The next stop on the off-season transaction bus is the “Non Tender Deadline,” by where players under club control (whether it be pre-arbitration or arbitration-eligible) need to be offered contracts (tendered) by 11/22/24 or else they officially get cut-loose and become free agents.
Its the same and DFA’ing a guy, of which we’ve already done several so far this off-season, including two non-tender candidates in Ildemaro Vargas (who made $1.1M last year and was projected to $1.8M, but clearly the team thought they could replace him for less from internal) and Jordan Weems (who will be 1st year arb eligible).
So, do we actually have any non-tender candidates on the roster at this point? Lets run through the arbitration-eligible players from high-to-low 2024 salary and make some guesses.
I’ll use Cots for 2024 salaries and MLBTraderumors for 2025 arbitration estimates.
- Kyle Finnegan. $5.1M in 2024, estimated $8.6M in 2025. Yes, that’s way too much for a reliever for a sub .500 team. The plan was to trade the guy and make him someone else’s problem but an ill-timed blowup scuttled his trade market and here we are. I think he’s too valuable to non-tender, and he could still be a trade candidate mid 2025 if we’re not contending. Tender him.
- Luis Garcia Jr. $1.95M in 2024, estimated $4.8MM for 2025. He’s worth it. 114 Ops+, nearly a 20/20 season in 2024. $4.8M seems a bit high for A2, but he’ll be well into the 10-digits by the time he hits his 4th arb year. I used to think he’d be first on the list to get replaced once one of our SS prospects panned out; now maybe he sticks around for the longer term.
- Derek Law: made $1.5M in 2025, projecting to $3MM in 2025. $3M for a 2-win workhorse reliever is a bargain.
- Tanner Rainey $1.5M in 2024, $1.9MM estimate for 2025. he somehow picked up 50 innings worth of work and was the lowest-leverage usage reliever in the game. 30 of his 50 appearances were 9th inning to finish off a game: 24 of those were in losses, the other 6 were in blowout wins. Ok, so do you write the $1.9M check for 2025 here? Yes I think you do. Roll the dice for one more year out of Rainey to see if he reverts back to his dominant 8th/9th inning self. Its a safe bet. If not, and you like the guy, clearly there was 50 innings out there for him to mop up in 2024 and they’ll be there again in 2025.
- Josiah Gray: $757K in 2024, $1.4MM estimate in 2025. You obviously tender Gray as your opening day starter last season, even if he’s hurt. Does he get to $1.4M for a year where he’ll miss most of the season? Maybe that’s just the going rate.
- C.J. Abrams: $752K in 2024, no estimate for 2025 because he earned super-2 after they published. I’d probably put his arb figure at $3.75M (that was about what Trea Turner got his first year of arb eligibility as a top-notch SS). Obviously, even given the casino incident, you tender Abrams.
- Riley Adams $750K in 2024, $1.1MM estimate for 2025. This is the one that some people seem to get hung up on. Why keep Adams around if we have Millas who many think is better? Well, there’s one main answer: we have no other catchers on the 40-man. Past Adams/Millas, you’re looking at guys like Lindsly or Stubbs from the current AAA roster. We don’t even have a catcher active on the current AA roster: they all hit 6year MLFA (Pineda, Vega, and Diaz). There’s just no way they should cut him loose, even if he isn’t good.
- Mason Thompson: $749k in 2024,: $800K estimate for 2025. Hurt all of 2023 but a solid arm if he returns healthy. He won’t have much of an estimated bump so he’s just as good as a pre-arb prospect.
- MacKenzie Gore $749K in 2024, $3.5MM. Bargain for a starter as good as Gore. Tender him.
So, of the 9 guys:
- Locks to tender: Garcia, Law, Gray, Abrams, Gore
- No good reason not to tender: Adams, Rainey, Thompson
- Expensive but needed: Finnegan
I think we tender all 9 of these guys.
11/22/24 update: to my surprise, the Nats Non-tendered both Finnegan and Rainey. I think i’m more shocked by the Rainer non-tender, if only because his arb figure was so low. But both moves make me slightly concerned for the financial outlook of this team for 2025: both are really penny-pincher moves. You non-tender a reliever who grew up in your org and who was projected to have less than a $2M salary? Concerning.
To be clear with the terminology, the Nats’ MO usually is to reach deals with all these guys before the tender deadline. If you want to pull a Jerry Blevins and bluff them into an arb hearing, it isn’t going to end well for you.
I agree that there are no obvious kick-to-the-curb guys, but there are several who aren’t worth the projected number. Your defense of Adams for catching depth makes sense, with caveat that he’s out of options. Is there other AAA-level catching depth available in the minor-league-contract free agent market?
There’s some scuttlebutt that they’re at least floating Finnegan as available for trade. At the same time, $8.9M is pretty cheap for a decent closer, and they need one if they expect to get back into semi-contention.
Rainey apparently has some sort of incriminating evidence on Rizzo. I have no idea why they’ve kept him around. Obviously they believe that he’s got another level of improvement that he can make from injury. It seems unlikely they would give him $1.9M, though.
To me, the much more interesting part of this discussion becomes when do you start talking about extensions with Gore, Abrams, and Garcia? I would include Gray in that as well if healthy. The Nats’ MO with better players has been to try to buy up some or all of the remaining arb years at a reasonable rate. They went beyond the arb years with Ruiz, but that’s been rare for them, and early returns are mixed. Garcia showed a good bit of improvement in 2024, but they’ve suddenly got a good number of middle infielders in the pipeline, not to mention the possible need to move Abrams to 2B. With Abrams, they’ve got the commitment question mark, plus the one of whether he’s an actual SS.
Gore is a very interesting extension candidate. He’s still controlled for three more years. He’s about to turn 26. An extension for two or three years beyond arb would pretty much lock him up for his prime. I’d have that conversation. Don’t know if Gore’s camp would bite, but it’s definitely worth exchanging numbers.
KW
21 Nov 24 at 2:42 pm
Nat fans will get a big laugh today if they do the Immaculate Grid, as one of the teams it matches the Nats with is the D-Backs. There are 79 players who have played for both franchises (Montreal included):
https://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/players-who-played-for-multiple-teams-franchises.fcgi?level=franch&t1=ARI&t2=WSN&t3=–&t4=–&utm_campaign=2023_07_ig_possible_answers&utm_source=ig&utm_medium=sr_xsite
I wonder how many here ended up in Nats to Oblivion.
KW
21 Nov 24 at 5:34 pm
I didn’t realize Finnegan was set to earn so much. I don’t know if that makes him more or less likely to be traded, but either way the Nats are going to need to eat a lot of the salary, because as we see with Law, good-but-inconsistent relievers can be had pretty readily and for much cheaper than $8.6m.
Also notably that until we make some much needed FA signings, Finnegan will be our highest paid player on the team by a significant margin. Keibert Ruiz will be the next highest earner at $5.4m, a whole 40% less than Finnegan.
Still, with all that said, Finnegan is well worth tendering. A while ago, so not sure how accurate the numbers still are, FanGraphs put a financial value on prospects. Wallace and Lomavita, both 40+ FV prospects, that we got in return for Harvey, were estimated to be worth about $4m each. That’s an $8m return for Harvey. While Finnegan will return less, being an inferior player and with less team control, his trade value is not insignificant. So even if we can only get $4-5m of prospect value for him, it’ll indirectly pay back a pretty significant chunk of his salary.
Will
22 Nov 24 at 8:31 am
I’ll just say that I’m surprised on both counts.
For both of them, it feels just internally inconsistent with the way they seemed to be valued last season.
SMS
22 Nov 24 at 11:33 pm
Wow,they didn’t tender Finnegan or Rainey. This makes their decisions to keep both on the roster (Rainey through not DFAing him and Finnegan through not trading him even for a bag of balls like they did Floro) nonsensical.
I’m losing no sleep over Rainey, but not tendering Finnegan has to solely be financially motivated. He’s not actually worth $8.4m, but he is valuable. If we’re not willing to spend even slightly more than his actual value, it doesn’t fill me with any hope that we’ll sign any decent FAs this offseason, as they will all command overpays too.
Will
23 Nov 24 at 4:06 am
The only surprise with Rainey is all the chances they gave him. His career has been well beyond nine lives.
Finnegan, in what supposedly was a “good” season, posted 0.0 fWAR in 2024 (1.0 bWAR). He’s 33, and his FIP was 4.25. So I can see how they decided that he isn’t worth $8.4M. But it’s also fair to wonder what they’ll do for a closer, particularly in that price range, and also to wonder why they didn’t try harder to trade him at the 2024 deadline, all the more when you look at the fairly significant return they got for the less-valuable Harvey.
The Nats did get good mileage for a time out of Finnegan and Rainey, both of whom had never “figured things out” with their previous organizations. I had forgotten that Rainey was the trade return for Tanner Roark, who was starting to run on fumes.
KW
23 Nov 24 at 1:49 pm
I would not be shocked to see Finnegan re-signed and Rainey agreeing to a minor league deal
FredMD
23 Nov 24 at 2:40 pm
I think if they could have re-signed Finnegan, they would have agreed on a number before the tender deadline. His agent apparently thinks he’s worth more than Rizzo does.
Rainey returning on a minor-league would make sense. That’s likely all he will be able to get no matter where he signs.
Nats down to 36 on the 40-man. The sad part is that there’s still a lot of mediocrity remaining among the 36.
KW
24 Nov 24 at 8:56 am
@fredMD: you think Finnegan would re-sign? If i was him, i’d be looking at this non-tender as a slap in the face. The Nats robbed him of an opportunity to be paid per his accomplishments last year, and instead he loses any guaranteed money for next year and has to hit the market. Now he’s a 33yr old RHP relief pitcher along side dozens of others in the same boat. He’s got good but not amazing numbers; his value was all his saves last year, which of course we know General managers couldn’t care less about, but arbitration hearing judges absolutely do.
Todd Boss
25 Nov 24 at 1:51 pm
Saying that the non-tender is a “slap in the face” assumes facts not in evidence. The scuttlebutt is that the team and the agent had a deal worked out, but Finnegan had a change of heart and walked away. If that’s correct, where is the insult?
As for “robbed him of the opportunity to be paid per his accomplishments last year,” that’s flatly ridiculous. He now has the opportunity to market himself, based on his accomplishments, to any team in MLB. What walking away from the arbitration process means is that he loses a real chance to be OVERPAID for accomplishments that arbitrators value but the industry does not.
If he walked away from a deal (which would have guaranteed money for next season, just not as much as the arbitration estimate) assuming that the team would tender a contract and he’s have a shot at an arbitration windfall, then that’s a gamble that he decided to take. For his sake I hope that it works out.
If, ultimately, the Nats offer(ed) more than what other teams offer, is Finnegan likely to walk away from what to you and me would be a substantial amount of money ($1-2M, give or take) on ego grounds?
John C.
26 Nov 24 at 11:34 am
I agree that the Nats didn’t “rob” him. If anything, the offer they made him, which did have some leverage from the projected arb number, likely was higher than what he’ll end up signing for. I would guess that they offered $6M to $7M and that he’ll do well to sign for $5M. Other GMs aren’t going to see the 38 saves, they’re going to see a 33-year-old with a 4.25 FIP and projected WAR of only 0.3. In the eyes of a contender, he’s a setup man, not a closer.
Meanwhile, I’m more interested in what the Nats are going to do with the gaping hole at the back of their bullpen.
KW
26 Nov 24 at 1:04 pm