Just a quick PSA; Mark Zuckerman, who’s covered the Nats since Day 1 via several different outlets, is back out on his own after MASN cut him loose last month.
He’s now trying the same thing this year that he did in 2009; a subscriber-based model for his coverage. He’s fired back up the old natsjournal.com site, with a substack affiliation, and he’s heading to Palm Beach to cover spring training.
Here’s his organizational post. In the wake of MASN cutting loose its beat reporters and now the Washington Post gutting/eliminating its sports department … there’s precious little Nats coverage in the industry.
I have no affiliation with Zuckerman, but I have always liked his stuff. I just subscribed to his feed to help support him, and I’d encourage you to do the same. I think the loss of Zuckerman would be a huge blow to Nats journalism and hope he can continue. I hope you consider doing the same.
As far as major pundits go: we’ve now gotten (links open to my analysis here if done) Keith Law, Baseball America, Prospects1500, Prospects361 (just a top 10 back in November), Baseball Prospectus (paywall), and ProspectsLive (mostly paywall protected) released. Still waiting for MLBpipeline, hopefully more than just a top 10 from ESPN/McDaniel, and the Fangraphs guys (who wait til June usually). Once we get the MLB and larger ESPN links, I’ll re-release my own rankings, which I put out a draft of at the end of 2025.
Law is known to be a bit contrarian in his farm system and prospect rankings; so far his system rankings are showing at least 4-5 outliers as compared to the rest of the field (including his ranking the Nats 6th overall, when most other pundits so far have us middle of the road in the 15-16 range). I think these outliers result in his methodology, which has him “start over” on prospects every year and he tries not to let previous years color his evaluations. I suspect this leads him to over- and under- evaluation of players who had one-off seasons one way or the other. We’ll see how that plays out during the analysis.
So, with that in mind, here’s his top 20 for the Nats.
Current Rank
First Name
Last Name
Position
1
Eli
Willits
SS
2
Gavin
Fein
SS
3
Seaver
King
SS
4
Travis
Sykora
RHP (Starter)
5
Harry
Ford
C
6
Jarlin
Susana
RHP (Starter)
7
Luke
Dickerson
SS/CF
8
Sam
Peterson
OF (CF)
9
Luis
Perales
RHP (Starter)
10
Alex
Clemmey
LHP (Starter)
11
Landon
Harmon
RHP (Starter)
12
Devin
Fitz-Gerald
SS
13
Ethan
Petry
1B/OF (Corner)
14
Sir Jamison
Jones
C
15
Yoel
Tejeda Jr.
RHP (Starter)
16
Abimelec
Ortiz
1B/OF (Corner)
17
Coy
James
SS
18
Yeremy
Cabrera
OF (corner)
19
Sean Paul
Linan
RHP (Starter)
20
Caleb
Lomavita
C
21
Kevin
Bazzell
C
22
Miguel
Sime Jr.
RHP (Starter)
23
Alejandro
Rosario
RHP
24
Christian
Franklin
OF (CF)
Here’s some thoughts going top to bottom.
He may be contrarian, but he’s not THAT contrarian, keeping Willits at #1.
Fien comes in at #2, in a bit of a surprise. He called Fien “the best HS hitter in the 2025 draft” and has high hopes. So do we, Keith, so do we. The more I look at the Gore trade, the more it looks like Gore for Fien plus a bunch of lottery tickets.
King all the way at #3. Easily the high mark for King this cycle. Law had King #2 this time last year, so he’s always liked him. He mentioned the “conflicting advice” King got last year as the reason behind his hitting troubles, something we’ve heard from multiple sources and something that Law attributes to several inexplicable hitting performances for King, Bazzell, and Dickerson last year. He was very bullish on King’s AFL performance, and also reminds us just how good he is defensively.
Sykora, Ford, Susana come in 4-5-6 whereas most of the shops we’ve seen have them ranked 2-3-4. Fair enough. Law has never been a fan of “100mph guy who walks 4 per nine” and that describes Susana (and Perales) to a T.
Peterson at #8, another high mark for the prospect. If we can turn an 8th rounder into a MLB regular, that’s a huge farm system win.
Something else Law doesn’t like is weird pitching mechanics, which explains why Clemmey is down at #10 when he’s mostly in the 5-6 range elsewhere.
He has 100mph capable Landon Harmon at #11, which is amazing considering where he lands on every other ranking right now (11-11-13-9-10-11-7-10-10-10-11-6-10-13 since drafted). It’s almost like the entire industry says, “Ok … prep RHP who throws 100mph at age 18 … got a huge bonus … he could be Justin Verlander or he could be … um… one of 1000 prep RHPs who never get out of low-A. Lets rank him #10.” Guess where I ranked him last Fall? #10! Where am I gonna rank him in a couple weeks? #10! Ok, Maybe.
He’s got Fitz-Gerald a bit lower than others, probably b/c he’s a bit undersized and has 2B ceiling all over him.
He’s super high on Sir Jamison Jones at #14, kind of a forgotten prep draftee from 2024 who took a bit more than the $150k min to sign surprisingly. Hey, if Law’s right here, all the better.
Also super high on Tejeda, kind of a RHP slinger who couldn’t get into the weekend rotation at Florida State but who pitched a-OK in low A for us.
I like that he recognizes the MLB playing potential for Abimelec Ortiz, who BA didn’t even have in their top 30. This guy could be in our MLB opening day lineup at 1B.
He had interesting comments on both Linan and Swan, the two arms we got for Alex Call out of the Dodgers’ stacked farm system. He still ranks Linan #19 but lists his ceiling as a “trick-pitch reliever.” Not promising. He describes Swan as having a “golden arm who can’t throw strikes or miss bats,” another indictment.
The list is bottomed up by Lomavita, who is #20 here but mostly in the upper teens elsewhere. Not a flattering look at his receiving.
He lists a few Honorable mentions that i’ve ranked “21-24: Bazzell, Sime, Rosario, and Franklin.
Who’s he missing?
The highest likely player he doesn’t rank that others routinely have in their top 20s is Angel Feliz. Could be b/c Law didn’t spend a ton of time in the FCL and wasn’t impressed with his 2 months in Low-A.
He seems almost unfairly down on Yohandy Morales … who he says has too much swing and miss as a 23-yr old in AAA. Yeah, a 23-yr old in AAA. Not a 26-yr old in AAA. Lots of 2023 draftees are still in A ball, not starting in AAA a full season. Should be higher.
Perhaps that’s also why Andrew Pinckney is nowhere to be found; anything you can say about Morales you can probably say about Pinckney right now too.
Not too many others that he left out: Jackson Kent maybe in the edges of his top 20. No Phillip Glasser, he with the NRI now for 2026 spring training. No recognition of Cornelio’s 2025 season. But we’re now nitpicking, because its likely most of these guys would be in his 21-30 range.
This might be the last time you ever see the MASN2 logo.
For most of this century, Regional Sports Networks (or, “RSN” as used throughout) became a massive revenue generator for MLB teams, as they recognized that they could fetch tens of millions of dollars (or more) from their local cable providers to show games in their home market.
However, the last few years have seen a massive acceleration of “cord cutting,” as a new generation of TV consumers has eschewed conventional cable packages in favor of streaming options, thanks to the rise of smart TVs, fast internet, the reliability of tools like Roku, etc. This isn’t a groundbreaking statement (duh Captain Obvious), just putting it there to set the stage for what comes next.
This almost immediately led to some of the weaker RSN markets encountering financial difficulties, which in 2023 started to lead to major changes in the marketplace. And, in the last few weeks, we’ve seen an acceleration of these actions that now have nearly half the league without RSN deals. Here’s some of the salient inflection points over the past 3 years:
Diamond Sports Group: was the first domino to fall in 2023, declaring Chapter 11 and failing to pay multiple teams its RSN fees, leading them to sever ties and have MLB pick them up. This included San Diego, Arizona at first in 2023, then Colorado, Cleveland, and Minnesota in 2024.
In Late 2025, Seattle decided to exit the RSN market (they owned their own RSN) and joined up with MLB. That made them the 6th team to join MLB’s umbrella. As we will see, this turned out to be kind of a shocking issue in that Seattle was a 9-figure market AND owned the RSN, but they had what most call a pretty poorly-negotiated contract locally.
Main Street Sports: the Diamond group emerged from bankruptcy in early 2025, rebranded, and tried to continue its operations, then partnered with FanDuel Sports Network. However, in early 2026, they missed payments to a slew of teams, who all bailed and went to MLB. This included: Cincinnati, Kansas City, Miami, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Tampa. Now this makes for 13 teams in the MLB network.
FanDuel Sports also had rights to Atlanta, Los Angeles Angels, and Detroit last year; they remain up in the air for 2026 as of this writing and could very well all join MLB as well, making it possibly 16 of the 30 teams for 2026.
Interestingly, Texas Rangers were also embroiled in the Diamond Sports Group issue, but launched their own RSN in 2025 and are there for the time being.
(A quick Tangent: A side effect of the MASN termination, by the way, is bittersweet: Mark Zuckerman was let go. Here’s his MASN farewell post, This is not the first time he’s had to find new work, having been axed by the Washington Times in 2009 when they ended all their sports operations, then depending on donations and individual contributions to self-finance his 2010 spring training coverage. He initially covered the team at a Blogspot site, then fired up NatsInsider.com for a bit before landing at Comcast Sports Net for a few years, getting axed there and joining MASN for the last decade. He’s covered the Nats since Day 1 and I certainly hope he picks up with a media outlet that continues to allow him to cover the team, whether its MLB.tv, or as MLB’s beat reporter covering the team, or perhaps whatever local cable shop ends up buying the MLB.tv Nats stream (Monument?). Nonetheless, He’s too valuable a resource in the community to have this be it.)
I think these links vastly under report the Dodgers’ actual revenues: they’re on an 25 year, $8.35B deal that averages $334M/year. Not sure why its only reported as $196M/year; maybe that’s after the 48% share?
Same to a certain extent with especially the Yankees and Boston; there’s just no way Boston is “only” pulling $97M from NESN. They own 80% of the network and it had $574M in revenues last year.
The two points above highlight the utter cynicism of MLB teams, at the same time, crying poor but then refusing to open their books. There’s only one “real” publicly traded team (Atlanta) and their finances are just fine: more than $600M in revenue last year with a payroll of $261M.
That being said …
Teams that own their own RSNs by and large are quite healthy, especially the Dodgers. The Dodgers have been taking every dollar of that massive amount of RSN revenue per year and throwing it at payroll, to the point of ridiculousness. Same for the Yankees and Mets famously. I’m not sure I really trust the revenue figures that these self-owned RSNs advertise (especially the $88M that the Mets supposedly get or the amount that the Cubs are pulling).
I also have no idea how much Toronto gets, but I suspect its a massive figure as the sole Canadian team controlled by the group that has a monopoly of TV in that country.
These healthy RSN revenue teams of course, also mostly benefit from being in the largest markets. NY, Chicago, LA, Philly. It remains to be seen what happens with Texas (in the 5th largest market) trying to make it a go with its own RSN.
However, the salient observation from above is easy to see: the smallest 10 teams in terms of historical RSN revenue have ALL seen their deals collapse in the last two years. They’re all now MLB.tv owned, joined by a smattering of slightly larger market teams. The only top-half market size team now in the MLB mix is Seattle, who interestingly decided to give up their own RSN because of some restrictive contracts with the local cable provider w/r/t local streaming options.
Tangent: DC is the 6th biggest DMA market, but was paid at the 17th highest rated team. I mean, I get it, these other markets have had decades to establish a fan and TV base for their teams … but this is one more illustration of how much the MASN deal screwed this franchise for decades.
So, what’s next? Well, first, we need to see what all these MLB.tv deals are going to pay. Something tells me that all these teams are going to take a massive haircut on the per-year revenue figures they were getting, even from failing RSNs. Do we really think the Nationals are gonna get $65M in shared fees and drip-drip streaming packages? Does anyone believe Seattle’s getting 9 figures? I don’t.
Next, we have the commissioner throwing a pretty major shot across the bow of the owners he supposedly represents by being on record saying he wants the broadcast rights for all 30 teams by 2028. But, what’s the incentive for these big market teams to do this? LA is in a deal that gives them an increasingly large amount of money until 2038. The Yankees are committed to their deal well into the 2030s. Toronto’s RSN has a monopoly in a country of 40M people; that’s twice the size of the NYC MSA. These wealthy teams aren’t just going to give up hundreds of millions of dollars so that Kansas City and Milwaukee can get more money. Oh, not for nothing, the 28th ranked media market out of the 30 teams? Frigging San Diego, who’s been running $200M payrolls for years … so something doesn’t add up when you have Miami and Minnesota and Cleveland crying poor.
Don’t get me wrong; I think in an ideal world where MLB could ‘start over” they’d nationalize TV deals, just as NFL/NBA/NHL have done. In a heartbeat. If MLB had what the NFL has, there’s be such a different competitive landscape. You can plunk a team in Green Bay or Podunk, Iowa and with a level playing field of TV revenue everyone can be competitive. But, I also recognize the current state of NY/LA/Chi markets and can’t quite come to terms with taking hundreds of millions of dollars out of the pockets of some teams so as to hand it to the (multi-millionaire) owners of smaller market teams, many of whom literally havn’t “tried” to win in years.
The last time we had a really significant work stoppage was in 1994, and a major reason behind that strike was internal battles between big and small market owners related to TV revenue sharing. They eventually agreed to partial revenue sharing, which still exists today (each team puts 48% of its RSN money into a big pot and re-distributes it equally), which but there’s been significant grumbling when the $110M or so of shared revenue gets handed to teams like Miami ($72M payroll in 2025) or Cleveland ($76M payroll) or even to Washington ($91M payroll last year) and they don’t even spend it all.
Now, in 2026 with LA making a mockery of the luxury tax cap with a projected $403M 40-man 2026 salary, fully $159M over the tax threshold and a slew of small-market owners losing their minds … something tells me we’re to going to see a massive issue this coming off-season. You have the commissioner running around telling players they “need” a salary cap (and guys like Bryce Harper telling him to get the f*ck out of their clubhouse), so the MLBPA is already girded for a massive salary cap fight … but Manfred also has to get his owners in alignment to be able to negotiate a common stance.
It’s “collective bargaining,” not “collective demanding,” and if the Owners want a hard cap, they’re going to have to “give up” something the players want in return … the question is, are they willing to give up enough to satisfy the players union? And, what could that possibly be? We alluded to it in the last column with the Skubal arbitration issue: would owners give up arbitration altogether, or let players go after 4 years to free agency, in return for a salary cap? Maybe. Would they agree to a salary floor to go along with the cap? That kind of has to be in there else we’re right in the same boat we are now.
And, all of this happening the year when half the teams in the league potentially face a franchise-altering loss of RSN money?
Tarik Skubal faces a possible arbitration hearing after two straight Cy Youngs. Photo via mlb.com
You can make a pretty simple argument that, in the collective, MLB players in the sport are underpaid every year by hundreds of millions of dollars. The three other major sports in the USA all have union-league agreements that generally split revenues between the players and owners 50/50 or close to it. In fy2024, here’s what MLB’s macro financial situation looked like:
MLB 2025 revenues: Not reported yet, but estimating a 9% increase over 2024’s $12.1B (call it $13.2)
Assuming 2025’s revenues come in at the $13.2B level, players are getting just 45% of revenues, which is somewhere in the range of a $660M payroll gap to the 50% line. And this $500-$600M delta has been the case for years, for more than a decade frankly.
Why does MLB have such a massive payroll discrepancy? Well, a lot of it is due to the arbitration system. Teams have undergone the gradual replacement of near-replacement level mid-30s free agents with near-replacement level pre-arb players for years, for obvious reasons, while benefitting from (sometimes drastically) underpaid pre-arb and arbitration-age players. We have had some pretty famous examples in the past:
Mike Trout’s first three full-seasons in 2012-14 produced a Rookie of the Year, an MVP, two MVP runner-ups that probably would have all been actual 1st place votes if his team was competitive, three All Star appearances, 3 Silver sluggers … and total bWAR of 27.1. Total pay for those three years? A shade under $2M. Total. After a 10-win rookie season, the Angels increased his pay by the grand total of $27,500. For that $2M in payroll, Trout provided something in the range of $200-$240M in WAR value (at $8-$9M/war estimate frequently used).
Yet, now that Trout has signed a massive extension and has struggled with injuries, many call it an albatross of a contract and one the Angels never should have signed. They got allll that value for nearly nothing a decade ago, and now are on the hook for hundreds of millions as he plays out the string.
The message is pretty clear: the sport drastically underpays its younger stars, and then teams continue to fight to underpay them, and only the lucky ones can get a long-term deal deep into their 30s to “make up” for all that time being underpaid.
Enter 2-time defending Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, who couldn’t come to an agreement on 2026 salary in his last arb year prior to the deadline, and now has filed along with the team. He’s entering his last arbitration year coming off of his second straight dominant season, and has filed for $32M in salary. Meanwhile, Detroit has filed at $19M, a laughably low figure for the player based on his accomplishments in the last two years and what he’d command on the open market, but what they filed nonetheless. In case you weren’t sure just how sh*tty teams behave in this process, Detroit actually offered Skubal $19.8M as a salary figure… then took it back and filed at a figure $800k lower.
Skubal’s salary in arbitration has gone from pre-arb figures to $2.65M in 2024, to $10.15M last year. Both of those figures were pre-hearing figures, settled upon by the teams. Skubal has filed a figure that would make him the highest ever pay determined by this system. but one that seems supported based on the current market conditions.
In theory, players should be getting roughly 40%, 60%, and 80% of their fair market value in their three arb years; one has to think Skubal would get a contract with a starting AAV much better than the Cole/Snell/deGrom range (all $36-$37M/year), and perhaps closer to the Scherzer/Verlander AAV range (both got $43M in their 2022-24 range contracts). 80% of $40M is exactly $32M, or exactly what Skubal filed for. I’m not entirely sure what Detroit’s arb team would argue for, if this went to a hearing … what possible criticism could you offer a two-time defending Cy Young champ? Odds are the two sides end up meeting in the middle somewhere, unless Skubal decides he wants to set a new precedent.
Here’s the larger issue that this case illustrates pretty clearly. Baseball has a major problem with paying for player value at the time that value is delivered. Skubal should be the highest paid pitcher in the league, right now, no argument. There’s no two ways about it. Trout should have been getting immediately paid at the top of the sport’s pay cycle after his first three seasons, and he shouldn’t be getting $35M/year in his decline years. But, because Trout was screwed for so long … the fact that he’s finally getting paid seems completely fair. This is a problem across the sport, where players are paid at pre-arb salaries for 3 years that are literally “assigned” by the teams, then kept artificially low for years more. Most players are between 29-31 before they finally hit the FA market … and now on the downside of their careers.
How do you fix this? I’m not entirely sure. You need a system that gets players appropriate pay earlier in their careers, but doesn’t penalize them heavily if they get hurt. You want to give some security to players, but also to the teams. So, you’d have to be able to support all these questions:
If you win the MVP as a rookie, do you jump from $750k/year to $40M/year? No, of course not.
If you are earning $20M this year and tear your ACL on opening day, do you earn the MLB minimum the next year since you provided no value? No, that’s not feasible either.
Should you be forced into three years of team-assigned payroll, this following sometimes 4-5 years of even lower team assigned payroll while in the minors? No, I think that’s clearly too long.
Is the arb system too long? Do you eliminate it and make everyone a FA after 3 years? Well, no that’s probably too short for to be fair to teams.
How about a restricted FA system like the NBA uses, where there’s a period where you can find other deals and your existing team can match them?
I dunno. I’m not sure what solution is on an individual player basis.
As for Skubal, something tells me they’ll settle pre-deadline, something in the $28M/year range. There’s no way Detroit wants to go to a hearing and criticize their best player to try to argue for a blatantly under-market deal. But, you never know. Teams have done weirder things in the past, especially when it comes to Boras-represented clients.
Highest Arbitration salary ever awarded (previous holder: Juan Soto $31M)
Highest Pitcher Arbitration salary (previous holder: David Price $19.75M
Highest year over year Arbitration raise of $22M (prevoius holder, Jacob deGrom $9.6M raise)
Interesting nugget in the story, quoting: “Scott Boras broke such precedent by filing at $32 million, citing a rarely-used clause in the CBA and arguing players with five years of service time can compare their contracts to any player in the game, not only contracts decided via arbitration. Skubal was thus able to invoke comparisons to the likes of Zack Wheeler, who earns $42 million annually via a contract extension he signed with the Philadelphia Phillies.”
If Detroit knew this was going to happen, i’m kind of surprised they didn’t push for a pre-hearing settlement. Because, there’s literally no argument against $32M/year when you’re comparing it to Wheeler’s $42M/year. Anyway. Maybe this is an impetus to drastically alter arbitration going forward in the next CBA. We’ll see.
