back to Low-A, still couldn’t hit, and ended the year with a .156 BA across the two levels. That’s not good. Luckily for Cox he got a massive bonus so he’ll get more time to work things out. Tavares hit really well in FCL last year; not so much this year in Low-A, hitting just .153. He signed for almost nothing as a 2023 IFA, so he’s in jeopardy already of an off-season release.
91 (76) Jeremy De La Rosa OF (Corner) 92 (105) Holden Powell RHP (Reliever) 93 (58) Angel Roman LHP (Reliever) 94 (106) Jackson Cluff SS 95 (62) T.J. White OF (Corner) 96 (50) Max Romero Jr. C 97 (nr) Chance Huff RHP (Reliever) 98 (103) Juan Obispo OF (CF) 99 (63) Marcus Brown SS/2B 100 (66) Rony Bello 2B/3B
We’ve finally moved past arms, and now have a slew of positional players in this range. Lets talk about them, because they include a bunch of names who used to be higher.
De La Rosa has slowly fallen off, and further down, prospect lists; he was as high as #13 on Fangraphs list in mid 2024, believe it or not. After another middling season at the plate (hitting .200 in High-A), he’s now basically a non prospect. Cluff improved his slash line this year as a fill-in AAA shortstop, but is now 28, was drafted in 2019, and may be hitting MLFA. White repeated High-A for the third successive year, losing some of the power he found last year but not really improving on his .650 OPS. Romero is the classic “hanging around catcher who can barely hit but keeps moving up the ranks because every team needs a twice-a-week backup to their actual catching prospect” guy, spending this year in AA. Obispo is a $600k IFA signing in Jan 2023 who repeated the DSL for the third time this year with marked improvement. Which is good … and bad. Why did it take him 3 turns in the DR? Marcus Brown looks like Troy Tulowitzki … but hits like Troy’s 2nd cousin Bubba. I suppose he has a chance to be the next Jackson Cluff; a pure SS who can barely hit but who plays the dirt as needed. Bello got a decent chunk of bonus money in jan 2025 but was relegated to the bench in his first DSL season primarily by two guys we’ve already talked about in Marconi and Cortesia, but his investment guarantees more time.
I’ve got three arms in here: Angel Roman got 13 starts this year in low-A before mercifully getting sent to the bullpen. Unfortunately he was even worse as a reliever than he was as a starter. He’s only even listed on this page because he’s a Lefty, and may have a future as a lefty reliever. Speaking of relievers, Holden Powell solved AA this year and got a bit roughed up in AAA as a middle relief->setup guy. He’s here because he made it to AAA, even if that might be his ceiling. Lastly we have Chance Huff, who was used kind of like a utility knife in AA this year, getting a few spot starts along with longer relief. He held his own; not amazing, but enough that he might have some future.
101 (52) Manuel Cabrera 1B/3B 102 (78) Leuris Portorreal RHP (Starter) 103 (54) Nick Peoples OF (Corner) 104 (80) Mikey Tepper RHP (Starter) 105 (71) Dustin Saenz LHP (Starter) 106 (75) Seth Shuman RHP (Starter) 107 (79) Gavin Dugas 2B 108 (85) Brandon Pimentel 1B 109 (nr) Vasquez Samuel RHP (Reliever) 110 (93) Andy Acevedo OF (CF)
So, in the 100+ range, we’re mostly talking about guys who used to be more highly ranked who have fallen due to declining performance. Fittingly, 9 of the 10 guys in this section were ranked higher last year but struggled this year.
On the “Starter” front, Saenz was in and out of the AA rotation this year and had passable ERA, but his swing and miss is lacking, and a 26yr old undersized RHP reliever seems like the first one to go. Shuman posted a 6.24 ERA as a 27-yr old this year and seems like a release candidate. He was in and out of the AAA rotation, but between pending veteran MLFA signings and rising Arms from AA (like Bennett, Susana, Tolman) who need to get to AAA sooner than later, I’d imagine his spot is in serious jeopardy. Tepper made just 2 starts and hit the season-long DL: it may be unfair to drop him 20-something spots, but that’s life. Portorreal gets credit for being part of the 2023 IFA crew that’s made it state-side, pitching in the FCL all season, but with little success.
I threw Vasquez in here with his solid AA relief numbers, but recognizing that he’s a Rule5 pick who was left available for a reason; he may be considered a dime a dozen in terms of capabilities and ceiling.
Cabrera has been moved completely off the 2B/SS and played almost entirely 1B and 3B this season; a .592 OPS isn’t going to cut it like that. Dugas was already super old upon his drafting; now he’s a 25yr old finishing up a .181 season in High-A and may be done for. Pimentel hit just .194 this year and as a NDFA with almost no investment, he’s in danger of an imminent release. With all due respect to Peoples, he’s now finished his 3rd pro season and his career minor league BA is .192. Acevedo is basically here on the back of his $1.3M signing bonus in 2023; he hit just .188 in the FCL this year.
111 (86) Joe Naranjo 1B 112 (65) Luke Young RHP (Reliever) 113 (60) Jack Sinclair RHP (Reliever) 114 (107) J.T. Arruda 2B 115 (92) Viandel Pena 2B 116 (99) Johnathan Thomas OF (CF) 117 (82) Jared McKenzie OF (CF) 118 (81) Elian Soto 1B/OF (Corner) 119 (98) Carlos Batista OF (Corner) 120 (84) Leodarlyn Colon RHP (Reliever) 121 (64) Everett Cooper 2B/LF 122 (68) Lucas Knowles LHP (Reliever) 123 (90) Yoander Rivero 2B 124 (95) Matt Suggs C 125 (104) Nathan Ochoa Leyva OF (Corner)
Every one of the rest of these guys is here because I managed to put them in my top 100 list back in March. Some have fallen significantly. I can’t really see any of these guys being actual “prospects” anymore, but instead of deleting them off the list they’re in the 100+ section.
We’ll talk about them in groups.
Relievers: Young earned a promotion this year but was just kind of a meh RHP middle reliever in AA. Same with Sinclair; i suppose Young’s numbers were slightly better than Sinclair’s so perhaps they should be reversed. Colon was a starter in FCL last year but now is full time relief. Knowles seems like one of those lefty rubber armed multi-role types that every team needs in the minors; he’s 27, in AA, still hanging around.
Infielders: Naranjo was a super-young MLFA last year, having signed internationally at age 16. He’s a sub 6-foot 1B who slugged less than .300; i wonder if he signed for more than one year. Arruda is kind of like Cluff-lite, in AAA but with no real pathway to the majors. Pena ended the year in AAA for some reason; as a backup 2B in AA he hit .201 this year and is basically Arruda with 2 more years of control. Cooper hit just .140 this year repeating Low-A. Rivero got moved to 2B, where he backed up our better players in Low-A while hitting .201 and ending the year on the 60-day DL.
Backup Catchers: I guess I could have also included all our backup catchers here instead of just Suggs. Basically every one of these guys is in the same boat: Lindsley and Stubbs in AAA, Suggs and Farmer in AA, Colmenares in High-A, or Fagnant/Hollified in Low-A: generally speaking these guys have batting averages in the .180-.200 range, play once a week backing up the starter, and are there more for defensive skills than prospect status.
Outfielders: Thomas actually earned a promotion to AA this year, but his primary skill seems to be stealing bases, not actually getting on base. McKenzie took a big step back while repeating High-A, hitting just .167 there this year. Juan’s brother Soto hit just .139 playing 1B/LF combo. Batista wasn’t much better, hitting .140 in FCL this year. Both Soto and Batista were decent-money 2023 IFAs who are getting socially promoted based on their bonus as opposed to their talent, but that’s going to run out at some point. Lastly we have the 125th ranked Ochoa Leyva, who had just a .493 OPS this season as he covered 2B/LF for Low-A.
Phew. Hope you’ve enjoyed this. I’d say, “did I forget anyone” but … man when ranking 125 of the players in our system, we’re getting a massive percentage of the total rosters of all our domestic teams (147 active players plus another 18-20 on the 60-Day DL), not to mention the 30 or so guys we have in the DSL. Maybe in the future we’ll rank all the way to 200.
Your #1 Nationals prospect, Eli Willits. Photo via MLBpipeline/Getty Images
It occurred to me … you know when the right time to do prospect evaluation is? It isn’t in March or April ahead of the next season, its right now. Well, at least until we see off-season churn, add new signings in January, add prospects in trade, etc. But for now, we’ve just finished the last of the minor league seasons, 2025 performance is fresh in our minds, we’ve added a slew of new prospects via the trade deadline and the Draft, and now’s a great time to pass judgement on the seasons we just saw.
So, here’s my top 125 Prospect Ranks for the National system, right now. I’ll list these in groups of 10, list where I had them ranked in Mid-March before the season started. I ended up writing so much that I broke this into two posts: Part 1 will be the top 60, then we’ll dive into the 61-125th ranked guys.
We’ve had a ton of prospect churn this season; we’ve graduated 10 prospects from my top 100+ list in March, including four of our top 10. Crews, House, Cavalli (who as of this exact writing needs one more start to officially graduate via IP, even though he graduated via Service time a year ago), Hassell, Lile, Lord, Nunez (another Service time vs Plate appearance guy), Rutledge, Henry, and Millas all hit MLB rookie eligibility limits this year (150 PAs or 50IP). We released another 10 guys who I had ranked in March, which mostly goes to the folly of trying to rank anyone above the top 50 or so.
The blocks will be in the form Current Rank (March 2025 Rank) Name position
Here’s my current top 10 for the system:
1 (nr) Eli Willits SS 2 (4) Jarlin Susana RHP (Starter) 3 (9) Alex Clemmey LHP (Starter) 4 (17) Jake Bennett LHP (Starter) 5 (2) Travis Sykora RHP (Starter) 6 (6) Yohandy Morales 3B 7 (nr) Ethan Petry 1B/OF (Corner) 8 (11) Caleb Lomavita C 9 (nr) Coy James SS 10 (nr) Landon Harmon RHP (Starter)
Discussion: So, I (like many shops) have Willits immediately going top. This is partly due to the injuries that Susana and Sykora suffered, and partly buying into the hype. Pretty much every other major shop has put Willits as #1 in our system upon his drafting too. In fact, the only shop that didn’t immediately have him #1 in our system was Fangraphs, and I’d bet they’d reconsider with Susana’s Lat surgery.
I kept Susana #2 once we found out it wasn’t Shoulder/Elbow. I know he’s still missing time in 2026, but it could be worse. I’ve dropped Sykora from a close #2 to 5th on the list behind our BA player of the year Clemmey and Bennett on the back of his outstanding season.
I remain baffled why Morales is so low on other rankings (#17 in BA, #20 MLBpipeline). I might be bullish on him, but I can’t see dropping him much below this. Petry’s inclusion to the AFL speaks volumes for the 2025 draftee; something tells me he’s going to be a pretty fast moving bat in this system. Lomavita looks like he could push Kiebert Ruiz for a job sooner than later, hitting for solid numbers in a pitcher’s park for most of 2025. I’ve filled out my top 10 with two speculative picks in the two highest profile prep players we overpaid for in the 2025 draft. These ranks could look pretty embarrassing in a year’s time, but are in line with BA/MLBPipeline’s initial rankings, so I’m happy with them.
Four of our top 10 were 2025 draft picks, an indication of just how important the 2025 draft will be to this organization going forward.
11 (nr) Sean Paul Linan RHP (Starter) 12 (nr) Eriq Swan RHP (Starter) 13 (19) Angel Feliz 3B/SS 14 (nr) Cornelio Riley RHP (Starter) 15 (nr) Christian Franklin OF (CF) 16 (5) Seaver King SS 17 (12) Luke Dickerson SS/CF 18 (26) Jackson Kent LHP (Starter) 19 (39) Sam Peterson OF (CF) 20 (nr) Davian Garcia RHP (Starter)
Discussion: Linan and Swan seem like they’re going to be the crown jewels of the 2025 trade deadline, but finishing the year in High-A with solid 2025 numbers. Feliz is our highest performing 2024 IFA class member so far, being one of only 3 guys from that class to get off the island so far, and the only one to really make an impression state-side. He’s going to likely get pushed to 3B as he rises alongside more pure middle infielder prospects like Willits and Dickerson.
Cornelio Riley deservedly was just named the Nats 2025 Minor league Pitcher of the Year and has exploded onto the prospect radar: I did not even rank him in my top 100 last year, having held his first two seasons in relative disdain for his mediocre numbers and social promotion. How wrong do I look based on his 3-level rise this year? Franklin is an interesting one, arriving as a AAA level corner OF in a system full of OF prospects and raked. I’ve dropped Dickerson five slots from March, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but he’s probably lucky to remain this high based on a .208 hitting season. Kent ended the year in AA in his first pro season, tiring at the end but looking promising. Peterson nearly had a .300/.400/.500 season in High-A as a 2024 8th rounder from a little-regarded baseball school (Iowa). Maybe he should be higher, closer to Franklin. Garcia may be a little high here as a 2024 draftee who struggled a bit in High-A once he got there, but his Low-A debut was really promising.
Lastly, i’ve dumped King from #5 to #16. Is that fair given that he was in AA most of the time? Probably not, but it’s a good representation of how disappointing his season was in retrospect given his draft slot and bonus. I’ll bet most shops don’t dump him much past the early teens, and perhaps #16 is harsh, but there’s some serious concerns here.
As with our top 10, half this group wasn’t even ranked in March, with trade acquisitions and fantastic performances from two guys not on the prospect radar pushing their way in here. Unfortunately, that’s tempered by the plummeting of the two biggest names from the 2024 draft in King and Dickerson.
21 (nr) Marconi German SS 22 (nr) Miguel Sime Jr. RHP (Starter) 23 (nr) Ronny Cruz SS 24 (67) Yoel Tejeda Jr. RHP (Starter) 25 (28) Andrew Alvarez LHP (Starter) 26 (14) Tyler Stuart RHP (Starter) 27 (20) Andrew Pinckney OF (Corner) 28 (7) Cayden Wallace 2B/3B 29 (29) Brayan Cortesia SS 30 (nr) Randall Josh RHP (Starter)
Discussion: German is looking like the jewel of the 2025 IFA class so far, with a stellar DSL season where he slashed .283/.479/.513 and made the DSL All Star team. Cortesia at #29 was a bigger bonus guy and had a better average in the DSL, but had just 4 XBH (0 homers) in 40 DSL games. Both show promise.
Sime is the fourth of our four big bonus Prep 2025 draftees; he got a bit less than James and Harmon, and is a bit lower regarded from a potential perspective, but still projects as a flame-throwing starter. Cruz came over with Franklin in the Soroka trade a couple months ago and joins a slew of 18-19 yr old SS prospects (Willits, Dickerson, Feliz, James all ranked above him) competing for playing time. Tejeda was great all year but was shelved w/o notice with about a month to go in Low-A; hopefully nothing wrong there.
I’m definitely high-man on Alvarez, even given the fact that he’s made his MLB debut. For whatever reason, none of these shops rate a lefty starter who has held his own in AAA for two years then has a completely respectable debut stint in the majors. Call me crazy, but isn’t the point of prospects to get to the majors and contribute?
I’ve dropped Stuart 10 spots due to his TJ, which likely means we won’t see him til 2027. Should I have Pinckney higher? He’s a CF-capable 20-homer AAA hitter who’s a year younger than Franklin, who i’ve got 10 spots higher. Perhaps … but something just seems to be holding him up. Randall was the third of three High-A starters we nabbed in the trade deadline this year (alongside Swan and Linan) but had the roughest go of it in Wilmington (6.44 ERA). I keep him in the top 30 … for now.
Lastly, a word on perhaps my biggest “miss” of my May rankings: Cayden Wallace. I had him at #7 in the spring, thinking honestly that he might actually push House for his AAA third-base job. I was not alone in this regard, with other major shops generally having him in the 10-12 range. He punted the 2025 season; hitting .242/.310/.376 (with much of that production in one hot month). I can’t see him moving up to AAA next season (not with both Tena and Lipscomb as 3B capable players currently on the roster), at least not to open the season. Furthermore, there’s already three 2B on the AAA roster now (Baker, Arruda, Pena), so he’d struggle with playing time there as well.
31 (44) Jose Feliz RHP (Starter) 32 (nr) Nick Schnell OF (Corner) 33 (nr) Sauryn Lao RHP (Starter) 34 (nr) R.J. Sales RHP (Starter) 35 (45) Dashyll Tejeda OF (CF) 36 (72) Sir Jamison Jones C 37 (21) Cristian Vaquero OF (CF) 38 (22) Victor Hurtado OF (Corner) 39 (87) Jorgelys Mota SS 40 (nr) Nauris De La Cruz OF (Corner)
Discussion: This group heavy on youngsters who may be moving further up soon. (Feliz, Tejeda, Jones, Mota, De la Cruz). It’s also notable how quickly our farm system thins.
Feliz is looking like the best arm out of the 2023 IFA class, having dominated the FCL this year. I look forward to seeing what he can do in full-season ball next year. Schnell may seem like an odd pick for a “prospect,” but the MLFA is still only 25 and bashed his way to AAA this year. The Rochester outfield (Schnell, Pinckney, Franklin) must have looked pretty harsh to opposing pitchers during the last half of the season.
Lao is an interesting one. He was DFA’d by Seattle a few weeks ago despite spending the entire season in their AAA rotation in Tacoma with a 3.19 ERA. He’s only 25. I think he might be a sneaky good contender for the AAA rotation to start next season, with an eye on covering in the majors quickly. He got called up to pitch out of the bullpen for the homestretch, but he’s no 4-A reliever.
Sales was probably the least heralded starter we got at the 2025 trade deadline, but he had some of the best numbers, with a 2.85 ERA in 22 low-A starts this year. He’s a college starter from UNC-Wilmington who will clearly be in our High-A rotation to start next season.
Both Tejeda and Jones are 19yr olds who may be ranked a bit high based on their 2025 performance, but who are promising. Jones is being brought along as a Catcher, which adds to his eventual value. Meanwhile, Vaquero and Hurtado remain primarily “bonus baby” prospects, and continue to leak downwards on the charts. I laugh at anyone who credibly tries to rank Hurtado in the top 20 of our system after hitting .236 while repeating the DSL. Mota could be a sneaky good prospect for us, as he hit well in Low-A while playing a ton of 3B while making way for the likes of Dickerson & Willits. He can play SS as needed.
Lastly, a word on Nauris De La Cruz, who gets a debutant ranking here after a very solid DSL debut. He signed for a pittance outside the normal signing period (they didn’t announce his 2025 IFA signing bonus, meaning it was at best $10k and likely less), but slashed .294/.448/.450 for the season. He may be a bit older than the normal DSL kid, but he still will move stateside having played mostly CF for the DSL nats.
41 (nr) Clayton Beeter RHP (Reliever) 42 (42) Robert Cranz RHP (Reliever) 43 (nr) Browm Martinez OF (CF) 44 (47) Phillips Glasser SS 45 (nr) Juan Reyes LHP (Starter) 46 (16) Kevin Bazzell C 47 (53) Jose Atencio RHP (Starter) 48 (96) Pablo Aldonis LHP (Reliever) 49 (40) Orlando Ribalta RHP (Reliever) 50 (37) Daniel Hernandez C
Discussion: Yes, this is the first time you’re seeing relievers. I have an awfully hard time ranking relievers in the top 30, let alone the top 40. Why? Well, look no further than the makeup of the current Nats bullpen: 2 MLFAs (Ogasawara, Pilkington), 2 waiver claims (Poulin and Lao), 2 trade acquisitions (Thompson, Beeter), and two high-profile Nats failed starter prospects (Rutledge, Henry).
So, yes, I know Cranz had awesome numbers. I know Beeter and Ribalta have MLB time this year. They’re still 4-A guys who seemingly could be a 6-era or a 2-era guy in a MLB pen. Lets talk about the rest of these guys. Aldonis converted to relief this year and completely dominated across 3 levels, finishing the season with a 1.45 ERA to post some of the best numbers of any reliever in the system.
Martinez is a lottery ticket trade acquisition who was hitting .400 in the DSL when we acquired him, but who immediately hit the DL and that’s that. His ranking is incredibly speculative. Glasser gets the nod here on the heels of just being named the Nats 2025 Minor league Hitter of the Year. I still think he’s got Org Guy stink on him, but if he makes the majors as a bench guy in the same Jake Alu vein, then more power to him.
Juan Reyes was the star of the DSL rotation this year … but at age 20. It’s entirely possible his success in 2025 was “too old for the level,” but he signed for nothing and has pitched his way into an FCL look next year. Atencio missed the entire 2025 season with injury but was a 3.41 ERA starter last year in AA, so hopefully picks up where he left off.
Daniel Hernandez was a 7-figure 2025 IFA signing who is a Catcher, and he hit like one this year, posting a .552 OPS figure in his debut DSL season. #50 may be generous here.
Lastly, there’s Bazzell, who takes a mighty tumble down the ranks. He spent the entire season in Low-A despite being a 3rd round pick from a major baseball conference and put up some pretty anemic numbers, even for a catcher. Zero homers and a .283 slugging percentage. Keith Law ranked this guy #6 in our entire system earlier this year.
51 (69) Daison Acosta RHP (Reliever) 52 (23) Elijah Green OF (CF) 53 (32) Darren Baker 2B 54 (33) Zach Brzykcy RHP (Reliever) 55 (nr) Sam Brown OF (Corner) 56 (43) Randal Diaz SS/3B 57 (27) Armando Cruz SS 58 (24) Rafael Ramirez Jr. SS 59 (55) Hyun-Il Choi RHP (Starter) 60 (13) Andry Lara RHP (Starter)
This is the section where we see a slew of more heralded prospects now getting pushed down after years of unproductivity. Elijah Green being the headliner, but joined by Baker (recently DFA’d), Brzycky (who was always too high, even for a reliever, before getting blasted in the majors), Cruz (who hit just .177 in High-A this season), Ramirez (who barely played this year after missing a ton of time on the DL), and especially Andry Lara, who was absolutely tattooed in AAA this year to an 8.92 ERA, which was nearly as bad as his MLB ERA of 8.79 in a few mop-up appearances. Yes, I know he’s only 22 and I know he throws hard, but it must be straight as an arrow to get hit as hard as he has.
is Baker a prospect at all? It’s hard to see where he goes from here; likely he plays out the 6-year string with us and moves on. He’s still got some positional value (he can play several positions in a pinch) but if the team needs backup middle infielders they’re likely moving on other names at this point.
Choi was a minor league rule5 guy who went from the opening day AAA rotation to mostly pitching out of the AA rotation all year. I don’t see a lot of ceiling here. I think he gets whacked again in AAA next year and moves to the bullpen.
Lets talk instead about the two guys in this group who seem to be moving up: Brown and Diaz. Brown was seemingly a throw-in from the Angels in the Chafin/Garcia trade, but he got to AA here as a 24yr old 2023 12th round pick and hit; .307/.384/.472 from the left side in his time here playing 1B/RF. Not bad. The other guy in this section I like a bit more: Randal Diaz was a 5th rounder in 2024 who never appeared last year and played the whole season in F’burg. He’s listed as a SS but we know Short was primarily manned all year by either Dickerson or Willits, so Diaz moved around. A lot: he played games at every infield position plus Left and Right at some point this year. We know the Nats love positional flexibility. Problem is, he didn’t hit as well as he needs to; just .229. We’ll see.
Jake Bennett the leading prospect to head into the AFL this year. Photo from OSU
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.
