Nationals Arm Race

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 11/21/25 or else they officially get cut-loose and become free agents. The players don’t have to SIGN said contracts, just be offered one.

Its the same and DFA’ing a guy, of which we’ve already done a ton of so far this off-season. In fact, technically every single pre-Arb player is a tender decision this week as well, though only the Arb-eligible guys are being analyzed here.

So, do we actually have any non-tender candidates on the roster at this point? Yeah we do.

Lets run through the arbitration-eligible players from high-to-low 2025 salary and make some guesses.

Resouces in use to write this:

• Cots for 2025 salaries
• MLBTraderumors for 2026 arbitration estimates.
• Also, since this is the first time we really start talking about Options w/r/t player roster flexibility, here’s Roster Resource and the list of players’ options.
• Here’s the Big Board for depth chart squinting

Like last year, we had 9 arb-eligible candidates to discuss heading into the off-season. The team DFA’d a couple of non-tender candidates early in Alfaro and Thompson, both of whom refused outright and are on the open market. Of the remaining seven, here’s some thoughts (they’re listed in order of 2025 salary):

• Luis Garcia: $4.5M in 2025, projected for $7M in 2026 and still has a 4th Arb year thanks to just hitting the Super-2 cutoff. RJ Anderson at CBSsports listed Garcia as one of the 10 biggest non-tender decisions any team faces, and for good reason. $7M for what he gives us seems like a lot. He’s barely league average in OPS+, had a .289 OBP last year, gives us really, really bad defense (-17 DRS in 2025 … as a 2nd baseman?!), and has had “challenges” on the base paths and showing hustle. He’s probably more suited to play 1B … but you don’t put a guy with a .701 OPS figure at 1B. Another wrinkle: Garcia has zero options remaining, which doesn’t really mean that much since he’s clearly entrenched in the lineup, but it does remove any 26-man roster flexibility. However, if you cut Garcia, who are you replacing him with? Tena? Nunez? We have three guys at AA who could have stepped up in 2025 (Made, King, Wallace) and made a play for 2B, but all three need more minor league time. So, for me, for the time being I think he gets tendered and 2026 turns into his make or break season, unless the FO is committed to buying a replacement.
• MacKenzie Gore: $2.89M in 2025, projected for $4.7M in 2026. I’m slightly surprised Gore’s projected arb salary is this low; ask yourself what he’d get on the open market, right now. He’s our most valuable trade chip, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him part of a big GM-meeting bonanza trade. The 2025 all star is a lock to be tendered.
• Josiah Gray: $1.35M in 2025, projected for $1.35M again in 2026. Miss a year, pick right back up where you were. I guess Gray has no real recourse to demand more than $1.35M in salary after a year where he was paid that to basically recover from surgery. No real discussion here; obviously a 2nd or 3rd starter for $1.35M is a bargain, even if he ends up doing a 95 ERA+.
• Riley Adams: $850k in 2025, projected for $1.5M in 2026. There’s certainly a lot of animosity amongst some readers here towards Adams and his 59 OPS+ given that we have Millas, and have had Millas, waiting in AAA for years. Certainly Adams did himself no favors when he couldn’t step up and take the catcher job upon Ruiz’ concussion issues last year. Instead, Millas came up and slugged to a 127 OPS+ figure before breaking his index finger in mid August, ending his 2025 season. However, the truth is that we can’t depend on Ruiz right now, and it seems short-sighted to cut one of the only 3 catchers you have on the 40-man roster and the next closest legitimate catching prospect is a 2024 draftee in Lomavita, even if he was decent in AA. If you cut Adams, you’re basically guaranteed to be shopping for a backup Catcher on the FA market, and can you get something better than Adams there? I think you tender him for insurance, and if you find a better insurance policy who you can option to AAA as needed, you cut him at that point.
• CJ Abrams: $780k in 2025, projecting to $5.6M in 1st year of Arb. No surprise here; he basically had an identical year at the plate in 2025 as he had in 2024 when he was an All Star, only this year he didn’t manage to get himself sent home from school for misbehavior at season’s end. Like his double play partner Garcia, he’s awful defensively (-6 DRS, -11 total zone) with a slew of throwing errors, and it seems like it’s just a matter of time before he moves to 2B (though it may take a couple years, since all our best SS prospects are in Low-A). In the meantime, obviously you tender the guy.
• Cade Cavalli: $760k in 2025, projecting to $1.3M in 2026 first year of arb. Hard to believe, but he’s already arbitration eligible. This is what happens when you let a guy do all his injury rehab on the60-day DL. As for tendering, no argument here; he’s going to be in the rotation, he’s a 1st rounder, and he’s a huge part of the future.
• Jake Irvin. $774k in 2025, projecting to $3.3M in 2026. Ouch; $3.3M for one of the worst starters in the league? $3.3M projection seems high; how did Gore only get $2.89M in his first Arb year with far better 2024 numbers? I dunno; this seems like its a high projection. Nonetheless, some are calling this a clear non-tender. Ok sure, but what choice does the team have? Yes he had awful numbers, but he took the ball every 5 days and ate up the innings. His first two seasons in the Majors weren’t half bad: 92 ERA+ and in 2024 a 1.19 WHIP in 33 starts. One would think he could get back to that level of performance, which would be a bargain at $3.3M. Personally I think the team should eventually put him in the bullpen if he can’t get back to a 4th starter level, and would a $3M middle reliever be too much? Perhaps. But, if you non-tender the guy you’re telling me that one of these healthy current 40-man arms is taking his place: Lord, Williams, Lao, Eder. Not seeing it. Unless the new GM is planning on a big FA splash, but then the team still needs relievers. I’d tender him.

So, of the 7 guys:

• Locks to tender: Gore, Gray, Abrams, Cavalli
• No good reason not to tender right now: Garcia, Irvin
• In jeopardy of being Non-Tendered: Adams

Conclusions: Honestly, for the arguments made above, I’d tender all seven right now, and if you can find a replacement for Adams or Irvin, so be it. I can’t see cutting loose all three of Garcia, Irvin, and Adams.

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Post non-tender deadline update: On 5pm on 11/21, the Nats announced they tendered all seven candidates. So, nobody cut loose yet.

Post Publishing updates: corrected Josiah Gray’s name per JohnC comment.;

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 2025 and has narratives about each class and how the players turned out later on with updates for the last year of performance.

• 2025: Predicted: Bennett, Franklin. maybe on Cornelio, weak maybe on Wallace. Actual: Bennett, Franklin, Cornelio
• 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:

• 2025: Bennett, Franklin, Cornelio: too early, we’ll revisit next November.
• 2024: Lara, Hassell. both made it to the majors in 2025; Hassell ended up sticking on the roster for a while as basically an extra outfielder covering for injury, but struggled at the plate. Lara got absolutely shelled in the majors, and didn’t do much better in AAA, and I’m not sure what the plan is for him going forward.
• 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, even if neither Parker or Herz turned into awesome starters. A huge portion of these Rule-5 addition guys sit on the 40-man for 2-3 years, stalled out in the minors, but not this year. Parker got called up to cover for Grey and did spectacularly, giving the team 29 starts at a 94 ERA+ figure in 2024. He stepped back a bit in 2025, but may be a decent bullpen option going forward. Herz did something similar, coming up to cover for Williams and giving the team 19 starts with a 97 ERA+ figure, but blew out his elbow in ST 2025. Both were fantastic rule-5 additions and are solid candidates for the rotation for years to come. Henry converted to relief and looked for a while like a decent 7th/8th inning guy, but still has some room to grow. Meanwhile, Brzycky came back from injury and pitched his way up to AAA, but curiously his K/9 was way down and he wasn’t nearly as impactful as one thought; the team tried to sneak him off the 40-man in Nov 2025 and he got claimed.
• 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 the last three years in the rotation, even if he struggled in 2025. Ferrer has turned into a critical bullpen arm, taking over the closer role after we traded away other candidates. 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. Finally converted to relief, he stuck in teh MLB bullpen all of 2025 but had awful numbers. Alu looked ok as a bench guy in the MLB, but went back down and got outrighted back to AAA, where he went back to being “org guy” and ended up playing out the MLFA string. 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 got outrighted right back off the 40-man, where he played out the MLFA string.
• 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 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, gave some of that bWAR back in 2025.
• Mitchell Parker: bWAR of 0.7 for 2024 but -1.2 in 2025
• DJ Herz: bWAR of 0.7 for 2024, missed all of 2025 with TJ.

I’m tempted to say Irvin despite having slightly less bWAR than Taylor, if only because I expected Irvin to be a rotation guy for us for several more years. However, his 2025 performance gives me pause, so now I’m thinking Taylor is the answer.

It’s that time of year. Its “Rule-5 time!” November 18th 2025 is the official “Deadline to File Reserve Lists” on the off-season calendar, which is a fancy way of saying the deadline to add certain minor leaguers to the active 40-man roster to protect them from the Rule-5 draft, which occurs in a few weeks at the December annual meetings.

We do this post every year, and it’s now perhaps our longest running post topic. Its our annual deep dive into our older prospects to see who the team may be thinking about protecting. Here’s links to past years posts on this topic: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010. I also publish a post-Rule5 compilation post with all the prior selectees and draftees after we see what the team does on the 18th.

Many people think Rule-5 is a waste of time for fringe prospects who don’t matter. For those of us who pore over minor league box scores, hoping to find a diamond in the rough of our 160+ minor leaguers who might some day be wearing red and white Nationals home jerseys, its a deep-dive into what might be for these players and an always-fun exercise looking at what may be the edges of our farm system.

As a reminder, Rule 5 eligibility is as follows for any player not on a 40-man roster:

• Signed at 18-years-old or younger, has been in the organization for five seasons post draft/signing
• Signed at 19-years-old or older, has been in the organization for four seasons post draft/signing

So, generally speaking this translates to for 2025:

• College players drafted/signed in 2022 or before
• High Schoolers drafted in 2021 or before
• IFAs signed in 2021 or before unless they were already 18 at signing, then 2022 or before.

(I say generally speaking because there are some IFAs who get signed later in the year, or who might have turned 19 by the time they sign and turn Rule-5 one year earlier than we thought. This hasn’t happened with us for a few years).

Heading into this year’s Rule-5 selection piece, the Nats have quite a bit of room on the 40-man, thanks to a slew of DFAs and a few FAs who expired off the roster. As of this writing, we’re at 34/40 on the 40-man roster. I don’t think that means we’re adding 6 guys at this deadline, but I don’t sense this front office cleared that much room for the heck of it this early in the off-season. We also have a brand new GM and front office, who brings a new approach to the Rule-5 Process. Boston has not been very active ahead of the Rule-5 deadlines; 2 protected last year, 2 the year before, none in 2022. So I’m not expecting a massive set of additions.

Important Links for Rule-5 consideration:

• Nats Draft Tracker looking at the 2022 class and older
• Nats IFA Tracker; looking at the 2021 class and older
• Nats Big Board: you can search for “22D” or “21IFA” to quickly find the players in that class
• Roster Resource: the Options/R5 column has a red “R5” for all Rule-5 candidates; I use this to cross-reference my work to make sure we’re both in sync, though they sometimes have errors.
• 2025 MLFA List from Baseball America: 34 MLFAs for us this year
• 2025 Nov 2025 Minor league Transactions, which shows the 34 MLFAs we had along with all the other 11/6/25 transactions
• 2025 AFL Rosters, since we usually send a couple R5 candidates there. This year the R5 guys were Bennett, Aldonis.

Here we go. There’s several categories of players to consider; we’ll go one by one.

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Group 1: Newly Eligible 2022 draft College Players this year. Holy cow there’s a lot; we’ve still essentially have our entire 2022 draft class still playing, so there’s lots to discuss.

• Trey Lipscomb (AAA): well, the first player to cover is … a weird one. Lipscomb just got outrighted off the 40-man roster, and he immediately becomes Rule-5 eligible. Clearly the Nats won’t be protecting him, so there’s no point in analyzing him. Per my contact at Fangraphs, this is a rarity but does happen, and such a player has gotten plucked in Rule-5 before, which seems odd b/c the exact same team that picked him could have just put in a waiver claim on him a couple weeks ago and retained the flexibility of optioning him all next year instead of the Rule-5 limitations. So, odds are he doesn’t get picked in rule-5 either.
• Kyle Luckham (AAA): 5.46 ERA in 7 AAA appearances this year, and has very little prospect cred. I think he’s likely a AAA ceiling guy, and I can’t see him as a Rule-5 drafting prospect since he’s not tooled up.
• Riley Cornelio (AAA): had a great 2025, solving High-A and AA and ending the year in AAA with similar numbers there to Luckham. What makes him different is the fact that the organization has continued to promote him year after year, and the industry has taken note of his progress. However, I admit that I’m “higher” on Cornelio than others in the industry. BA has zero professional scouting reports on him, but did note he added 2-3 mph from 2024-2025 on his fastball. At the very least I think someone would risk picking him as someone who could deal out of the bullpen. I think we’d be fools not to protect him, and I’d bet he’s pushing for a MLB rotation spot by mid 2026.
• Marquis Grissom (AAA) briefly was looking like a solid RP prospect, but then proved to be pretty hittable in AAA this season. Might still be someone who can grow into a middle reliever in the bigs, but he didn’t show enough this year for a team to think about carrying him all 2026.
• Jake Bennett (AA): one of our top 3-4 prospects right now, was unhittable for the entirety of 2025 after missing a year with TJ, and he’s a big part of the future. He’s going to be the #1 protection name submitted.
• Tyler Stuart (AA): solid prospect, out for all of 2026 with TJ, thus no chance he’s picked. If he had an injury-free 2026, he probably would have made it to AAA and we’d be protecting him.
• Chance Huff (AA); bonus-limited 8th rounder who was workable in AA this year, but who has no chance of getting picked because he’s not a prospect arm.
• Cayden Wallace (AA): he was the marquee prospect who we got for Hunter Harvey and was immediately in our system top 10, getting a NRI to spring training and having some talking about him possibly being better than House. An up-and-down AA season in 2025 pinched a lot of that talk, but this is still a 2nd rounder who can play on the dirt and can hit. He could be a backup infielder for a bad team’s MLB roster today. I think he is protection material.
• Johnathon Thomas (AA): a backup undersized 19th round outfielder in AA who’s behind nearly a dozen other outfielders on the depth chart isn’t a threat to get protected. I don’t think he’s getting picked either.
• Max Romero (AA): even in a catcher-thin system, you can’t protect a guy unless he can at least hit .200 right?
• Murphy Stehly (AA): the 10th rounder in 2022 is actually now 27 yrs old and he hit the crap out of the ball this year in AA. Great story, but not likely to get plucked just based on his drafting pedigree and age.
• Luke Young (AA) a middle relief RHP in AA with mediocre numbers; that just screams “org arm.”
• Courtland Lawson (High-A), Jared McKenzie (High-A): bench bats in High-A aren’t candidates. Somewhat surprised they’re still in the system.

Summary: Bennett a lock. Cornelio a strong candidate. Wallace a maybe.

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Group 1-A: 2022 NDFAs

• Matt Suggs (AA): the sole 22 NDFA we have remaining of nine we signed. He was the 3rd backup in AA this year and seems like he’s hanging around until he hits 6yr MLFA.

Summary: no candidates in this section.

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Group 2: Newly Eligible 2021 High School-age drafted players under consideration for protection

• TJ White (High-A): just finished his 3rd straight year in High A and still doesn’t have an OPS above .650. Not a candidate.

Summary: no candidates in this section

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Group 3: Newly Eligible 2021 signed IFAs under consideration for protection

• Armando Cruz (High-A): you can’t possibly think of protecting a guy who just hit .177 in High-A because he had a $3.9M bonus investment, could you? Well, we’ve done it in the past; Yasel Antuna was almost in the identical situation here. Luckily we have a new GM who could probably care less about these kinds of prior investments.
• Guys still in Low-A or Rookie Ball: Emmanuel Ramirez, Gabriel Agostini, Brayan Romero, Brian Polanco (who might have actually been eligible last year b/c he signed at 19), and Angel Roman: not candidates.

Summary: Cruz, if they’re fools.

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Group 4: Rule-5 Eligible Drafted/Domestic hold-overs of note from prior years

• Christian Franklin (AAA): solid 800+ OPS for us after being acquired in trade for Soroka. Most shops have him ranked in the 11-15 range of prospects for the system, and he’s a good OF depth piece. I think he’s a lock to get protected b/c he could be a backup OF for a slew of teams right now, and at the very least he’s someone the team could be looking to use in trade given our logjam of outfielders.
• Brad Lindsly (AAA): He got 58 ABs in 2025 as the 2nd or 3rd C on the AAA roster and probably made half a dozen trips to the “Developmental List.” He’s basically a bullpen catcher with a playing contract.
• Holden Powell (AAA): made it to AAA and then walked a guy an inning.
• Seth Shuman (AAA): got shelled in AAA, lost his rotation spot. He was a 2019 draftee but somehow didn’t get MLFA declared.
• Brandon Boissiere (AA): had a nice year in AA at age 25; probably not enough to be protected.
• Erik Tolman (AA): developmentally behind after missing a year with injury, mostly succeeded in High-A this year. Not a candidate, despite being lefty. Perhaps if he was closer to the majors.
• Jack Sinclair (AA): 5+ era as a 26yr old in AA: he may have hit his ceiling.
• Dustin Saenz (AA): lost his rotation spot, might be converted to lefty reliever, but not terribly impressive this year.
• Brendan Collins (High-A): kind of like Tolman in that he basically missed a whole year. Side-arming middle reliever seems like AA may be his limit.

Fun fact; Jake Irvin (2018 4th rounder) is now our oldest remaining originally drafted player. He’s the sole player remaining from the 2018 draft active for the Nats; nobody older. For almost the entire life of this team, the answer to this question was either Ryan Zimmerman or Stephen Strasburg.

Summary: Franklin a lock.

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Group 4A: 2021 and older NDFAs,

• Tyler Schoff (AAA): spent most of the season on the 60-day DL, seems like he’ll get another year with us.
• Peyton Glavine (High-A): missed all of 2024, decent in 2025 but a year behind developmentally.

Summary: no candidates here

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Group 5: IFAs: 2019 and older (we didn’t really have a 2020 IFA class)

• Kevin Made (AA): lots of promise, little delivery. We’ve talked about him ad nauseum in the comments. If he was a more consistent bat, he’d be a top 10 prospect, in AAA and probably pushing the likes of Tena and Nunez off the 40-man roster to be our go-to backup middle infielder. But he’s not, so he’s not.
• Pablo Aldonis (High-A): stellar numbers in High-A as a lefty reliever, after missing all of 2024 due to injury. This is an interesting one; great numbers and clearly good stuff, but hasn’t ever gotten out of A-ball. I’d think he is safe from being drafted in the major league phase for sure, but the Nats sending him to the AFL also put a big shiny target on his back. His AFL numbers werne’t too bad: 11ip, 6 games 2 “starts,” 14/5 K/BB and a 1.33 whip. It seems nonsensical for a team to pick him and think he’s gonna stick in their bullpen for an entire year, especially since we’re not talking about a well known MLBpipeline top30 guy.
• guys in Low-A or Rookie ball: Victor Farias, Andy Luis, Juan Abreu

Summary: Aldonis a maybe.

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So, where does that leave us? Summarizing the Groups:

• Group 1 Protection Candidates: Bennett a lock. Cornelio a strong maybe, Wallace a maybe.
• Group 1A Protection Candidates: none
• Group 2 Protection Candidates: none
• Group 3 Protection Candidates: Cruz, if they’re fools
• Group 4 Protection Candidates: Franklin a lock
• Group 4a Protection Candidates: none
• Group 5 Protection Candidates: Aldonis a maybe

My Prediction: Team protects Bennet, Franklin.

If it was Todd Boss the GM, i’d go four: Bennett Franklin, Cornelio, and Wallace.

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Two things I’ll update to this post when they happen:

• Nats Actual Rule-5 protection results: on 11/18/25, the Nats added three: Bennett, Franklin, and Cornelio. So, they added Cornelio in a surprise to this observer, but didn’t add Wallace, which was always going to be a stretch.

• Actual Rule-5 draft results in Dec: will be added later, likely in a new post.

11/6/25 was a big moving day in baseball: its 5 days after the World Series ended, and on the same day all 60-day DL guys (in the majors and minors) have to be returned to active roster status, and all free agents are declared. In the majors, that means the “exclusive” bargaining period ends (which is almost never used anymore), but more importantly to this site and this audience, it means that dozens of prospects that we’ve sometimes tracked for 6-7 years are now cut loose.

Here’s a look at the churn at both the 40-man level and in the minors. All these moves are now updated on the Big Board, as well as the Draft Tracker and the IFA tracker and my internal Nats Prospect Rankings page, which saw a slew of guys I had ranked just a few weeks ago get cut loose. I’ll talk about them below in a bit.

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Major League Free Agents

• Josh Bell 1b/DH 11/2/25: FA
• Paul deJong 2b/3b 11/2/25: FA
• Derek Law rhp 11/2/25: FA

In other words, the three guys the team couldn’t even trade for a bag of balls at the trade deadline.

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40-man DFA’s

• CJ Stubbs c 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA
• Ogasawara, Shinnosuki rhp 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA
• Mason Thompson rhp 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA, refused assignment, FA
• Eduardo Salazar rhp 10/30/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA, refused assignment, FA
• Jorge Alfaro c 10/31/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA, refused assignment, FA
• Zach Brzycky rhp 11/6/25: DFA’d, claimed by Miami, gone
• Ryan Loutos rhp 11/6/25: DFA’d, claimed by Seattle, gone
• Trey Lipscomb 3b 11/6/25: DFA’d, cleared waivers, outrighted to AAA

So, that’s 11 total guys removed from the 40-man with FAs and DFAs. We added back our four 60-day DL guys (Grey, Herz, Williams, Millas), which puts us at exactly 34/40 as of this writing. That’s a ton of room for the next phase of the off-season (Rule5 and Free Agency).

Most surprising out of this list? Probably Brzycky, who was a NDFA and kind of “found gold” for the player dev staff. He didn’t get a ton of MLB time and I’m surprised they cut him and kept other relievers for the time being. It’s no surprise to me he got claimed.

There’s not a ton of “fat” left on the roster now; most of the guys I had listed early on my “next guys to cut” are now gone. I could still see the team part ways with a couple of waiver claim/MLFA relievers that made their way onto the active roster (Fernandez, Pilkington), but the next cuts after that will be deep.

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MLFAs declared

Here’s the meat of this post. As of 11/6/25, all 6-year MLFAs were declared. Generally speaking, this means the following are now declared MLFAs:

• anyone drafted in 2019
• Most IFAs signed in 2018 under a certain age.
• Some older IFAs signed in 2019: if you were already 18 you’re like a draftee.
• Furthermore, anyone we’ve signed as a MLFA along the way one a one-year deal, or who hasn’t already resigned on some other deal we’re unaware of, is also newly declared.

So, from the massive list of 11/6/25 minor league transactions, here’s what that looks like. We’ll go level by level:

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From AAA: no fewer than 16 guys hitting MLFA.

2B	Arruda, JT#
CA	Stubbs, C.J.
DH	Yepez ,Juan
SP	Solesky, Chase
LF	De La Cruz, Carlos
SU	Cuevas, Michael
LR	Conley, Bryce
MID	Adon, Joan
SP	Sampson, Adrian
MID	Dunshee, Parker
MID	Acosta, Daison
SS	Cluff, Jackson*
MID	Davila, Garrrett*
MID	Mejia, Erick#
CF	Schnell, Nick
CA	Mejia, Francisco

Some of these guys I absolutely had ranked in my end of year ranking. The highest was Schnell, who I had just outside my top 30. I had Acosta and Davila in the 50-60 range, Erick Mejia in the 70s, and then a few more in the 80-90 range. Only four of these MLFAs from AAA were home grown (Arruda, Cuevas, Adon, and Cluff). Nonetheless, 16 guys off a 31 player roster is a huge number gone.

AAA now has 15 players remaining; and basically the entire 2025 pitching staff is gone. Interestingly, there are a couple names who seem like they should have been declared MLFAs but who remain; Pena (an 17IFA, Orelvis Martinez (just signed as a 26 MLFA), and Seth Shuman (a 19Draftee who should have been declared). I don’t entirely trust these rosters or milb.com transactions, so its possible these guys were also declared MLFAs and missed the announcement, or its possible they’ve already re-signed for 2026. Especially with Shuman, I hope he’s back in the fold.

Also worth mentioning here, a shoutout to Darren Baker, who was released a bit earlier in the off-season to pursue other opportunities.

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From AA: 8 guys

SP	Atencio, Jose
CF	Williams, Donta’ *
CL	Santos, Junior
CF	DeShields, Delino
MID	Vasquez, Samuel
LR	Knowles, Lucas*
1B	Naranjo, Joe
LR	Choi, Hyun-Il

Just two of these 8 were home grown (Knowles and Atencio). I had Atencio ranked relatively high on my end of season ranks (#47) and I had high hopes that the team might retain his services. I had a couple of these guys in the 100+ range (Vasquez, Knowles, Naranjo). Lastly I thought the team could hold onto Choi a bit longer, but perhaps not.

I don’t see any players remaining on the AA roster who seem like they should have been declared. The oldest draftee/signee is Kevin Made, a 19IFA who was young and retains one more year of control.

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From High-A: Six guys.

SU	Otanez, Johan
CA	Colmenares, Jose
LR	Caceres, Bryan
LR	Arias, Wander
SU	Montero, Euri
DH/CF	De La Rosa, Jeremy*

I think it goes without saying that, if you’re not out of A-ball by the time you’ve had 6 seasons in the minors, you’re not really a prospect. And, true to form, the only one of these six guys who I even mentioned in my rankings was De la Rosa, and that’s only because at one point a couple years ago he was in the top 30 range.

Wilmington still has a couple of rostered guys who seem like they should have been declared MLFAs: setup man Yeuris Jimenez and maybe Adam Bloebaum, who was signed as a “MLFA” in 2025 but may really be an “NDFA” for eligibility purposes. Pablo Aldonis (currently in the AFL) was a 19IFA but was young and gets one more year.

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Low-A: just 3 guys

2B	Rivero, Yoander
MID	Dowdell, Kevin*
SU	Kane, Tommy*

Rivero was home grown, the other two were 2025MLFAs. Rivero, coincidentally, was the last remaining 2018IFA player we had, closing the books on what turned out to be a really awful IFA class. The most accomplished player out of the 2018 IFA class was either Rodney Theophile (MLFA last year after getting to AA) or oft-injured Jose Atencio, who made it to AA but missed all of 2025.

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Nobody was cut loose from the FCL team, and just one name from DSL who, frankly, I didn’t even realize was rostered. Sometimes the team sneaks these signings without much in the way of announcement.

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All in all, 34 MLFAs declared on 11/6/25. With all the outrights and MLFAs, the domestic system is now down to 139 players.

Of the 125 players that I ranked at year’s end, 16 of them are now MLFAs.

I think the biggest “shock” to the system is just how much of this year’s AAA squad is now gone. There’s not nearly enough players set to rise up from AA, and there’s not enough guys who would be dropping down from MLB right now (34 on the 40-man, meaning just 8 would move down not including known DL guys). This spells a ton of new MLFAs set to come into the fold this coming spring.

Baseball America is always one of the first (if not the first) shops to put out an early top 10 for teams In November. They then follow it up with their more comprehensive Handbook and top 30 towards the end of January. But, it’s good to get a read on where they think things are at the top. For what its worth, last year BA did not change its top 10 rankings from Nov 2024 to its eventual release in Jan 2025, so it seems likely this is their top 10 for us.

Here’s their top 10 for 2026, and where BA had these players ranked in Mid August, after all the trades and drafting had settled.

Current Rank	8/13/25 Rank	First Name	Last Name	Position
1	1	Eli	Willits	SS
2	2	Jarlin	Susana	RHP (Starter)
3	3	Travis	Sykora	RHP (Starter)
4	4	Alex	Clemmey	LHP (Starter)
5	9	Seaver	King	SS
6	15	Jake	Bennett	LHP (Starter)
7	5	Luke	Dickerson	SS/CF
8	7	Coy	James	SS
9	16	Angel	Feliz	3B/SS
10	11	Landon	Harmon	RHP (Starter)

Here’s some quick observations of this top 10.

• This seems like a very “conservative” top 10, one that’s mostly based on youth, ceiling, and promise. Four of these 10 guys didn’t play above rookie ball, if at all, in 2025.
• A reminder: doing a top 10 is easy. Doing a top 30 is harder.
• BA has no changes to its top four players from mid August, despite a year gone for Sykora and a likely delay in the start of his 2026 season for Susana. I’m not sure I agree with this honestly, especially since Susana was hurt more than once in 2025.
• They elevated Seaver King to #5, despite his season-long malaise, but perhaps with the benefit of seeing his performance in Arizona. Interesting. Is it fair to just “throw out” his entire 2026 at this point thanks to some ill-advised piece of advice from an unnamed Nats player development staffer? My ranking him at #16 just after the season is looking like a take that won’t age well, and I will be putting him back into the top 10 with my own pre-2026 ranking at some point next spring.
• Bennett gets the expected bump well back into the top 10.
• Despite major struggles, Dickerson only drops a couple spots. His ranking is going to be a point of discussion with all these shops this off-season: i’ve seen him as high as #3, and as low as #27, on lists so far this off-season.
• Our two 2025 draft $2M+ bonus prep kids James and Harmon are 8 and 10
• Feliz continues to march up the boards, now inside the top 10 of a major ranking for the first time.

In the midst of a fun World Series, I took a quick peek at the Transactions pages for both the Major League team and the Farm system of the Nats today… not one transaction for the entire month, anywhere in the system. I suppose this isn’t too much of a surprise, given our new GM and the wholesale shakeup of the entire front office, but it is a little curious since smart GMs often use this period to try to sneak players off the 40-man to try to stash them back in the minors before the wave of MLFAs are declared right after the World Series ends.

Update: of course, the moment I publish the Nats do exactly what I said they should be doing, which is to try to “sneak” four guys off the roster and outright them. Salazar, Thompson, Ogasawara, and Stubbs were DFA’d, cleared waivers this week, and were all outrighted to AAA. Both Thompson and Salazar were out of MLB Options and thus could (and did) elect to refuse the outright and are thus now FAs. Ogasawara was a $3.5M IFA signing that hasn’t really panned out, but we’re lucky he sticks around. Stubbs probably took one look at our paltry C-depth and chose to stick around for the time being.

These four moves put the 40-man roster at 36 for the time being and clears the way for the eventual return of the 60-day DL guys, which happens almost immediately once the World Series ends. We have five on the 60-day DL (Grey, Herz, Williams, Millas, and Law) but Law is a FA so will also get cut loose once the WS ends. After that, we’ll have FAs get cut loose, further lowering our active 40-man count, and there’s still plenty of names who probably could/should get DFA’d themselves to make room for this off-seasons Rule5 and FA acquisitions (not the least of which is several from this list: Loutus, Alfaro, Brzycky, Lara, Tena, Pilkington, or even Nunez.

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Note: you can get quick links to Transaction pages, all the resources I maintain, and a slew of other baseball related links at my “Nats Quick Links Page” which I basically use as a bookmark manager for Nats and Baseball stuff at this point.

So, with very little to talk about, we’ve been quiet. Seaver King has come back down to earth; he’s now “only” slashing .354/.456/.583 in the AFL. Fun fact; the Scottsdale AFL team also has a player with both DC and personal ties; one Nick Morabito. Morabito is the son of Brian Morabito, who is the exact same age as I am, and who was a Little League legend growing up in the Vienna/McLean/Reston circles. You know you’re good when, in the 1980s pre social media you were a “known name” to rival little leagues. Brian ended up going to JMU (as I did) and played baseball all four years at JMU before heading back to the DC area to live. His eldest son Nick went to Gonzaga, and was a 2nd round pick, and has been moving up the chain, playing the entire 2025 season at AA Birmingham.

Anyway. once the WS ends, we’ll get all our MLB FAs declared (there’s only a few left: Bell, Law, deJong, and maybe a couple of these mid-season guys added), plus a slew of MLFAs who will have aged out of the system (all 2019 draftees and 2018 IFAs who weren’t older than 18). We don’t have too many of these guys left in the minors, but should include the likes of Cluff, Arruda, Shuman, Knowles, and Cuevas maybe (he was a prep draftee so he may have another year). 2018 IFAs include guys like Atencio, De La Rosa, Colomenares, Vasquez, Otanez, and Rivero. There’s a few more 19D/18IFAs on the roster who we acquired via MLFA already (Santos, Solesky, Narajo) who might be MLFAs again … or maybe they signed multi-year MLFA deals. Or perhaps they’ve already reupped for 2026; this is where tracking the Big Board sometimes gets a little murky. We also have all our 25MLFAs who may or may not be coming back, some of whom played pretty well this year (Schnell).

So, it’ll certainly be interesting when Baseball America lists their declared MLFAs in a few days. We’ll do the requisite XLS work online and then make the inevitable observations about what it means for (especially) the AAA roster, which looks to get gutted of a ton of org guys/MLFAs/4-A types.

So, we’ll be back in November with some of our favorite off-season things to write about: Rule-5 protection, non-tender analysis (both usually in the Mid-November timeframe). The other two main things to talk about in November are Awards Season and Qualifying Offers. Here’s the 2024 off-season Key Dates column for last year that helps drive this year’s schedule.

Most of us have labeled Seaver King at best a disappointment so far in his career, and at worst a failed pick, after getting picked 10th a couple years ago, having now seen the glittering debut performance of possible Nats picks Trey Yesevage or the high prospect ranks of the likes of Braden Montgomery.

But, he’s destroying the ball in the AFL, a league that’s “supposed” to basically be like playing in a AA-level all star game every day.

What’s going on in Arizona?

MLB.com’s Sam Dykstra had the following to say in today’s “Early Standouts from the AFL” email newsletter about King:

Seaver King peaking late: Few Fall Leaguers needed a good autumn as much as the Nationals’ 2024 first-rounder and No. 7-ranked prospect.

While other members of his Draft class surged to the Majors this summer, King hit just .244/.294/.337 with six homers in 125 games between High-A Wilmington and Double-A Harrisburg — two notably pitcher-friendly ballparks. Here in the desert, the right-handed-hitting shortstop has looked much more like his Wake Forest self. He’s 13-for-31 (.419) with two homers, five doubles and only three strikeouts through seven games.

King has been routinely on fastballs, batting .533 against them in the early going while he shoots balls to the gaps. He could stand to pull the ball a little better with his homers going to right-center and right, but with an early hard-hit rate of 71.4 percent and three barrels in 14 batted balls, he is finding the right part of the bat generally in the early small sample. Add in good speed — he has two recorded Sprint Speeds above 30 ft/sec — and King is pushing his stock back up headed into his second offseason.

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A discussion about Park Factors in our Minor League system

We know Wilmington is a super pitcher’s park .. I’m not sure I realized that Harrisburg was as well. I went digging for Park factors; here’s Baseball America’s 2024 Minor League Park factor data. Here’s all our parks in one spot:

Team	Level	Org	Runs PF	Runs Mult	HR PF	HR Mult	wOBA PF	wOBA Mult
Rochester	AAA	WSH	86	0.931	75	0.873	93	0.963
Harrisburg	AAA	WSH	88	0.939	107	1.037	95	0.974
Wilmington	High-A	WSH	93	0.965	84	0.922	98	0.988
Fredericksburg	Low-A	WSH	97	0.984	104	1.018	100	1.001

So, basically, every one of our full season parks is a pitcher’s park. And, as you move up the chain, each higher level’s park is actually harder from a wOBA perspective than the last. Wilmington, which we keep hearing is a death valley for hitters … is really just death for homers (which explains why our team leader in high-A for homers was just 7 this year). It’s 98 for wOBA in general. Harrisburg is actually worse for Runs and wOBA; it just has a spike for HRs due to its pretty easy pull power alleys (325 down the lines, 350 to LCF and RCF).

Aside: When looking at this HR park factor for AAA, by the way, it definitely puts a different spin on the 2025 HR production of the likes of Schnell (21 hrs in 95 AAA games) or Pinckney (20 hrs in 125 AAA games).

Anyway, back to King; We also read in another blog a quote from King from a fellow draftee prospect about approach and patience, something that my fellow Nats bloggers have used to basically draw the conclusion that the entire Nats player development staff is incompetent because King got a tip from a buddy and has had a nice first week in the AFL.

I like that he’s showing power to the opposite field, AND he’s showing speed to the point where a prospect maven is pointing it out. I’m not going to suddenly jump the guy 10 spots in my prospect rankings … but something tells me MLBpipeline may, based on this report.

Can’t wait to see where he goes from here. But i’ll ask this question tot he group? If he finishes the AFL with his current slash line (.419/.486/.774) will it change your mind on his prognosis? He’s only about 7 games through a 30 game season.

One of my favorite posts every off-season is to try to guess what the 2026 rotations might look like, based on 2025 performance, who’s coming back from injury, who the team may or may not pursue in FA, and how many veteran MLFAs the teams needs to fill out our perennially empty AAA rotation. Here’s that off-season thought piece, which of course takes zero FA acquisitions or trades into account as of this date, and makes some strong assumptions on the health of some arms (as noted as we go).

So, Here’s a quick analysis of where we ended 2025 and where we might start 2026 for our entire system. In each section, i’ve got the “candidates” lined up roughly from most to least-likely to be on that team, and then those that make sense to do so are pushed down to the next level.

Yes, it’s way too early to do this. I can revisit this next Spring with updated information/transactions, then use it in early April 2026 posts when we see who the rotations are, to see how decent a job we did predicting. I’m always up for proving how bad I am at player evaluation 🙂

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MLB

In House 40-man Candidates: Gore, Grey, Cavalli, Lord, Alvarez, Irvin, Parker, Ogasawara, Lao, Eder (Herz, Williams)

Thoughts: Gore, assuming he doesn’t get traded, should be next year’s Opening Day starter. I’m assuming Grey is ready to go for opening day; he’ll have the entire off-season to prepare, and I can’t see any reason why he’d be delayed, even though he only got a few rehab starts in 2025. Cavalli gave the team 10 starts at a near-league average ERA+ after a long time away and had peripherals that give some hope (velocity up from 2022, Babip of .327 meaning he was a bit unlucky, etc). So, if we got Grey back to 2023 numbers when he was an All-Star, and if Gore and Cavalli pitched to their capabilities consistently, that’s a nice little 1-2-3 start to your rotation with some upside. At worse case all three are hovering around a 95-98 ERA+ as they did this year, which are all typical 3rd-4th starters. That’s the good news.

Here’s the bad news: Irvin led the league in Earned Runs and Homers allowed, and finished dead last amongst qualified starters in FIP, fWAR, and a couple other categories. Parker would have been right there with him in dead last had he gotten a few more innings. What should you do with a guy who’s the worst starter in the league? Well duh, you should put him in the bullpen. Lord’s splits as a starter were not good: his ERA was 2 full “points” higher than as a reliever, and I think he needs to go back to the pen, as much as I like his ascension story to the majors. Alvarez’s debut couldn’t have gone better, but is he a MLB starter? Nobody seems thinks so; he got almost zero prospect love in his career, and I sense he’ll be a rotation placeholder, morphing into the classical 4-A rubber-armed multi-role lefty for this team for the next few years until he runs out of minor league options, but he held his own and (for now) is probably the 4th or 5th starter in 2026.

I don’t buy Ogasawara as a MLB-capable starter; I sense he’s heading to AAA to prove (or disprove) my theory in 2026. Waiver pickup Lao actually had great AAA numbers this year as a starter and was only up in the MLB bullpen to fill a hole at the end of the season; maybe he competes for the 5th starter job next year. Same with trade acquisition Eder, though his AAA numbers weren’t nearly as good. I don’t sense Herz or Williams will be ready to go for opening day 2026; certainly not Herz, but Williams’ “brace” surgery may get him back quicker. Even if he was 100% healthy, he was abhorrent as a starter in 2025 despite his near all-star performance the first half of 2024, and I sense he should be in the bullpen going forward. So, for now they’re all out of the running.

So, what does that leave us with? Three acceptable starters and a bunch of question marks. How much is this team willing to spend on the open market? A 66-96 team is more than one Starting Pitcher away from competing, so my guess is, another mid-level $10M/year starter, open competition for the 5th starter job, hope for incremental improvements from Gore/Grey/Cavalli, and hope for some help coming up from guys who are in AA or AAA right now.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Gore, Grey, Cavalli, a Free Agent, Alvarez or a spring training competition for 5th.
• Lord, Irvin, Parker to MLB bullpen
• DL: Herz, Williams
• Ogasawara, Lao in AAA rotation
• Eder in AAA bullpen

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AAA

In House Candidates: Lao, Eder, Ogasawara, Solesky, Sampson, Conley, Shuman, Luckham, Cornelio, Bennett

Thoughts: First off, we have four guys likely out the door here as being one year MLFAs (Sampson, Conley) who never earned their way up, and another couple guys (Solesky and Shuman) who I believe are be at the end of their 6year runs with us (both will be 28 this offseason, both had 5+ ERAs in AAA, and both seem like they’ve done all they can done in the game). So, I’m assuming these four are gone for consideration next year, at least as starters. The whole Covid year and what it did to FAs still confuses me, so I may have it wrong here, but even if they’re still under contract, neither merits another year in the rotation based on 2025 performance.

Despite being in the MLB bullpen for most of September, Lao, Eder, and Ogasawara have been primarily starters for their minor league careers and one would think the team would want to see if they can continue. Especially Lao, who had really good AAA starting numbers in Seattle’s system before inexplicably getting waived in September. However, I could also see the argument (especially for Eder) of trying them in the bullpen. I’m not sure Luckham has what it takes to succeed as a starter, so I can see him moving into the Shuman role for next year (LR/SS).

So that leaves Lao, Cornelio, and Ogasawara returning to the AAA rotation for another year, joined by Bennett rising up, and then filled out with a MLFA signing. I can’t really see the team dumping the three vanquished starters (Lord, Parker, Irvin) to AAA. We might see Susana back earlier than expected and he could fit in here relatively soon. But opening day 2026, this makes sense.

The team also still has Lara and Adon, both former starters, and one (Lara) still with some prospect love, who pitched their way out of starter roles and who both had abhorrent numbers in the pen in 2025. Could the team return to them as starters? I don’t think so, even if we need them. We need to see if they can contribute at the MLB level out of the bullpen.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Lao, Ogasawara, Cornelio, Bennett, veteran MLFA
• MLFA/released: Solesky, Sampson, Conley, Shuman
• To the bullpen: Luckham to bullpen as Long reliever/Spot Starter, Eder to bullpen as lefty specialist.

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AA

In House Candidates: Kent, Clemmey, Tolman, Choi, Atencio, Sthele (Susana, Stuart, Sykora hurt)

Thoughts: The Nats late-season promotions of basically the entire season-ending AA rotation was the latest demonstration of their typical pattern of starter handling: they like to get starters’ feet wet in the new level before the new season, so we basically already know what most of the opening day AA rotation will look like. Kent, Clemmey, and Tolman all excelled in High-A this year, earned promotions, and struggled in short AA stints. They make perfect sense to start in AA, though Tolman seems to be more suited at this point as a multi-role reliever, so I’m projecting him to the pen. Atencio sat the entire 2025 season on the AA D/L: He was assigned to Harrisburg on Opening Day, then hit the DL before he could make a start. If he’s ready to go for opening day 2026, then he’s here. He was already planned on being part of the 2025 AA rotation, so I’d imagine he’ll come right back here when healthy. If not, maybe we’re pushing Tolman back into the rotation.

Choi, the 2024 minor league rule5 pickup, was up and back from AAA without holding onto his spot and makes sense to start in AA again. I’d imagine he’d make sense to start in the rotation until Susana is ready to go: if Susana is ready opening day, then we have to make a decision on one of Choi, Sthele, or Atencio.

When Susana is ready to go, you either push Choi to bullpen, demote Atencio, or send Susana straight to AAA. I mean, why not? He had 11 AA starts this year and struck out 70 in 47 innings; what exactly does he have left to prove there? I’m sure AAA could find room (Ogasawara to bullpen, or something).

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Kent, Clemmey, Choi, Sthele, Atencio
• D/L: Susana, Stuart, Sykora
• To the Bullpen: Tolman as LR/SS

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High-A

Candidates: Randall, Garcia, Meckley, Swan, Linan, Polanco, Tepper, Tejeda, Sales

Thoughts: Last year it seemed like Low-A was the place where we’d have a traffic jam; 2026 will be High-A. I count 9-10 legitimate candidates for the High-A roster next year. Lets talk about them.

Randall only had 16 low-A starts before getting pushed up to High-A and traded to us, but was also a 2024 3rd rounder from a decent baseball school (San Diego), so I can’t see him going back down; he will be in High-A for sure. Garcia got solid 2024 draft bonus and dominated Low-A before his promotion: he’s guaranteed to be in this rotation again in 2026 based on his “investment.” Meckley is kind of like Garcia but lesser on all counts; less draft bonus, lesser performance; I think he’s a victim of numbers and heads to the bullpen. Swan started this season in LA’s High-A team, finished it in ours, and showed basically the same stuff year long: good arm but wild. I think he repeats High-A but could also get socially promoted if a need arises given. He could also go into the pen and transition to a high K reliever.

Linan only gave us one High-A start before hitting the DL: he had the best numbers of the three trade acquisitions for their prior teams and probably will be one of the first to move up. But what was his injury? I’m putting either Linan on the opening-day DL, based on ending 2025 on the DL. Post publish update: Thanks to commenter Will for pointing this out: Linan has been put on the AFL roster and is pitching in Arizona, so therefore we can assume his injury was minor. I’m revamping the below prediction as a result.

Polanco just turned 24 and just finished a full season making 23 starts for Low-A; he’s moving up, with nothing left to prove in Low-A. He’s gonna either sink or swim in High-A. Tepper spent entire 2025 on the DL and his usage has been all over the road; I’m not sure he’s ready to be a starter, so I’m guessing he goes to the pen. Tejeda suddenly stopped pitching on August 3rd, but was a gun-slinging 6′ 8″ effective starter before that; i’m hoping nothing bad happened, and with Linan confirmed healthy i’ll hedge and start Tejeda on the DL. Trade acquisition Sales finished off a great year in Low-A, pitching well for both his old and new teams despite being “just” a 10th rounder; he’s solved Low-A and has to be here.

I could make the argument that Randall is less effective than Swan and those two switch places. Or, you could look at Swan’s K/9 rate and think ‘high end closer’ and put him in the pen.

If Linan is healthy, what happens? He’s a bit young yet for AA and definitely needs more High-A time, so perhaps he pushes Tejeda to the bullpen. Or, perhaps Tejeda is still hurt from whatever injury he sustained on or about August 3rd. But for now, here’s what i’m thinking:

With Linan confirmed healthy, but Tejeda not necessarily, I’m putting Linan in rotation and Tejeda on DL to start 2026. If Tejeda is indeed healthy … then someone has to head to the pen, because I think Tejeda needs to start for now. I think if this comes to pass, you’re moving Polanco to the bullpen.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Randall, Garcia, Polanco, Linan, Sales
• D/L: Tejeda
• To the Bullpen: Meckley, Tepper, Swan

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Low-A

Candidates: Sullivan, Romero, Johnson, Agostini, Farias, Feliz plus 2026 college draftees Tonghini, Maddox, Moore, Biven, Huesman, Puk

Thoughts:

Sullivan, the 2023 draftee, missed basically a year and a half, but has more or less dominated Low-A in the 9 cumulative starts he’s made there. He’ll turn 24 in May of next year and really does no good in Low-A, but there’s just too many arms so he starts in Low-A again. He returns. Same with Johnson, who made 8 low-A starts with a 5-something ERA this year as a very old 2025 draft signing. Romero made 14 Low-A starts, missing a month or so of time, with middling results; he’s heading to the bullpen. Agostini missed most of 2025 with injury but is a solid prospect; he should return if healthy.

Two new names moving up from FCL for next year should be Feliz and Farias. Feliz is looking like a solid prospect and is starting to get top-20 prospect love; he had a 2.20 ERA in the FCL this year after posting a 2.96 ERA in the DSL last year. He moves up and is an important young arm for us. Farias wasn’t great in the FCL this year but is already 23 and kind of has to move up; i’m putting him as the 5th starter in 2026 unless the team wants to compete him with one of the 2025 college guys.

All six college 2025 draftees are mentioned in Low-A to begin 2026, but I think all of them will go straight to the bullpen based on their college usage and pro potential. We’ll summarize our 2025 draft day posts here briefly; Tonghini was a setup-guy at Arizona. Maddox was a college SEC starter but a senior sign/5.56 ERA guy. Moore was a bullpen guy his first two years in college and pitched his way out of ODU’s bullpen before getting drafted, but wasn’t great as a starter. Biven was a swingman at Louisville. Huesman barely pitched at all at Vanderbilt, and Puk was a multi-inning Opener for FIU. None of our drafted college arms really project to be useful rotation pieces. The best option to start would be either Maddox or Moore if they need an arm.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Sullivan, Johnson, Agostini, Feliz, Farias
• D/L:
• To the Bullpen: Romero, Tonghini, Maddox, Moore, Biven, Huesman, Puk

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FCL

Candidates: Harmon, Sime, Lunar, Portorreal, Reyes, Carela, Gimenez

Thoughts: Harmon and Sime are our two big bonus prep arms from the 2025 draft: I suppose its possible they start in Low-A in 2026, but that typically hasn’t been the MO of this team with its high school draftees. I’m guessing they do XST, ease into pitching, start in FCL and then maybe move up to Low-A later in the summer if they blow away their fellow teenagers in the complex league.

Lunar and Portorreal repeat FCL after middling 2025 results. Both are still relatively young as a 24IFA and 23IFA respectively. I’m guessing they make way for the three more promising arms coming up from the DSL and move to the bullen.

Moving up from the DSL are the three best starter prospects from the island this year in Reyes, Carela, and Gimenez. All three pitched solidly and it will be interesting to see how they fare. Reyes is a bit older as a 23IFA, while the other two didn’t start the year in the DSL rotation but pitched their way there as 24IFAs. None of these three were big money IFA signings, so they’ll be on a short leash.

One thing to keep in mind: the team loves using the FCL as a rehab weigh-station, so it’s entirely possible the “rotation” ends up being 4 guys and a rotation rehab start; they did this for a while this year.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Harmon, Sime, Reyes, Carela, Gimenez
• D/L:
• To the Bullpen: Portorreal, Lunar

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DSL

Candidates: Torrellas, De La Cruz, Robles, Mejia, Carrasco, Reynoso, plus 26IFA class

Thoughts: Torrellas, De La Cruz, and Robles finished 2025 in the rotation. Mejia and Carrasco were in the rotation to start 2025 but pitched their way out; they could get another shot but seem more likely to head to the pen. Reynoso is an unknown, having pitched in 2024 then missed all of 2025; i’d guess he’s bullpen bound.

The team signed 6 arms last January; not one of them featured in the 2025 rotation. Perhaps we’ll see some of them step up, but it doesn’t seem likely. Not one 25IFA arm had decent numbers this season. However, they also didn’t feature a single 24IFA signing in the 2024 rotation, preferring to bring them onboard a bit more slowly. The Nats havn’t really focused big bonus dollars on arms lately; just one non-trivial bonus amount in the last several drafts (Jose Feliz for $120k in 2023, then several guys in the 2021 class who are already gone), so it’s little surprise they struggle to find competent starters in the DSL.

Prediction for 2026:

• Rotation: Torrellas, De La Cruz, Robles, plus two 25IFA or 26IFAs.
• D/L:
• To the Bullpen: Mejia, Carrasco, Reynoso

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Ok, so that’s what we’re looking at. This may change as we do MLFA releases and signings this coming off-season, or if we add/remove players via trade.

I hope I didn’t miss anyone, but let me know if i’m missing someone obvious and/or if you think i’m crazy.

This is the 6th and last monthly review of all our rotations for the 2025, checking in on the latest month’s worth of production and doing some analysis. For this final post, instead of isolating September’s performance (since the Minor teams only played part of the month), we’ll look at these pitchers’ season-long performance and give the beginnings of some 2026 thoughts as to what next year might look like (a post I like writing a bit later, but which i’ll start the leg work on here).

Each team section analysis will have the same items: current rotation, changes in the last month, observations, next guy to get promoted (if its in the minors), next guy to get cut, and then a few comments about relievers.

Important links for this analysis:

• Big Board
• Nats MLB stats: at baseball-reference.com
• AAA Rochester stats: (all minor league stats at milb.com)
• AA Harrisburg stats
• High-A Wilmington stats
• Low-A Fredericksburg Stats
• FCL Nationals Stats
• DSL Nationals Pitching Stats

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We’ll start with the Majors.

• Opening Day 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Soroka, TWilliams
• End of April 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, TWilliams, Lord
• End of May 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Soroka, TWilliams (back to the original)
• End of June 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Soroka, TWilliams
• End of July 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Lord, Ogasawara
• End of Aug 2025: Irvin, Parker, Lord, Cavalli, Alvarez
• End of Season 2025: Irvin, Lord, Cavalli, Alvarez, Parker/Gore

Changes in last Month: Gore returned from a late August DL trip and the team did a couple of weeks of 6-man rotation. Then they dumped Parker to the bullpen to go back to a 5-man plan when it was clear Alvarez’ debut wasn’t entirely a gimmick. Then Gore hit the DL again, pulling Parker back into the rotation to finish off the season.

Rotation Observations: The team finished 66-96, third worst in the league (though it won’t matter for the 2026 draft, as the Nats will pick 11th no matter what happens in the lottery thanks to being a revenue payor and participating in the 2025 lottery). A big reason for this record is the rotation; they ranked collectively 27th in total fWAR and 29th in ERA (ahead of only the 43-119 Colorado Rockies, who also get kicked out of the 2026 lottery despite the 3rd worst record in the modern age). Parker was demoted to the bullpen, laying the likely groundwork of being replaced in the 2026 rotation. But Irvin was just as bad, finishing dead last in several categories for qualified starters this year.

For the year, Gore had the best ERA+ of the group at 98, but seemed to tail off as the year went on. Physical Fatigue wearing down as a long season went on? Mental Fatigue of playing for a crap team? Lord’s splits as a starter were pretty bad all in all; he was 2 full ERA points better as a reliever. Cavalli’s return was on a par with Gore’s from a performance perspective, a good starting point for 2026. Alvarez had a 2.31 ERA and a 3.39 FIP in his five September starts: that’s something that clearly earns him a shot at next year’s rotation, even if most would think its unsustainable.

Bullpen comments: For the season, most of our existing bullpen was either mediocre/league average, or god-awful. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of cattle call we’ll have for replacements. Or if we have one at all: maybe its just a Rizzo thing to try to build bullpens that way. However (and this kind of buries the lead of my 2026 rotation prediction piece), I feel like 3/5ths of the rotation at the end of this year heads to the 2026 bullpen, perhaps buttressing it and giving us some performance next year.

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AAA Rochester

• Opening Day 2025: Alvarez, Lara, Ogasawara, Choi, Solesky
• End of April 2025: Alvarez, Lara, Solesky, Shuman, Cavalli (rehab)
• End of May 2025: Alvarez, Solesky, Shuman, Cavalli, Sampson
• End of June 2025: Alvarez, Solesky, Shuman, Cavalli, Sampson
• End of July 2025: Alvarez, Solesky, Cavalli, Conley, Ogasawara
• End of Aug 2025: Alvarez, Conley, Luckham, Sampson, Cornelio
• End of Season 2025: Sokesky, Sampson, Shuman, Eder (Luckham DL, Conley and Cornelio restricted)

Changes since end of last month: The last month of AAA was chaotic, with lots of last minute paper moves to move guys on and off the restricted list or the DL to finish the season. Alvarez got deservedly called up, he was replaced by Eder coming off the DL (which he hit almost as soon as we traded for him). Then, Luckham hit the DL, replaced by Shuman. Cornelio and Conley got stashed on the restricted list at season’s end: they were replaced by Solesky coming back off the DL briefly and then the end of the season hitting before they could return Cornelio. So, really, the “rotation” for Sept was primarily Sampson, Conley, Cornelio, Luckham, and a grab bag of starts from a slew of others.

Rotation Observations: 18 guys got starts in AAA this year, 12 of which were actual AAA starters (3 were rehab starts, 3 more were “Openers” in bullpen games). Of those 12, I’d only categories a couple as even being competent in terms of performance: Alvarez and Ogasawara (not surprisingly, both ending the season in the majors). The rest were a slew of ERAs in the 5’s and 6s (if not higher). I’d be expecting a wholesale reshuffle of AAA next season. We’ll likely we’ll be seeing a big contingent of 40-man arms pushed down to AAA in 2026 combined with the typical Nats cattle call of veteran 30-something MLFAs like this year’s Pilkington, Sampson, and Conley.

Next guy to get Promoted: Nobody on this list pitched well enough in aggregate to push for even a shot at the 2026 MLB rotation via a ST invite, though (again, burying the lead on a future post) Cornelio likely is getting added to the 40-man to avoid Rule-5 and may be in MLB camp. But, his 8-game stint wasn’t fantastic to finish out 2025 and will start 2026 in AAA.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: I’m guessing 2025 MLFA Sampson and Conley’s time here is done. Solesky may be at MLFA as well, depending on the deal he signed before last season. Shuman turns 28 in December and was a 2019 draftee, which I believe means 6-years MLFA for him as well, so we should see lots of churn in this rotation next year.

Bullpen comments: There were a slew of Sept callups from the bullpen, but perhaps more notably is which 40-man arms the team left in AAA to finish out the season. Salazar (Waiver claim), Loutus (waiver claim), Brzycky (NDFA), and Lara (19IFA) all had relatively awful AAA numbers this season, and one has to think they’re amongst the first guys to get DFA’d when the team needs to find its first four slots for its 60-day DL guys in the off-season moves coming up (which happens right after the World Series concludes). Of the rest, only Davila had anywhere close to decent numbers.

But, this is more of an indication of just how much the AAA team has fed the MLB bullpen this year: 8 of the 9 guys in the MLB bullpen at year’s end was promoted up this season. So, bravo for the production.

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AA Harrisburg

• Opening Day 2025: Shuman, Luckham, Saenz, Susana, Atencio
• End of April 2025: Luckham, Saenz, Susana, Choi, Soroka (rehab)
• End of May 2025: Luckham, Saenz, Choi, Cornelio, Conley (with multiple Gomez openers)
• End of June 2025: Luckham, Choi, Cornelio, Conley, Stuart with Lara, Sykora at end of month.
• End of July 2025: Luckham, Choi, Cornelio, Bennett, Huff/Schultz openers (with Sampson, Sykora, Lara each getting 1 start)
• End of Aug 2025: Bennett, Susana, Tolman, Kent, Clemmey
• End of Season 2025: Bennett, Tolman, Kent, Clemmey, Choi

Changes since end of last month: The only move of September was to put Susana on the DL with thankfully a non-arm injury, and replace him with Choi.

Rotation Observations: The performance of the guys in the Harrisburg rotation was awesome this year, with stellar season-long performances from Bennett, Cornelio, Susana, and Luckham for big chunks of the year. Clemmey and Kent’s promotions didn’t go very well for the last 5-6 turns of the season, but they both more than earned their spot and will be 1A and 1B in next year’s rotation. I would imagine that Susana misses the first part of the 2026 season with his Lat surgery and will get a month in AA once he’s going before heading to AAA next year where he belongs. Sykora and Stuart are both likely out for the entirety of 2026. Tolman (like Bennett) missed huge chunks of the last few years and had a rough debut in AA, but should be there to start 2026.

Next guy to get Promoted: Bennett likely has done “enough” to start next year in AAA; he turns 25 in December, lost all of 2024 and a huge chunk of 2025 to injury, barely pitched in 2023 as well, and its time for him to get a full season in.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: Choi was demoted out of the rotation and only put back thanks to injuries, but his overall numbers really weren’t that bad on the season.

Bullpen comments: there’s definitely some promising arms in the AA bullpen; Schultz, Huff, Vasquez, and Amaral all were promoted up from High-A this season. Schultz and Huff made spot starts and threw a ton of multi-inning appearances.

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High-A Wilmington

• Opening Day 2025: Clemmey, Cornelio, Kent, Sthele, Tepper
• End of April 2025: Clemmey, Cornelio, Kent, Sthele, Arias
• End of May 2025: Clemmey, Kent, Sthele, Sykora, Bennett, Stuart (rehab) plus a bunch of spot starts
• End of June 2025: Clemmey, Kent, Sthele, Bennett, and four rehab stars from Ogasawara/Lara
• End of July 2025: Clemmey, Kent, Sthele, Tolman, Susana rehab starts plus Tejeda and Garcia late.
• End of Aug 2025: Sthele, Garcia, Meckley, Randall, Swan plus a slew of spot starts
• End of Season 2025: Sthele, Garcia, Meckley, Randall, Swan

Changes since end of last month: None; the last month was very stable.

Rotation Observations: Sthele was the only guy to go the whole season in the rotation: 7-7, 4.22 ERA, 1.11 whip, and a 82/24 K/BB in 138IP. Is that enough to get promoted? Probably not, but do you have him repeat High-A? Two of our three High-A starter acquisitions (Randall, Swan) finish off their seasons on our High-A team giving the Nats mediocre-to-bad stints. Garcia & Meckley were both Nats 2024 draftees; Garcia a bit more heralded (6th rounder $425k bonus) than Meckley (12th rounder, $150k bonus), but both finished off with middling High-A numbers after good (Garcia) to mediocre (Meckley) Low-A numbers.

Next guy to get Promoted: Sthele could get socially promoted; not sure what he’s got left to prove in High-A, even if he may not cut it in AA.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: None of these guys are getting sent back down; its either the rotation or the bullpen at this level

Bullpen comments: I have two main comments about the High-A bullpen: first, we know Wilmington is a pitcher’s park in a relative pitcher’s league, so there’s lots of guys in Wilmington with decent numbers (most of them already promoted to AA). Of those ending the year on the roster, Shout-out to Aldonis, Arguelles, and Glavine perhaps as having halfway decent seasons.

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Low-A/Fredericksburg

• Opening Day 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia
• End of April 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia with Bennett making his 2025 debut
• End of May 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia with two “rehab” starts from Bennett/Sykora
• End of June 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia, Romero
• End of July 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Romero, Sullivan, Johnson
• End of August 2025: Polanco, Romero, Sullivan, Johnson, Sales
• End of Season 2025: Polanco, Romero, Sullivan, Johnson, Sales

Changes since end of last month: None.

Rotation Observations: Polanco was the sole guy to make it the entire season in the Low-A rotation, turning 24 at season’s end. He was good but not great; 3.71 ERA, 1.25 whip, .225 BAA, but got passed over several times to get moved up. Romero came off the DL and then proceeded to walk more guys than he struck-out for the season; he turns 24 before next season and is at a cross-roads. Sullivan finished the season healthy and with a 3.23 ERA in 7 starts. Our 2024 draftee Johnson is a super interesting case, getting just $2k to sign out of UMBC and dominating (as he probably should have) in the FCL, but struggled in a month or so in the Low-A rotation to finish out the season. Lastly trade acquisition Sales finished off a great year in Low-A, pitching well for both his old and new teams.

Next guy to get Promoted: Sales by performance, Polanco and Johnson by age.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: Romero probably has pitched himself into a corner.

Bullpen comments: By Season’s end, the “bullpen” in Fredericksburg was pretty bloated, with 12 bullpen arms to go with the 5 rotation guys. When FCL ended, the team called up a slew of guys from the affiliate team to go along with a handful of the 2025 draftees. None really got any semblances of useful stats.

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FCL/Rookie

• Opening day: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Johnson, Rehab starts
• End of May 2025: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Johnson, Lunar
• End of June 2025: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Lunar, Sullivan (rehab)
• End of Season/End of July 2025: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Lunar, Johnson

Changes since end of last month: none; season ended in July.

Rotation Observations: The team moved up Johnson and Farias, left the other three guys in the FCL once the season ended, which is as good of an indication of what those guys did this year.

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DSL/Rookie

• Opening day: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Carrasco, Mejia
• End of June 2025: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Carrasco, Torrellas
• End of July 2025: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Torrellas, Carela
• End of Season/End of Aug 2025: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Torrellas, Carela with Gimenez

Changes since end of last month: none; Season ended in August.

Rotation Observations: Basically, there’s 3 good starter prospects here (Reyes, Carela, Gimenez) and three who’ll be back next year (De la Cruz, Robles, Torrellas). Reyes looked the most promising, but all three solid starters should come stateside for 2026. Depending on how many IFA arms we sign next January, Robles is probably the first to go.

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That’s it for 2025 Rotation reviews.

Next up (and I was kind of writing it as I did this piece, which is why this one is so late) I’ll do a too-early glance at what the 2026 rotations might look like.

Hey there Readers

I’m going to use this opportunity to give some incremental updates and call out some improvements I’ve made to a couple of the main online Nats Data Resources I maintain. Just in case you hadn’t been to these resources in a while.

As always, any suggestions for improvements or errors noticed are always appreciated.

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Big Board

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc/edit?usp=sharing

The Big Board shows our entire system, from MLB to DSL, with players generally in their starting spots at any given time, rotations kept in the order they appear, and bullpen arms kept roughly in their roles. The 2025 Rosters are now frozen for the end of the season, and I’ve created the 2026 Roster and 2026 Release page to start keeping track of player transactions (first one for the new tab was Darren Baker’s requested release).

MLB has recalled all 40-man players, and restored all 7 and 15-day DL players to the active roster, so MLB shows at 40/40 right now. The five 60-day DL guys won’t be returned until the World Series is over; that will correspond with the technical separation of these FAs to be: Bell, Law (who himself is on the 60-day), deJong, Alfaro, 25MLFA Pilkington, and 24MLFA Stubbs, so I don’t imagine we’ll have any DFA’s to return the 60-day DL guys at the onset. However, the exact terms of these MLFA deals can vary, so they actually may be multi-year deals. AAA also cleared up all its DL and Restricted list in late September, but the lower leagues have not, so there’s still a slew of DL and Restricted names on those rosters.

There’s a small number at the top of the Big Board, which keeps track of the total number of players under contract in the four domestic minor leagues. It attempts to keep track of this number to see how it compares to the 165 total system limit, which the team flirted with a couple times this season. That’s the main improvement I’ve added to the Big Board lately, in addition to the color coding of Promotions and Demotions throughout the season. Each player is also a link to their milb.com page (for minor leaguers) or their baseball-reference.com page (if they’re primarily MLBers).

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Draft Tracker

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY/edit?usp=sharing

I made a relatively large addition to the Draft Tracker this year: I added the “High Level” column to each player. I did this because I have dreams of doing a massive analysis trying to quantify what makes for a “good draft” by looking at the lower rounds to see what expectations are for these players. For example: if you draft a college guy in the 15th, where do you “expect” that player to get to? If they never get out of Low-A, that seems to have “met expectations” for that player, but if they get to AA is that a win?

Anyway, this analysis stalled once I started getting into the 2019 and prior drafts, where we went to 40 rounds instead of the current 20. I’ve been critical of the sport for cutting these 20 rounds (and cutting the entire Short-A level), but must admit it was kind of shocked at how many of our draftees never got out of Short-A. For example; in 2017 we drafted 33 players; here was the high-level breakdown:

• MLB: 5: Romero, Crowe, Tetreault, Cousins, Klobotis, Raquet
• AAA: 3: Freeman, Dunlap, Johnston
• AA: 2: Connell, Troop
• High-A: 4
• Low-A: 10
• Short-A: 6
• FCL: 2

A slew of the Low-A top-outs were in Short-A in the draft year of 2017, got assigned to Low-A to start 2018, and were released directly out of that league. So, the question is, is this a typical distribution expectation for a 40-round draft? Was this generally speaking a good or bad draft (hint: this was an awful draft, even with 6 guys getting to the majors, since 3 of them made the majors for other teams and the other three combined gave us a career -1.0 bWAR).

I initially replaced the Rule5 Eligible column with this high level, thinking that Rule5 eligible was a useless field, but then immediately returned it. Thank god for backups.

My big “value add” to the Draft Tracker generally is to have year-specific Draft worksheets where I keep track of the exact Bonus dollars as they’re announced, which gives us some insight into the negotiations for later-signing guys. I also have schools, commits, social media links, NDFAs, etc. I have done this same analysis for “local draft guys” (i.e. DC/MD/VA players) in the past, but kind of have petered out on tracking local players in general over the past few years. Also of note; the player names are links to milb.com pages/baseball-reference.com pages for convenience as with the Big Board.

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IFA Tracker

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ksPorXhEHhtkNAGqxrJWqUFkvioMgoWhBU50uaZstc8/edit?usp=sharing

A couple years ago I had the brilliant notion to create an IFA tracker in the same format as the Draft Tracker, because, well, why not; its an important way we ingest talent and we sign 20+ players a year.

My big value add to the IFA tracker this year was to add in High Level, as I did with the Draft tracker. This analysis led to a pretty obvious observation; a huge majority of these players never get out of the DSL. Like, a massive percentage. Take our 2018 class; we had 38 signees. here’s their highest levels:

• DSL: 16
• FCL: 13
• Low-A: 3
• High-A: 4
• AA: 2
• None higher

Five of these guys are still active, having resigned after their initial 7year stint expired after 2024, but who may be re-hitting MLFA this off-season. One may still pan out; Atencio, who was solid for us as a AA starter in 2025 then missed the entirety of 2025 with injury but who is still just 24. But, will he re-sign? did he already? The Covid year throws all this analysis into doubt.

Nonetheless, this is a lot of players churned through DSL and FCL for very little payoff.

The last time we even got a MLB player out of an IFA draft was in 2019 (Andry Lara), before that 2017 (Ferrer). There were more in 2016 and prior, but I havn’t gone back to do “high level” analysis that far back because it becomes pretty difficult to track down these players at some point: the DSL rosters aren’t nearly as comprehensively kept as the domestic rosters. Also, bonus dollar figures are incredibly tough to come by, even in recent years. For example, I know that our IFA 2025 pool was $6.2M, but I could only account for about $4.9M of bonus dollars being spent. We had 10 signees with no dollar amounts announced; were they all $10k? More? Less? Did we really leave $1.3M of bonus dollars on the table? I certainly hope not.

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Nationals Prospects Ranks

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xs9fmb-dctE90hTS3bdozznETS-Oc3GsMuGzRo2faUc/edit?usp=sharing

This is more of a collection of Prospect ranks, but I also publish my own ranks (recently discussed here with my post-season 125 rank). It’s a good place to kind of see the trends of other sites and how they’re ranking our guys. I also do a ton of value add here, putting in starting levels each year, bonus amounts,

There’s now 270 ranks dating back to pre Washington Nationals days. We’ll get a slew of updated ranks over the course of the off-season, with the major pundits mostly publishing in Jan/Feb of next year. I’ll re-do my top 125 at that time, add in the missing 2025 with non-trivial bonus dollars plus the 2026 IFA class, remove MLFAs and other releases we make this coming off-season, and (maybe) will even attempt to do the impossible: rank all 150+ minor leaguers in one spot.

You can see i’ve already highlighted in my recent 125 rank the players who I need to revisit, who might be too high or too low. I’ve also added in placeholders for another 10 players who probably all slot into the 80-90 range (those being the rest of the 2025 class plus some of the higher-bonus dollar 2025 IFAs).

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Anyway, happy off-season. Can’t wait to see what the new regime has in mind.

Next big update to these docs will come at the end of the World Series, where all MLB and MLFAs are declared. I’ll try to keep up with the releases and the signings as best that I can, with the caveat that milb.com doesn’t always have the best record keeping.

As far as I can tell, anyone who we drafted in 2019 should become a new 6-year MLFA, and 2018IFAs also should hit MLFA unless they’ve agreed to some extension. We have a slew of 2019 draftees and 2018IFAs on our rosters who probably become new MLFAs on 11/1 or thereabouts.

• AAA: Cluff, Arruda, Solesky, Shuman, Cuevas
• AA: Naranjo, Knowles, Santos, Vasquez, Atencio
• High-A: De La Rosa, Colomenares, Otanez
• Low-A: Rivero