Here’s a complete history of my predicted Rule-5 additions (with links to each prediction piece), along with the Actual players the team protected (with links as well), to show my (lack of) predictive powers. It’s updated for 2024 and has narratives about each class and how the players turned out later on with updates for the last year of performance.
- 2024: Predicted: Lara, Hassell, maybes on Alvarez, Cronin. Actual: Lara, Hassell
- 2023: Predicted: Parker, Lara, and Herz (maybe on Henry) Actual: Parker, Herz, Henry, and Brzycky.
- 2022: Predicted: Cronin, maybes on Alu, Millas, Rutledge, Ferrer. Actual: Cronin, Alu, De La Rosa, Rutledge, Ferrer, Irvin.
- 2021: Predicted Cate, Casey. Actual: Casey and Lee.
- 2020: Predicted Pineda, Adon. Actual Adon, Antuna.
- 2019: Predicted Braymer, Sharp. Actual: just Braymer. And…. Sharp got picked in the Rule-5 draft by Miami.
- 2018: Predicted: Bourque, Mills, Istler. Actual: just Bourque.
- 2017: Predicted: Gutierrez, Gushue, Ward, Baez. Actual: Gutierrez and Jefry Rodriguez.
- 2016: Predicted Voth, Bautista. Actual: Voth, Bautista, Marmolejos, Read and Skole.
- 2015: Predicted Kieboom, Bostick, Marmolejos-Diaz. Actual: Kieboom, Bostick, Lee
- 2014: Predicted Cole, Skole, Goodwin. Hedged on Grace, Martin and Difo. Actual: Cole, Goodwin, Difo, Grace.
- 2013: Predicted Solis as the only lock. Possibles mentioned in order Barrett, Taylor, Grace, Holland. Actual: Solis, Barrett, Taylor.
- 2012: Predicted Karns and McCoy, with Hood and Rosenbaum as maybes. Actual: Karns and Davis. I think we were all surprised by Davis’ inclusion, despite his good AA numbers that year.
- 2011: Predicted Norris as a lock, guessed strongly on Moore, Meyers and Komatsu. Actual: Norris, Moore, Solano, Perez. This was poor analysis on my part; I did not consider the IFAs newly eligible.
- 2010: Predicted Marrero, Meyers and Mandel. Actual: Marrero, Carr and Kimball.
- 2009: pre-dates my blog and thus no predictions, but Actual was Jaime, Thompson and Severino.
- 2008: I might be wrong, but I don’t see any evidence of the team protecting *anyone* prior to the Rule-5 draft. A bit of an indictment of the farm system at the time, I’d say 🙂
How many of the above players who were added to “save” them from the Rule-5 draft actually turned into impactful players for the Nationals? Lets work backwards:
- 2024: Lara, Hassell. Too Early. check back next year.
- 2023: Parker, Herz, Henry, and Brzycky. The fact that we got two MLB SPs the next year makes this the greatest Nats Rule5 draft ever, by a sizeable margin. A huge portion of these guys sit on the 40-man for 2-3 years, stalled out in the minors. Parker got called up to cover for Grey and did spectacularly, giving the team 29 starts at a 94 ERA+ figure. Herz did something similar, coming up to cover for Williams and giving the team 19 starts with a 97 ERA+ figure. Both were fantastic rule-5 additions and are solid candidates for the rotation for years to come. Meanwhile, Brzycky came back from injury and pitched his way up to AAA, but curiously his K/9 is way down. Maybe he’s not 100%. lastly Henry pitched just 15 innings before going back to the season-long DL, and he is looking like a possible lost cause to his shoulder injury. One is hopeful, but it’s not looking good for Henry.
- 2022: Cronin, Alu, De La Rosa, Rutledge, Ferrer, Irvin. Some good, some bad so far out of this crew. The Good: Irvin spent most of 2023 and all of 2024 in the MLB rotation, and looks like he’s improving. Ferrer has turned into a critical bullpen arm and spent all of 2023 and 2024 contributing. The replacement level: Rutledge pitched great all year in 2023 to rocket up the system and even get some MLB cycles, but has tanked as a starter all year in 2024 and may need to convert to relief. Alu looked ok as a bench guy in the MLB, but went back down and got outrighted back to AAA, where he’s now just an org guy. Cronin got DFA’d rather quickly, but had really solid 2024 stats. He may be a change-of-scenery guy. The bad: De La Rosa did little, was probably way too young to protect, and has now been outrighted right back off the 40-man.
- 2021: Casey and Lee: Casey was DFA’d mid 2022, outrighted, then demoted to AA for most of 2023 before hitting MLFA. He never once played in the majors for us. Lee got hurt in 2022, made a few starts in AA, got outrighted (ironically to make room for the 2022 Rule5 guys) then was converted to relief for 2023 where he struggled badly in 2023. He was a bad rule5 protection selection; someone who was “good” for a brief second and had crazy K/9 numbers but who couldn’t come close to sustaining it at the higher levels of the minors.
- 2020: Adon, Antuna: Adon toiled in the lower minors for most of 2021, made it to the majors for a spot start and looked solid. His performance since? Absolutely abhorrent: 1-12 with a 7.10 ERA in 2022 before mercifully being sent down. 2023 was not much better. His final option year in 2024? Another 7+ ERA year in AAA. Meanwhile, Antuna was a disaster, had to move off of SS and hit .230 in High-A with none of the power he’d need to present with his move to a corner OF position. The team seems to be clinging to the guy simply based on his massive IFA signing bonus. Finally at the end of 2023 he hit MLFA; final career minor league totals: .224/.326/.675 and the only level where he even came close to an .800 was rookie ball.
- 2019: Braymer; got DFA’d mid-season 2021 and outrighted after struggling in both seasons. Never amounted to much after that.
- 2018: Bourque: got shelled in AAA in 2019, waived in 2020, then left the team as a MLFA.
- 2017: Gutierrez, Jefry Rodriguez. Gutierrez never really did anything for us and was traded to KC in the Kelvin Herrera deal. Rodriguez threw a bunch of mediocre starts and was flipped to Cleveland in the Yan Gomes deal; he’s now back with us as a MLFA for 2022.
- 2016: Voth, Bautista, Marmolejos, Read and Skole. A ton of guys; anyone impactful? Voth has competed for the 5th starter job for years but has a career 83 ERA+ and was waived; he then went on to Baltimore to succeed, a pretty black mark for this team’s usage of him (since Baltimore ins’t exactly known for being a pitching development team). Bautista never did much for us: 33 career MLB plate appearances. Read had a PED suspension and a handful of MLB games. Marmolejos was a 1B-only guy who showed some gap power in AA but never above it. Skole was inexplicably protected as an age 26 corner infield guy whose profile seemed to mirror dozens of veteran free agents readily available on the market; he hit .222 in 2017 and then hit MLFA.
- 2015: Kieboom, Bostick, Lee: This was Spencer Kieboom, the catcher, not his younger brother Carter. S.Kieboom was a AAA catcher who was worth protecting but he played just a handful of games in his MLB career. Chris Bostick didn’t last the full 2016 season before being DFA’d. Nick Lee lasted even less, getting DFA’d in July.
- 2014: Cole, Goodwin, Difo, Grace. All four players ended up playing in the majors for various lengths … but all four were role players for this team. AJ Cole was tried out as a 5th starter season after season, finally flipped to the Yankees when he ran out of options. Goodwin was another guy who couldn’t seem to break our outfield, but who has had spells of starting with some success elsewhere. Difo was our backup IF for years, and Matt Grace pitched in the Washington bullpen for years before getting outrighted and leaving via MLFA in 2019.
- 2013: Solis, Barrett, Taylor. Sammy was good until he wasn’t, and his time with the 2018 Nats was his last. Barrett remains with the team after multiple surgeries, but is a MLFA this off-season and may be forced into retirement after so many injuries. Michael A. Taylor is an interesting one; he had a 2.7 bWAR season for the Nats in 2017, nearly a 20/20 season when he finally got full time playing time in CF. He won a Gold Glove this year for Kansas City, one season after we DFA’d him because we all thought Victor Robles was a better option.
- 2012: Karns and Davis. Karns had one good year as a starter in the majors … for Tampa. Career bWAR: 3.0. Davis pitched a little for the team in 2013, then got hurt, then never made it back to the majors.
- 2011: Norris, Moore, Solano, Perez. This was a big year; Norris was a big part of the Gio Gonzalez trade and made the all star team in 2014 for Oakland, but didn’t play much afterwards. Tyler Moore was great in his first year as our backup 1B/bench bat type, but never replicated his 2012 season. Jhonathan Solano was always our 3rd catcher and saw sparing duty until he got cut loose. Eury Perez played in just a handful of games for us before getting DFA’d and claimed by the Yankees in Sept 2014.
- 2010: Marrero, Carr and Kimball. Marrero was a 1st rounder who “had” to get protected to protect the team’s investiment; he just never could get above AAA. Adam Carr and Cole Kimball were both relievers who looked promising after their 2010 minor league seasons but did relatively little afterwards: Cole never made the majors, while Kimball hurt his shoulder and never recovered.
- 2009: Jaime, Thompson and Severino. three pitchers, none of whom did much. Jaime was a 2004 IFA who has a grand total of 13 MLB innings. Thompson was waived a year after being protected. Severino got a cup of coffee in 2011 then hit MLFA.
- 2008: Nobody added. Not one eligible pick or signing from the 2004/2005 draft was considered worthy of protecting.
Conclusion: So, after more than a decade of rule-5 additions, who would you say is the most impactful player we’ve ever added? Candidates:
- Brian Goodwin: career bWAR for the Nats: 0.0 (across 3 seasons)
- Michael A. Taylor: career bWAR for the Nats: 3.5 across 7 seasons, with one 2.7 win season
- Sammy Solis: career bWAR for Nats: 0.2 across 4 seasons
- Jake Irvin: career bWAR: 3.0 for 2023 and 2024
- Mitchell Parker: bWAR of 0.7 for 2024
- DJ Herz: bWAR of 0.7 for 2024
I’m tempted to say Irvin despite having slightly less bWAR than Taylor, if only because I expect Taylor to be a rotation guy for us for several more years.
Thanks for the breakdown. And the reminder about Andrew Istler, who I’m still mystified about. He was the original Matt Cronin, but arguably better. We acquired him from the Dodgers (for Ryan Madson), while he was dominating, and already in AAA. He got injured to start the 2019 season, and then reported to A+, and then after several months got promoted to AA, still a whole level below where he was the previous season, while having dominant numbers (0.75 ERA), and then he never threw another professional inning.
It’s the exact same story of Cronin’s 2024, and so I wonder what happened that caused both he and Istler to be handled in such a strange manner developmentally…
I’ll be watching whether Alvarez gets snagged, and whether Cronin is even eligible. But looking at the extremely low numbers of R5 picks who even make it out of ST with their new team, I’m not too worried. I’m more interested in what other players have been left unprotected, because the Nats have really placed a strong emphasis on R5 pickups, with Ward and Nunez both sticking the full season. I wonder how many times a MLB team has successfully kept R5 picks in back to back seasons? It must be a very low number.
Will
20 Nov 24 at 8:58 am
I don’t really remember Istler very well, but Cronin’s weird arc must be related to his injury recovery. It just seems so much more likely to me that there’s some medical reason to slow walk him this year than the team punishing him or forgetting about him. They know how to do the same sort-leaderboard-by-FIP queries as we do.
And I’m curious about Rizzo’s plans to pick this year too. I don’t think it’s likely that Rizzo will feel he has the extra 26-man spot to hold a potential upside prospect like he has the last couple years, but I do think it might make sense to give basically a tryout to some interesting bullpen arm. Grab some other team’s Cronin or Sinclair. 4 out of 5 times, you give him back, but the 1 out of 5 is all upside.
SMS
20 Nov 24 at 10:09 am
The post is updated from the perspective of the players vis what they did for the Nats, but a couple of points (as Paul Harvey would say “the rest of the story) (yeah I’m old). Both was indeed regarded as a black mark against the Nats when he went on a career year/heater in 2022. What most don’t realize s that after that he turned back into, well, Austin Voth. Since his magical mystery run in 21 games (17 starts) good for 1.7. bWAR for the O’s in 2022 he posted a Vothian 5.19 ERA/5.10 FIP in 2023 and the O’s let him go. Apparently their secret sauce had an expiration date. He hooked on with the M’s last year, which is nice because he’s from the state. But he was still just a guy with Vothian stats.
Since putting up two of his four best seasons in his two years with the Royals MAT has returned to his natural 4th OF good glove/lousy bat niche. No shame on that, and I hope he gets to ten years of service time so he fully vests in MLBPA benefits.
John C.
20 Nov 24 at 11:02 am
@SMS, there’s definitely an injury component to it. Both Istler and Cronin were returning from injury in their strange seasons. I totally understand the value of rehab starts to regain one’s feel for their pitches, strength and just getting into the routine again. What I don’t understand is why Cronin and Istler needed a whole season to rehab what weren’t massively serious injuries (both missed months of time and not whole seasons), and were visibly and statistically back to themselves rather quickly, meanwhile every other injured pitcher in the system was being handled in much more conventional ways. I’m just really curious what warranted this approach. From my distant, uninformed perspective, it’s illogical, but there’s certainly a good reason for doing what they did. I’d just like to understand why.
Back to R5, MLB.com posted a list of all eligible top 30 players and whether they were protected or not, and there doesn’t appear to be any big surprise omissions: https://www.mlb.com/milb/news/rule-5-draft-prospects-protected-on-40-man-rosters-2024?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage but I didn’t look closely so there could be some interesting profiles here. It wouldn’t take much to find space on our current 26 man roster for some players at 3B, util INF, 1B, DH or RP, for example.
Will
20 Nov 24 at 11:55 am
Based on a quick glance at the unprotected list, the guy who most intrigues me is Colson Montgomery, a mega-prospect (preseason overall rankings: 9, 11, 15) who hit only .214 at AAA with a 28.6% K rate. He will take a walk (12%), had bad BABIP “luck” (.281), and will only turn 23 in February so is actually half a year younger than Hassell. He’s a SS (a real positional need with the Nats) who may have to move to 3B. You do have to wonder if there’s more than meets the eye for the worst team in baseball to leave one of its top prospects unprotected, though.
KW
20 Nov 24 at 8:49 pm
Todd’s post here, the Nat Rule 5 history, is quite instructive. One thing that jumps out is that if it takes guys this long to emerge, the odds aren’t good at all that they’re going to develop into anything significant. That even goes for guys like Goodwin and Cole who were on top-100 lists for multiple years. There’s no one here who has significantly succeeded for any extended period. We’re hoping that we’re bucking that trend with Irvin, Parker, and Herz, but we’ll see. Steamer projects all of them with WAR under 2.0 . . . but considering that Cole’s career bWAR is 0.9, in some ways they’ve all already sorta surpassed him.
I also hope that we’re bucking that trend with Lara and Hassell. Lara had a strong season at age 21 and finally looks like the prospect that the front office was hyping him to be a couple of years ago. Hassell has been terribly slowed by injuries and other struggles. Sometimes we forget that he was a #8 overall pick. He seemed to be finding himself in AZ, against admittedly suspect pitching. We’ll see. The upcoming season will definitely be a prove-it one for him. Anyway, these two seem to have a higher ceiling than typical Rule 5 decision guys. We’ll see if they can reach it.
KW
20 Nov 24 at 9:03 pm
The offseason dates just keep coming, as Friday is non-tender day. Here are the arb-eligile Nats, and MLBTR projections:
Tanner Rainey (5.127): $1.9MM
Derek Law (5.081): $3MM
Ildemaro Vargas (5.007): $1.8MM
Kyle Finnegan (5.000): $8.6MM
Luis Garcia Jr. (3.142): $4.8MM
Josiah Gray (3.075): $1.4MM
Mason Thompson (3.046): $800K
Riley Adams (3.005): $1.1MM
MacKenzie Gore (3.000): $3.5MM
Vargas has already been released, which I actually thought was nice move so he could be on the market before the big dump this week.
There’s not a lot of argument in favor of keeping Rainey, Thompson, and Riley Adams, but none of them is costing much either.
KW
21 Nov 24 at 6:31 am
@KW, Montgomery was protected by the White Sox. It’s not a very clear article, but the bolding and “+” next to his name indicates he was added to the 40 man. It’s the non-bolded names without the + that are available for selection.
Among that list, there’s very little of note.
Will
21 Nov 24 at 6:35 am
@KW – If they held Rainey through his awful spring and bad summer only to non-tender him after his good fall, I’ll be flabbergasted.
And re Adams – If he’s non-tendered, is he immediately a FA? Or does he pass through waivers and then potentially outrighted? Because my take on him is that Millas is better and should be C2, but there’s no other C3 anywhere in the system, so I’d really like Adams to come back on a minor league deal. And if that means he has to be tendered and then later DFAd, I think it’s worth the $1M.
SMS
21 Nov 24 at 10:59 am
Newposted on non-tender deadline.
Todd Boss
21 Nov 24 at 1:16 pm
@Will — Yeah, I misread that about Montgomery. Oh well. Not much else there excites me.
@SMS — I wondered what incriminating evidence that Rainey had on Rizzo. LOL. Will follow up on Todd’s new post.
KW
21 Nov 24 at 2:20 pm