Nats in General at Nationals Arm Race

Nats Opening Day History updated for 2026

One of these random files I have maintained since 2005 is a history of our Opening days. Now that we’ve had both our opening day on the road and our 2026 home Opener, here’s that data updated for 2026.

Home Opener Attendance and Weather through the years

The weather for 2026’s home opener was solid: 62 and partly cloudy is a heck of a lot better t han it has been in the past. 2011? 41, overcast, windy. 2022 a 4+ hour delay, 52 and rainy.

I think the best weather we ever had for a home opener may have been the infamous Philly invasion: 1pm 80-degree and sunny day. Too bad it was ruined by so many South Jersey bros who had been drinking for 3 hours by the time they got to the stadium.

2026: 41,161 (2:45 fri game, 62, partly cloudy)
2025: 41,231 (4:05 thurs game, 57, sunny, slight wind)
2024: 40,405 (4:05 tues game, 53, cloudy, slight wind)
2023: 35,756 (105 thurs game, 45 degrees and sunny)
2022: 35,052 (7:05 thurs game (pushed back from 4:05, then delayed to 8:21 weather. 52 degrees, cloudy, rainy)
2021: 4,801 (4:05 tuesday game, 74 degrees, partly cloudy, 5mph wind)
2020: 0 (7:09 thurs game, 90, partly cloudy, 7mph wind)
2019: 42,263 (1:07 thurs game, 56, partly cloudy, no wind)
2018: 42,477 (1:08 thurs game, 42, partly cloudy, slight wind)
2017: 42,744 (1:05 monday game, 66 and cloudy, slight wind)
2016: 41,650 (4:05 thursday game, 60 and 1.5hr rain delay)
2015: 42,295 (4:05 monday game, 75 and gorgeous)
2014: 42,834 (1:05 friday game, 50s and overcast)
2013: 45,274 (1:05 monday game, 60 and beautiful)
2012: 40,907 (1:05 thursday game 56, partly cloudy)
2011: 39,055 (1:05 thursday game, 41 degrees and overcast)
2010: 41,290 (1pm game monday, beautiful weather 80s and sunny): This was Phillies Invasaion
2009: 40,386 (3pm game on a monday, chilly 53degr and overcast).
2008: 39,389 (season and stadium opener), 8pm sunday night, Braves, nat’l tv clear but cold.
2007: 40,389 (in rfk, 1pm game vs Florida, 72 degrees
2006: 40,516 (in rfk, tuesday day game vs Mets, 72 degr and sunny)
2005: 45,596 (in rfk, debut of entire franchise, 62 degr and clear, evening game).

Home opener Results and Box Scores

The Nats are just 6-16 all time through 2026 in their home openers, a pretty interesting stat given that for most of the 2010s they were one of the best teams in the sport.

Nats Season Openers.
We are slightly better in Season openers: Record: 9-13. We’ve been home 13 times, away 9 times.

2026: Away: Nats d Cubs 10-4. WP Lord, LP Boyd (Starters Cavalli, Boyd).
2025: Home: Phillies d Nats 7-3, WP Alvarado, LP Poche (Starters: MaKenzie, Wheeler)
2024: Away: Reds d Nats 8-2. WP: Montas. LP Grey (Starters: Grey, Montes).
2023: Home: Braves d Nationals 7-2. WP: Luetge, LP Corbin (starters: Fried, Corbin):
2022: Home: Mets d Nationals 5-1. WP: Megill, LP Corbin (starters same):
2021: Home: Nationals d Braves 6-5. WP: Hudson, LP Smith (starters Scherzer v Smyly):
2020: Home: Yankees d Nationals 4-1. WP: Cole, LP Scherzer (starters same):
2019: Home: Mets d Nationals 2-0. WP: deGrom, LP Scherzer (starters same):
2018: Away: Nats d Reds 2-0. WP Scherzer, LP Bailey (starters same):
2017: home: Nats d Marlins 4-2. WP Strasburg, LP Phelps (Starters Strasburg, Volquez):
2016: away: Nats d Braves 4-3. WP Treinen, LP O’Flarity (starters Scherzer, Teheran):
2015: home: Mets d Nats 3-1. WP: Bartolo Colon. LP: Max Scherzer
2014: away: Nats d Mets 9-7. WP Aaron Barrett, LP Familia (starters Strasburg, dillon Gee):
2013: home: Nats d Marlins 2-0. WP: Stephen Strasburg. LP: Ricky Nolasco.
2012: away: Nats d Cubs 2-1. WP Clippard, LP Marmol (starters: Strasburg and Ryan Dempster):
2011: home: Braves d Nats 2-0. WP: Derek Lowe. LP: Livan Hernandez.
2010: home: Phillies d Nats 11-1. WP: Roy Halladay. LP: John Lannan
2009: away: Marlins d Nats 12-6. WP: Nolasco, LP; Lannan
2008: home: Nats d Braves 3-2. WP: Rauch. LP: Moylan (Starters: Tim Hudson and Odalis Perez)
2007: home: Marlins d Nats 9-2. WP: Dontrelle Willis. LP: John Patterson
2006: away: Mets d Nats 3-2. WP: Glavine, LP: Hernandez.
2005: away: Phillies d Nats 8-4. WP: Lieber, LP: Hernandez.

Written by Todd Boss

April 4th, 2026 at 1:11 pm

Posted in Nats in General

Opening Day Starters Trivia for 2026

7 comments

Cavalli gets the ball opening day for the Nats. Photo via MLB.

Now that the 2026 Opening Day is past us, and I’ve updated my internal spreadsheet that tracks Opening Day starters over the years, which lets me bring you the following useless Trivia realted to Opening Day starters.

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

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

First time Opening Day Starters for 20262: 13 of the 30 teams used first-time starters this year. That’s in line with the past few years (12 in 2025, 14 in 2024) and continues the trend of overall churn in starting pitching in the sport.
Current Active Leader of Opening Day Starts: this remains the ageless Richmond-native Justin Verlander, with 12. He did 9 in Detroit, then another 3 in Houston. Clayton Kershaw was #2 but has now retired. Tied for 2nd now is Chris Sale (who extended his streak this year with Atlanta) and our former Ace Max Scherzer (who will slot into the back-end of Toronto’s rotation as he chases one more ring).
Current Active Consecutive streak: Logan Webb, who made his 5th straight for San Francisco and was quickly bombed by the powerful Yankees lineup on the Netflix day before the real opening day nonsense that broke a ton of traditions.
Current Leader of Consecutive Opening Day Starts: Verlander made 7 straight with Detroit; Webb is creeping up on him, and we have a slew of guys who just made their 3rd or 4th straight opening day starts … including Detroit’s Tarik Skubal, who seems like a great candidate to push for this record if/when he joins a new team.

Historical records:

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

Nats Records:

Max Scherzer is the Nats franchise leader in Opening day starts with 6. Do you think he’ll go into the Hall of Fame wearing a Nats hat? I tend to think so; he elevated himself to HoFame levels during his time in Washington.
Strasburg is 2nd with four: he took the ball opening day in the 3 seasons before the Scherzer acquisition, then got it in 2017 mid Scherzer contract. Reminder: $35M of the Nats $92M opening payroll is going to Strasburg, who will get another $35M next year too in what may be the worst free agency contract ever handed out.
Cade Cavalli becomes the 10th player in the Nats 22 year history to take the ball on opening day.
Odalis Perez remains the most unlikely Opening Day starter, getting the ball in our bottoming-out year of 2008.

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

Cavalli is the 4th straight different Opening day starter we’ve had, not really a surprise to Nats fans who are watching the second straight reboot of the franchise. Cavalli seems likely to lead the line again though, since his competitors have either been traded (Gore) or are injured again (Grey) and our top starter prospects remain lower in the minors or hurt.
Some teams have consistency, others are just all over the road. Cincinnati threw Virginia-born Andrew Abbot; he’s their 11th different opening day starter in 12 years.
Other teams who can’t find a consistent ace: Tampa Bay (8 different guys in last 9 years),
Texas had a crazy run where they used 15 different starters in the 16 years running from 2009 to 2024, but have now thrown Eovaldi 3 years’ running.

Written by Todd Boss

March 27th, 2026 at 8:58 pm

Posted in Nats in General

Nats 2026 Opening Day Roster Announced — Who are these guys?

6 comments

The PG version of this image from the movie Major League, without the actual dialog in caption.

Today 3/25/26, the Washington Nationals, a franchise in Major League Baseball purportedly worth more than $2 Billion dollars, rolled out the following opening day 26 man lineup.

SP: Cavalli, Griffin, Mikolas, Littell, Irvin
RP: Henry, Beeter, Poulin, Varland, Granillo, Waldichuk, CPerez, Lord,
C: Ruiz, Millas
INF: LGarcia, Abrams, House, Vivas, Nunez, Tena, Chapparo
OF: Wood, Young, Lile, Weimer

By way of comparison, here’s 2025’s opening day 25-man roster.

SP: Gore, Williams, Irvin, Soroka, Parker
RP: Finnegan, Lopez, Sims, Ferrer, Poche, Salazar, Ribalta, Lord
C: Ruiz, Adams,
INF: Lowe, LGarcia, Abrams, DeJong, Tena, Rosario
OF: Young, Wood, Crews, Call
DH: Bell

So that’s 1 returning Starting Pitcher, 1 returning Reliever, 1 returning catcher, 3 returning infielders (against all odds since Tena should have been DFA’d the moment we acquired Vivas), and 2 returning outfielders. That’s just 8 of the 26 men who made it a year on the roster from this time last year, and probably half the roster that even the most experienced fan couldn’t pick out of a lineup.

Perhaps another way to look at it: acquisition method of this 26-man roster. Here’s a breakdown:

Home grown players: 8: Garcia, House, Young, Lile, Henry, Cavalli, Irvin, Lord.
Trade acquisitions: 9: Ruiz, Chapparo, Abrams, Wood, Beeter, Granillo, Millas, Tena, Vivas
MLB FAs: 3: Griffin, Mikolas, Littell
MLFAs: 1: Perez
Waiver claims: 4: Weimer, Poulin, Varland, Waldichuk
Rule5: 1 Nunez

On the one hand, yes it’s great that 17 of the 26 are either home grown or trade acquisitions, since for the most part these trade acquisitions were prospects when we got them. But 6 MLFA/Waiver/Rule5 guys is embarrassing. That’s 6 guys who weren’t worthy of being on some other team’s entire 40-man roster but who are now on our MLB active lineup..

Somehow, this roster is costing the team $92M in 26-man payroll … until you realize that figure includes Strasburg’s $35M annual salary still on the books (as well as Adam’s split contract $500k figure and Ogasawara’s $2M/year figure still owed despite his outright). So it’s actually closer to $58M to field this team … or about $25 less than what the official 30th ranked team (Miami) is spending. Wow.

So, hey Season Ticket Fans, welcome to 2026! Thanks for your checks last fall securing your seats; hope you enjoy the season.

Written by Todd Boss

March 25th, 2026 at 2:00 pm

Posted in Nats in General

Odd Roster Choices for Start of 2026 Season

12 comments

Crews won’t be wearing this uniform for a while. Photo via Crews’ instagram page.

So, we knew going in that 2026 was going to be another lost season. We could tell from the HS-heavy focus on players they drafted in June 2025, from the lack of any spending this off-season, and now by the increasingly curious moves they’re making in spring training.

And, honestly, I don’t entirely get what the team is doing.

The strategy should be simple: if you have no aims to compete, play the kids.

Instead, the team has endeavored to fill the MLB roster with veteran retreads. Instead of seeing if our younger arms like Parker, Lord, or Alvarez can prove out, or to let Josiah Grey get back to being his opening day starter self, we’re going to give starts to innings eaters like Mikolas, Griffen, and Littell.

Instead of having top-prospects like Crews and Hassell getting MLB at-bats, we’re going to apparently give the likes of Christian Franklin and waiver-claim Joey Wiemer those opportunities. We’re still claiming random middle infielders off other team’s waiver wires, and are quickly putting together a roster of randoms instead of a roster of home-growns. They did five waiver claims in a week and a half, then turned around and DFA’d most of them for other moves, making us (i’m sure) super popular reputation-wise in the player base.

What is this front office doing??

Are they planning on letting all these 30-something 1yr FAs showcase as trade bait in a few months? Is that what all of this is?

Because, I’ll tell you, the team this front office is putting on the field at the expense of home grown talent that the fan base actually knows, after years of trading away all their stars, is going to literally repel the casual fan. Who is going to look at the probable pitchers and say to themselves, “Oh man, we gotta go see 37yr old Miles Mikolas pitch today!”

What exactly does Crews or Hassell have left to prove in AAA? Or Alvarez, or Grey, or Parker? Eder is now 27; he NEEDS to be in the majors. They just optioned Fernandez: he’s 30. If he can’t cut it at this point, then just release him.

I dunno. This entire spring has been one small hint after another that this was the trend, but Crews’ demotion sealed it. There’s very little exciting to this MLB team this year, except maybe to see if Cavalli’s spring dominance can continue, or to see if House can turn the corner. Otherwise … it’s seemingly going to be a long year.

Written by Todd Boss

March 23rd, 2026 at 8:15 am

Posted in Nats in General

So, Is that all we could get for MacKenzie Gore??

30 comments

It’s been rumored all off-season, and now a few weeks before Pitchers and Catchers report, our biggest trade asset MacKenzie Gore has been traded. Announced last night, the Nats moved Gore to Texas for a package of 5 prospects.

Here’s a quick look at those 5 prospects, with their new Nats system rank and other pertinent information:

shortstop Gavin Fien; 2025 1st rounder, Age 18. Our new #5 prospect (was Texas’ #2 prospect)
right-hander Alejandro Rosario; 2023 college 5th rounder, Age 24, AA last year, new #11 prospect
infielder Devin Fitz-Gerald: 2025 prep 5th rounder but over-slot bonus, age 20, new #12 prospect
outfielder Yeremy Cabrera: 2022 IFA, just 20, our new #17 prospect
first baseman/outfielder Abimelec Ortiz; 2021 NDFA, Age 3, on 40-man, hit AAA last year, new #24

First glance? I’m sorry, but is this all we could get? One 18yr old 1st rounder, two 20yr olds in low-A, a AA starter who missed all of 2025 AND just had TJ so he’s missing all of 2026 too, and a AAA utility guy? This is a major swing from a risk perspective, and the lack of additional higher-regarded prospects give me pause. The discovery (post publishing) that the 2nd best prospect is out for the entire 2026 season is even more demoralizing here.

I’m really disappointed with this return. We didn’t even get Texas’ best prospect in this deal. Maybe that’s me overvaluing Gore. On the one hand, Gore’s career numbers put him at a 98 ERA+. But at the same time, we’ve seen him be completely dominant for stretches. He’s valuable because he’s being paid a pittance for what he provides as a mid-rotation starter ($2.8M in first year Arb this year, $5.6M this year) and for 2 more years of control. He’s an innings eater who throws mid-90s from the left side; that’s worth a ton of the FA market and should have been worth more in trade.

When he didn’t go in the Winter Meetings, I thought the team should hold on to him until the Trade Deadline, when desperate teams who had lost starters to injury would be overpaying for mid-level starters. I was wrong; the new FO pulled the trigger on a deal they liked. I sense this was an underpay by Texas, but clearly the GM sees these younger guys and liked the deal.

An additional wrinkle: we’ve spoken before about the logjam of young shortstops projected to play in Fredericksburg in 2026 … well we just added two more guys who need playing time. We now add Fien and Fitz-Gerald to Willis, Feliz, Dickerson, and Mota, all of whom are likely projected to Low-A and who predominantly play SS.

What does this mean for the franchise? Insiders and those in the knew already knew this, but the signals have been strong that we’re on our way to bottoming out once again. My “casual Nats fan” pinged me last night with an immediate reaction to this trade, asking why we were getting rid of our best pitcher and I had to break it to him; we’re going to be bad for a while, so buckle up. This latter type of fan is the one who the Nats eventually will need to come back, to buy tickets, to bring the family for weekend games … but I sense a move like this, one which gets rid of one of the few players whose names they even know, is going to turn people off for a while.

I’m always excited to get more prospects into the system, as a prospect-heavy analysis site. Don’t get me wrong; can’t wait to do the spreadsheet work and try to noodle where I think these players will fit in my eventual top-100+ ranking that i’ll publish before the season starts. But I hate trading away assets and not getting enough in return, which I believe happened here.

What do you think? Am I over-valuing Gore? Did we get appropriate return here? Should we have waited til the Trade deadline 2026?

Written by Todd Boss

January 23rd, 2026 at 10:43 am

Posted in Majors Pitching,Nats in General,Prospects

Happy New Year 2026 … Let’s try this again

14 comments

Toboni has a young exec team; will it work? Photo via IG

Hello my fellow Nats fans. Happy New Year from all of us (i.e. “me”) at Nationals Arm Race. I posted this on 1/1/26, then the site immediately took a dump, but seems to be back now, so lets try this again.

Thanks for continuing to read what I have to write, to have awesome conversations in the comments, and to be fans of the sport and the team.

I wondered what would be a useful post for 1/1/26. I think i’ll ask some open ended questions and ask for predictions in the comments.

Topic 1: Will the Nats Executive Youth Movement work?

I have yet to write at all about the youth movement in the Nats front office because, well, It’s certainly worked in the past for other/better franchises than ours (Theo Epstein was 28 when he took over Boston in 2002, Jon Daniels the same age when he took over Texas in 2005, and both had great success), so I don’t really have anything to say there from a criticism or support perspective.

Now, perhaps the combination of all three of these key figures being so young is concerning.

Paul Toboni, 35, as President of Baseball Operations
Anirudh Kilambi, 31, as General Manager
Blake Butera, 33, as Manager (youngest in 50 years)

Toboni came from Boston, Kilambi came from Philly, and Butera came from Tampa. All three of those franchises are in far better places than we are, and each brings much needed experience to this team.

Toboni’s role in Boston? Amateur Scouting and Player Development
Kilambi’s role in Philadelphia? R&D, Data, Analytics, and Player analysis
Butera’s role in Tampa? Senior Director of Player Development and head of their Farm system

See a trend here? I do. So the question is this: What do you see this brain trust doing with the team going forward? And, do you think it will move the team in a positive direction?

Here’s my 2 cents: The Rizzo regime blew nearly a decade of drafts and left this team with the gaping hole of player development that it’s just starting to get out of. Unfortunately, he had to trade practically every major star we had in 2021 and 2022 to cover for these player development failures … and now those players are starting to push into Arbitration. Now we have a new approach heavy on data (the Nats were not exactly considered at the forefront of data usage in the league), heavy on development (where we’ve failed badly for a while), and heavy on amateur scouting (which Rizzo, despite his pedigree coming up as a scout in Arizona, grew out of in his later years).

I sense this group is going to start over, probably has pitched the ownership group a 5-year plan starting with this year’s IFA crop to be announced in a couple weeks, and then moving onto the 2026 draft, and in the meantime will trade most anything not nailed down for more prospects to help build from the bottom up. This also signals to me that the MLB product will get worse before it gets better. And it leads to my second topic:

Topic 2: Will Gore and Abrams be on the roster on Opening Day 2026?

Clearly the industry expects Gore to be moved this off-season, with his name atop most trade candidate analysis pieces. But … he didn’t move at the Winter Meetings when the buzz was hottest. The best time to get the most value out of a player is either:

At the Trade Deadline, when contending teams make irrational decisions in pursuit of playoffs
At the Winter Meetings, when everyone’s in the same building and you can play teams off each other.

Since he didn’t move at the Winter Meetings, I’m now thinking Gore sticks with us until next trade deadline and we roll the dice he stays healthy and improves the first half of next season.

Now, as for Abrams? He’s one of the worst fielding SS in the league but produces at a solid 106-107 wRC+ level the last two seasons. The SS free agent crop this off-season is pretty weak … but its not like the league can’t look up Fangraphs fielding stats themselves and see what the rest of us see. Nonetheless, His trade value is as a SS, and he needs to stick there until some rival executive swallows his analysis and says to himself, “ok we’ll deal with the defense to get the offense.” I’ve seen other blogs make the argument that Nasim Nunez should start at SS for us in 2026 and we should move Abrams to 2nd … The dumbest thing you could possibly do with a tradeable asset is to make him LESS valuable in trade by moving him to a less desirable position.

So, all that said, I’m guessing Abrams also sticks with us, plays out the first half, and we look to move him to a team that could use him at either SS or 2B and let THEM make the argument to him that its time to move off SS. I mean, if you’re Abrams and you’re looking at a 100-loss team that’s going to be this way for another couple years, and you get an offer to join a contender but you have to move to 2B … you’d have to be a fool not to jump.

Topic #3: Are we going to see more Starter Acquisitions for the 2026 Rotation?

At the end of the 2025 season in my 2026 rotation wrap-up/prediction post, I thought the 2026 rotation would look like this:

Gore, Grey, Cavalli, a Free Agent, and one from Alvarez/Irvin/Parker/Williams for the 5th.

Since then, we’ve made some moves. We signed a FA (Foster Griffen), we picked a Rule-5 Starter (Griff McGarry), and we’ve acquired a hard-throwing starter in trade with MLB experience (Luis Perales), all three of whom change this equation. I think if you laid out the Nats 40-man starter depth chart right now it’d look something like this:

Gore, Grey, Cavalli
Griffin locked in as the #4
Williams (as much as I hate to admit it) the early favorite for #5, if only to see if he gets some trade value in his walk year.
McGarry as Rule-5 is making the team, but seems likely to be in a SS/LR role. Maybe he beats out Williams for the 5th starter.
Alvarez proved he can pitch in the Majors and as a lefty gives the rotation/bullpen flexibility. Or, maybe he wins the 5th starter role and puts both Williams and McGarry in the pen.
Irvin, Parker, Lord: all seem better suited for the bullpen. All have options but it’d seem foolish to put any of them back in AAA.
Herz to the DL
Perales, Cornelio, Eder as the 1-2-3 in AAA. We just lost Lao to Japan apparently, though I’ve only seen that on social media posts and not officially in the transaction pages.

So, the salient question for the front office is this: Are you happy with this configuration, or are you making more moves? If they move Gore pre-season, that almost guarantees a Rule-5 pick and/or Alvarez is in the rotation to start the year, unless we want to roll the dice with more 5.75 ERA production from one of Irvin/Parker/Lord.

I sense this front office isn’t done making trades or signings yet.

Anyway, Happy New Year and hope to get your thoughts on these three topics to kick off January.

Written by Todd Boss

January 7th, 2026 at 9:21 am

Posted in Majors Pitching,NAR Admin,Nats in General

Happy New Year 2026!

Interesting Trade, Prospect for Prospect, Bennett for Perales

32 comments

The Nats new GM reached back out to his old team and made a trade you just don’t see that often; prospect for prospect, two minor leaguers (essentially) for each other, both of whom are at the cusp of MLB production.

Jake Bennett heads to Boston straight up for Luis Perales a 22yr old RHP starter who got a cup of coffee with Boston this year.

From a prospect ranking perspective, MLBpipeline had Bennett as our #11 and now has Perales as our new #5, so in theory our farm system improves marginally. In reality, whether it was Bennett or Perales in our AAA rotation to start 2026, both would be expected to matriculate up this year. Perales is only 22 as an international signee, and has more upside/more risk, while Bennett is considered more floor/more consistent.

Keith Law had some interesting analysis in the immediate wake of the trade, noting that Bennett (and the Nats pitching dev staff) had done little to improve upon his offerings in his time here (either in terms of velocity or adding breaking pitches), whereas Boston has had success in helping its arms improve. Something to think about; Boston must have seen something it thinks it can improve upon with Bennett, while Toboni rolls the dice on a higher upside arm that he’s familiar with.

Here’s what our rough SP depth chart looks like right now on the 40-man:

Likely opening day rotation: Gore, Grey, Cavalli, Alvarez/Irvin/Parker competition
Likely starters->bullpen: McGarry, Lord, Williams
To the DL: Herz
To AAA: Perales, Lao, Eder, Cornelio

That’s not a bad AAA rotation to start, adding to it Luckham, Shuman, and Ogasawara as 5th candidates

Anyway, odds are we’re not done seeing trades. Big question is whether he will move Gore now or try to leverage desperate teams at the 2026 trade deadline … and if he can convince other teams that Abrams is really a shortstop.

Written by Todd Boss

December 16th, 2025 at 11:15 am

Posted in Nats in General,Prospects

Quick update on improvements made to Nats Online Data Resources

12 comments

Hey there Readers

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.

Big Board

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc/edit?usp=sharing

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).

Draft Tracker

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY/edit?usp=sharing

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:

MLB: 5: Romero, Crowe, Tetreault, Cousins, Klobotis, Raquet
AAA: 3: Freeman, Dunlap, Johnston
AA: 2: Connell, Troop
High-A: 4
Low-A: 10
Short-A: 6
FCL: 2

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.

IFA Tracker

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ksPorXhEHhtkNAGqxrJWqUFkvioMgoWhBU50uaZstc8/edit?usp=sharing

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.

Nationals Prospects Ranks

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xs9fmb-dctE90hTS3bdozznETS-Oc3GsMuGzRo2faUc/edit?usp=sharing

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.

AAA: Cluff, Arruda, Solesky, Shuman, Cuevas
AA: Naranjo, Knowles, Santos, Vasquez, Atencio
High-A: De La Rosa, Colomenares, Otanez
Low-A: Rivero

Written by Todd Boss

October 7th, 2025 at 11:11 am

Posted in Nats in General,Prospects

Nats do surprisingly well at Trade Deadline

5 comments

Alex Call was probably the biggest surprise mover at the deadline. Photo via Federal Baseball.

The 2025 Nats trade deadline has come and gone, and I have to admit, I’m surprised at how “well” the team did in moving its assets. In five separate deals the team moved nearly every one of its expiring contracts or useful-but-spare parts pieces and netted a ton of actual prospect depth along the way.

Earlier this month I previewed what we had to offer teams, and I went over a rather pessimistic take on what I thought we’d get in return for players. As it turned out, of everyone discussed, the only three non-injured guys we didn’t manage to move were Salazar, Bell, and deJong (none really a surprise given their overall performance for the season), and then on top of that we managed to move an outfielder in Alex Call who, while we like him, was certainly spare parts given the massive amount of OF depth we have in the system (in no particular order, Wood, Crews, Young, Lile, Hassell, Pinckney all at AAA or higher).

Lets take a quick run through the moves and talk about the value of the prospects we got back, which now populate a big chunk of our top 30 on the MLBpipeline board. As the day progressed and as of right now, our Big Board is updated with all transactions, with all newly acquired players assigned to their new levels.

Executive Summary: we traded 6 guys off the active roster, got back 10 prospects, 6 of which now sit in our top 30 as per mlbpipeline’s rankings. As I list them below i’ll put their new spot in our top 30.

Trade #1: Amed Rosario traded to NYY for #24 RHP reliever Clayton Beeter, OF Browm Martinez. Beeter is a former 2nd rounder, setup type guy, 40-man roster already, and is in AAA now but may get called up since we suddenly have some bullpen spots open. Big arm, lots of Ks, lots of walks. Martinez is the proverbial lottery ticket, an 18yr old in DSL who we immediately put onto the 60-day DL upon acquisition.

Trade #2: Chafin & Garcia traded to LAA for LHP reliever Jake Eder, 1B Sam Brown. Neither Eder or Brown are top 30 prospects; Brown in AAA with some MLB time this year, while Brown is repeating AA this year. Still, not bad return for two guys we signed off the veteran/MLFA heap in May and July respectively.

Trade #3: Mike Soroka traded to CHC for #11 OF Christian Franklin, #13 SS Ronny Cruz. Franklin heads to AAA, is an undersized corner type (similar to Lile) and adds to our existing OF depth, kind of surprising acquisition given what we already have in that regard. Cruz seems to be the prize, a 3rd round prep kid drafted last year, given decent money and who has solid power grades despite being a SS.

Trade #4: Kyle Finnegan traded to Det for #23 RHP starter Josh Randall and RHP starter RJ Sales. Randall is the prize; a 3rd rounder starter who heads to High-A sinker/slider guy with a 4.18 ERA this year in Low-A and who had just been moved up to High-A (he was assigned to Wilmington for us). Sales was a 10th rounder last year who doesn’t have he same upside, though he has far better numbers in Low-A this year than Randall and reports to our Low-A directly.

Trade #5: Alex Call traded to LAD for RHP starter #10 Sean Paul Linan and RHP starter #12 Eriq Swan. Linan seems to be the prize here, a 20-yr old IFA with really good K numbers in High-A this year to go along with a 2.65ERA. They even called him up for 2 spot starts in AAA (he got shelled). But don’t sleep on former 4th rounder Swan, a strong arm type who’s relatively new to pitching but has effortless upper 90s velocity.

So, to summarize, here’s where these 10 guys are reporting:

AAA: OF Franklin, RHP reliever Beeter, LHP reliever Eder
AA: 1B Brown
High-A: three new SPs Randall, Swan, Linan
Low-A: new SP Sales
FCL: SS Cruz
DSL: OF Brown

Possible Minor League impacts:

AAA: Beeter and Eder are both 40-man guys and we’re suddenly down a bunch of players at the MLB level so they may get callups soon. With Call’s trade, Hassell likely gets called up so Franklin can go right into starting lineup in Rochester.

AA: Brown joins a team that just promoted 1B only Boissiere and who has 1B-only Naranjo on the roster as well; not too much playing time to split when you have three primary 1Bs. Naranjo may be odd-man out, either going back to High-A or getting released since he’s a MLFA with little investment.

High-A: Three new SPs, all of whom are decent prospects, will stress that rotation as it is made up right now, especially since the team just promoted both Tejada and Garcia. There’s just not enough innings to go around in Wilmington right now and something will have to give. Kent isn’t going anywhere, though he’s showing signs of fatigue. Tolman is kind of a swingman type but has great numbers. Sthele is a fan favorite but may be topped out and could move to the pen. They’ve already moved out Arias and Caceres. Should be interesting to see how this rotation shakes out.

Low-A: Also just added three new arms via promotion in Sullivan, Farias, and Feliz and now they have 8 starters for 5 spots. There’s not an obvious existing candidate to dump out of the rotation to make way necessarily.

FCL: well, we just assigned our $8.2M SS Willits to FCL; Cruz isn’t playing above him. We also have $2.5M SS Coy Jones there. Maybe Cruz and Jones become 2B and 3B and get SS time here and there.

DSL: Brown immediately to 60-day DL, a curious acquisition to get someone who’s hurt upon arrival.

Judgement: love the pouring in of arms. Six arms, some of whom immediately help in the bullpen, others who might stick as starters or who add to the roster of possible relievers. Why has our bullpen been so bad lately? Because we have not had the pipeline of starters-turned-relievers that we need from the last few drafts. Now we have a bunch more candidates for that.

All in all, a solid trade deadline haul.

Written by Todd Boss

August 1st, 2025 at 11:20 am

Posted in Nats in General,Prospects

Nationals Arm Race

Archive for the ‘Nats in General’ Category

Nats Opening Day History updated for 2026

Opening Day Starters Trivia for 2026

Nats 2026 Opening Day Roster Announced — Who are these guys?

Odd Roster Choices for Start of 2026 Season

So, Is that all we could get for MacKenzie Gore??

Happy New Year 2026 … Let’s try this again

Happy New Year 2026!

Interesting Trade, Prospect for Prospect, Bennett for Perales

Quick update on improvements made to Nats Online Data Resources

Nats do surprisingly well at Trade Deadline

Links I use Frequently

NatsArmRace Creations

z MLB Legal

Pages

Categories

Archives

Recent Comments