Nationals Arm Race

We had some pretty clear cut needs heading into the off-season. Starter depth, a power-hitting 1B/DH option, maybe a 3B, and some bullpen help. In order to fill these spots, the team has turned to some familiar faces.

The Nats have announced a couple of veteran player signings in the past couple of days, both with very recent ties:

• Josh Bell: 1yr, $6M
• Trevor Williams: 2yr, $14M.

Additionally we’ve acquired a couple more unhearalded players in minor moves:

• Traded for Lowe
• Signed Soroka 1yr $9M

So, what do these moves tell us? In no particular order:

Pitching prognosis with moves so far:

• With both Williams and Soroka signed, not only do the Nats not trust that Cavalli is ready to go to start 2025 … they think he may not becoming back for a while.
• They now have 7 healthy starters for 5 spots to open the season, and Herz in particular may have just lost his starter role. We’ll have a good old 5th starter competition all spring.
• No, I don’t see them doing a 6-man rotation.
• I’m guessing we go Gore, Williams, Irvin, Parker, Soroka as the rotation to open the season, with Herz in AAA and Cavalli either on the DL or in AAA himself.
• Yes, Soroka was in the bullpen last year; they didn’t spend $9M to have a middle reliever; he’s gonna be tested as a starter to see if he can reclaim his prior starting glory.
• No, I don’t believe they’ll put Williams in the bullpen; not on a 2yr deal and not after his all-star level performance to open last season. They’re going to see if he can repeat his performance of 2024. And if he can, he’ll be trade bait unless this team is in the Wild Card race in July. He should be the #2 starter of this squad behind Gore going opening day.

Bats prognosis with moves so far:

• Lowe for a reliever we got off the garbage heap is found money (Robert Garcia == waiver claim in August 2023 from Miami). Fantastic trade. I don’t care if Lowe isn’t a long term solution at 1B; we can replace Garcia easily enough (he had a negative bWAR in 2024).
• Bell clearly will be the primary DH, and since he’s a switch hitter he could slot in at 1B when the team faces a lefty and put a RH bat like Chapparo or Yepez in the DH slot for the day.
• Bell was a solid 3-win player for us a couple years ago but has now played for 5 teams in 3 years and i’m sure wouldn’t mind some stability. But, he also has to know exactly what he’s signed up for with a one year deal; a chance to shine first half and earn a trade to a contender.
• These two moves probably dump Chapparo or Yepez to AAA; neither should start at 3B (Tena for now) and there’s not enough bench bats to go around. Assuming we’re looking at Adams as the backup C (no options), Baker as one utility infielder (Nunez can go hit .200 in AAA), either Garrett or Call as the 4th OF, and then either Chapparo or Yepez as that 1B/DH bench bat, there’s just one bench spot left, and we havn’t talked about House winning the opening day 3B job and/or acquiring a veteran 3B.

Do these moves make us better in 2025?

• Williams alone should be a 6-win player if he pitches as he did last year. But that’s rare air; lets assume he regresses from his 2.03 ERA of last year but still gives us 5-win pace performance all year.
• Soroka would replace Corbin’s -0.9 bWAR season with something positive; even his 4.74 ERA season was positive on the bWAR stable, and if he falters we replace him with Herz (who put up a near-1 win season in his 19 starts).
• So that’s a swing of at least 4 full wins just in the rotation, before considering expected incremental improvements from guys like Gore and Irvin, who were improving all year.
• Meanwhile on the bat side; we got negative bWAR out of both 1B and 3B, two of your most important bats on the field. We should get something positive out of what we have now for 3B, and we’re clearly improving 1B so that’s a 2-3 win swing right there as well.
• This is how you go from 71 wins to 77 wins without much fanfare. Then you count full seasons and growth from Wood and Crews and suddenly you’re a .500 team.

Lastly…

• As much as I don’t want to admit it, the signings of Bell, Williams, Soroka, the acquisition of Lowe … these are not “we’re competing in 2025” moves. These are “i’m acquiring flippable assets for the 2025 trade deadline” moves once again. There does not seem to be a 9-figure FA signing in the cards to shake things up, because .. well why would we at this point? There’s no reason to spend money unless you can see the target in sight. That’s what we learned in 2011, the last time Rizzo was architecting a dynasty.

Here’s my “who i’d vote for” on the 2025 BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot.

I’ve fallen out of the habit of doing this post. I did a quick search and the last time I did this was three years ago for the 2022 ballot. I guess, once the PED guys fell off the ballot, it wasn’t nearly as interesting/argumentative. We still have a couple PED guys left, but the massive backlog on the ballot is now gone.

Here’s my reasoning, player by player, on the 2025 ballot.

Methodology/thought process: While I like using WAR and JAWS here, I also like pointing out the “fame” factor. The Hall of Fame is missing players who were better than others b/c they weren’t nearly as famous for one reason or an other, and that’s just the way it is. I only touch on it a couple times here, but it matters.

New Candidates first.

• Ichiro Suzuki: 100% yes. Had 3,000 hits despite not debuting in the MLB until his age 27 season, and had 1200 more hits in Japan. Has a credible argument for being the best pure hitter in the history of the game. 10 straight ASGs in his first 10 years here, a MVP and a ROY in his debut season. Should be unanimous.
• CC Sabathia: Yes. 250 wins (the “new 300”) and 3,000 career strikeouts. He was in the top five Cy Young voting for years in his prime. Absolutely a star, a workhorse, and zero PED accusations. He may struggle to get to 75% b/c his peripherals aren’t awesome (3.74 career ERA, 116 ERA+) but he’ll get in eventually.
• Dustin Pedroia: No. he’s got a credible argument, having better career stats than a slew of 2B who were enshrined by various veteran’s committees. For me, not enough of a sustained peak; he had a ROY and MVP in back to back seasons then kind of disappeared. Basically out of the game by 33, so not enough longevity.
• Ian Kinsler: No. almost identical WAR figures to Pedroia but his overall stats aren’t anywhere close. He’s off by 30 points in BA, was just a shade above average in OPS+, and the closest he ever got to an MVP award was an 11th place finish in 2011. Just not good enough.
• Felix Hernandez: No. He’s a crazy case: from the age of 23 to 29 he was one of the best 2-3 arms in the sport. Won a Cy Young, had two 2nd places and a 4th place, threw a perfect game, had a couple of 170 ERA+ seasons. Then … he struggled for a few years, opted out the Covid year, and never came back. His elbow just gave up on him. He was throwing mid-80s in 2021 when he gave up. Like Johan Santana and Bret Saberhagen and Dave Stieb before him, he was great for a while, but not good for enough time.
• Troy Tulowitzki: no. A guy who we thought might revolutionize the position of SS, he just couldn’t stay healthy. He suffered a laundry list of injuries, mostly to his lower half, which eventually drove him from the game at age 34. He never really accumulated enough accolades to even be consiered here.
• No for the rest of the marginal candidates, Ben Zobrist, Curtis Granderson, Hanley Ramirez, Russell Martin, Adam Jones, Brian McCann, Carlos Gonzalez, and the sole player here with Nats ties: Fernando Rodney (he played his last year with us in 2019 and is forever on our “Nats to Oblivion” post).

Returning Candidates:

• Billy Wagner: No. I know the argument. If so-and-so mediocre closer gets in (Lee Smith, Trevor Hoffman), then so should Wagner b/c his numbers were so dominant. Here’s a simple question for my readers, since Wagner pitched in our division for nearly a decade; did you come to the ballpark to see Wagner come into a 3-run game in the 9th to blow away three mediocre hitters? No? I didn’t think so. He was a closer at a time when there were 10 closers with dominant numbers. I won’t get all mad if he makes it to the Hall, since it’ll be his last year and he only missed by a handful of votes last year, but to me he’s a one-trick pony who was never famous enough to be in the Hall.
• Andruw Jones: Yes. For a decade, he was the next coming of Willie Mays: hit for power, hit for average, amazing defender. Then he fell off of a cliff performance wise, and struggled for 5 years before hanging ’em up at 35. Despite this, he still has 62 career bWAR and ranks 11th all time for CFs in the history of the sport. I’m a yes.
• Carlos Beltran: Yes. He was so good for so long. Never quite got to benchmark hitter thresholds (he had 434 homers, 2725 hits) but had a career 119 OPS+ and he was a true center fielder with 70 career bWAR. Every CF with more career WAR than him is enshrined, and a slew below him are on the way.
• Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez: Yes. you’re either vehemently anti-PED guys and are automatic “No” votes on players like this, or you’re like me and believe the issue just isn’t that simple. If you disagree with me, I get it. This isn’t the hill I’m necessarily willing to die on, but I do believe the Hall is now missing 10 guys who really should be there. In this case, A-Rod and Manny were morons and cheated later in their careers; they were still two of the best players to ever play and the whole point of the Hall of Fame is to bring awareness to the best who ever played, warts and all.
• Chase Utley: No. He’s a better candidate than either Pedroia or Kinsler, but he never had any post-season accolades and he played the game like such an a-hole, purposely trying to injure players, that I’d imagine he’ll struggle to get votes from many writers who remember what he did to players. MLB literally added a rule in the wake of an Utley play (where he broke Ruben Tejada’s leg), and he had at least two other incidents in his career that made it really hard to root for the guy, even if he was on your team.
• No to the rest: Vizquel, Abreu, Rollins, Pettitte, Buehrle, K-Rod, Torii Hunter, David Wright. A couple of these guys i’m shocked they’re still on the ballot.

So my fake ballot would have 6 names on it: Suzuki, Sabathia, Jones, Beltran, Rodriguez, and Ramirez. A long way from the days when we had to drop players to get to the 10-man limit.

I suppose it is only fitting that, one year after we “won” the 2024 draft lottery (but were ineligible because of being classified a “big market team” despite the fact that we get the exact same amount of RSN revenue as the Baltimore Orioles by rule, and they’re considered a “small market team” that literally gets Competitive Balance picks every year … but I digress), the Nats “won” the 2025 Draft Lottery and will pick 1st overall in the 2025 draft. We had the 4th best chance (around 10% overall) of getting picked, and we got lucky for the 2nd year in a row.

We’ll now have the 3rd #1 overall pick in the history of the franchise. The first two worked out pretty well … so expectations are pretty high. Based on the current state of the qualifying offer and other comp picks, the Nats will pick 1st overall, then have the 49th pick overall in the 2nd round, the 87th overall pick in the third round, and then roughly every 30 picks there on out (some teams are already forfeiting 5th rounders with QO-assigned FA signings, so we won’t know the exact draft order for the top 5 rounds for a while).

Bonus pools will be announced later, but by virtue of having #1 overall, we’ll have a massive pool to work with. The first pick alone will probably be worth close to $11M (last year’s #1 overall draft slot was worth $10.5m), which is important because the #1 overall pick will not sign for anywhere close to that figure (Travis Bazzana, last year’s 1-1 pick, signed for $8.95M, which gave Cleveland an extra $1.5M to work with), which means the Nats may have some major flexibility to sign another Luke Dickerson-type in the upper rounds and essentially get an additional 1st-round quality guy.

So, all that said, who is in the mix right now for 1-1 overall in 2025? Here’s a few names that have been in play since I started tracking the 2025 draft class. Remember, lots can change in a draft class once the baseball season starts next spring, but for now, there’s two HS guys and a handful of college guys at the top of most draft boards.

Prep guys:

• Ethan Holliday, SS, Stillwater HS, Oklahoma. The brother of 2022 1-1 overall pick Jackson Holliday, son of Matt Holliday. Ok State commit. Consensus 1-1 pick as of Dec 2024 pre 2025 season on several draft boards.
• Seth Hernandez, RHP, Elite Charter Academy HS, Temecula, Calif. Vanderbilt commit. 90-93, reaching 95 as HS sophomore. Top prep arm on board, projecting top 10 of 1st round, improving late 2024.

College guys:

• Jace Laviolette, RF TAMU. D1 Fresh AA. 20/20 season as a freshman. Risen to be 2025 1-1 candidate with 29-HR sophomore season.
• Jamie Arnold, LHP Starter from Florida State. 11-3, 2.98 ERA as sophomore in ACC.
• Tyler Bremner, RHP UC Santa Barbara. blew up in 2024, going 11-1 with 2.54 ERA and 104/21 K/BB in 88 IP. Top RHP on board.
• Cam Cannarella, SS/CF Clemson. D1 fresh AA, ACC Fresh of the year. slashed .388/.462/.560, Team Usa. Took a small step back sophomore year, went from 24SBs to zero (why?) but power stayed put.
• Caden Bodine, C, Coastal Carolina. slashed .367/.456/.609 with 17 homers, Sun Belt Fresh of year, then continued in Cape with Wood to vault to top 10 status. Numbers fell across the board soph season, dinging prospect status.

One last comment. I’ve already seen some comments about Laviolette in particular, which are along the lines of, “well we already have plenty of outfielders, we should draft for need.” YOU DO NOT DRAFT FOR NEED IN BASEBALL. This isn’t the NBA, where you draft someone to immediately go into the 5-man starting lineup and you have to consider who you have in your current point guard position and how long they’re signed for; this is baseball, where players move around positions, where they may look great now but hit a plateau at AA or AAA, or get hurt and miss two seasons (ahem Cavalli). You draft the Best Player Available and if/when that player starts to push an existing veteran, so be it; you cross that bridge when you get there.

Right now, on December 11th, 2024, the #1 pick projection is absolutely Ethan Holliday. His brother destroyed the minor leagues, was the #1 prospect in baseball for most of 2024 and debuted as a 20yr old. Ethan is not his brother: he’s 4-inches taller and projects more like a corner bat/corner outfielder like his father versus a 6-0″ agile defender like his brother. If you told me Ethan would have his dad’s career right now, I’d take it (44 bWAR, 300homers, career .300 hitter with power). Sign me up.

It’s great to dream on a player … but you just never know what can happen in a spring baseball season. The #1 overall pick we get may be someone we’ve never heard of. Paul Skenes went from a decent Air Force hurler in a nothing conference to a guy putting up circus strikeout numbers at LSU in a year, to being the All Star Game starter and nearly winning the Cy Young in his rookie season … so we’ll see what happens as the spring season unfolds.

All that said, this is a great event for the franchise and could absolutely help lead the team back to a decade of prosperity.

Some random thoughts today on the Juan Soto deal.

15 years, $765million.

Just putting that out there. $51M/year AAV. If a WAR on the FA market is worth $9M (that’s the going rate from a few years back, i’ll bet its more now), then Soto will have to put up about 80 WAR in the next 15 years to “earn” this contract. Or maybe you can’t think about this contract in those terms, because he’ll sell a million jerseys in the next decade, and he’ll be the cornerstone of a franchise that should be able to buy its way to the playoffs each year. Or, perhaps in about 12 years time when Soto has around 700 career homers … the media blitz alone will be worth the money (he just finished his age 25 season and already has 200 homers, and he averages 35/year … do some quick math and factor in that he’s not even in peak slugging years yet and look out).

Honestly, i’m surprised he went with the Mets. He was such a perfect fit in the Bronx. Right attitude, perfect field, all the history, the pipeline of prospects in the DR, etc. But you don’t hire Scott Boras to take the second best offer (reportedly 16yrs, $760M).

I know we’ve made comments about how the Nats 2025 payroll could have absorbed all these contracts and still have room to spare. I think i’m more irritated they let a core of players go that could have carried the team into the next rebuild; Turner ($27M/year), Harper ($26M/year), Schwarber ($20M/year), basically the Phillies 1-2-3 hitters, all Ex nats. But, you take the good with the bad. We gambled on Strasburg and lost, but cut bait on Rendon and won. Nobody has a crystal ball. Was letting Harper go the right move? We offered Soto $440m, he said no, so we traded him for a cache of players that are (or are projecting to be) crucial to us being relevant again (MacKenzie Gore, Robert Hassell III, C.J. Abrams, James Wood, Jarlin Susana). Was that a good trade? Absolutely. Should this team have committed $51M/year to Soto? Hard to say, given the fact that we were competing against two teams that print money (NYY and LAD) and another team owned by a profligate hedge fund billionaire who could give a sh*t about the luxury Tax.

Draft lottery tomorrow; we project to pick 4th, could move up, will pick no worse than 10th I believe. There’s some decent names in the top 10 projecting already; once we know where we’re picking i’ll throw up a 2025 draft proffer to show what’s likely to be in the mix at our slot.