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.
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