We had some pretty clear cut needs heading into the off-season. Starter depth, a power-hitting 1B/DH option, maybe a 3B, and some bullpen help. In order to fill these spots, the team has turned to some familiar faces.
The Nats have announced a couple of veteran player signings in the past couple of days, both with very recent ties:
Additionally we’ve acquired a couple more unhearalded players in minor moves:
So, what do these moves tell us? In no particular order:
Pitching prognosis with moves so far:
- With both Williams and Soroka signed, not only do the Nats not trust that Cavalli is ready to go to start 2025 … they think he may not becoming back for a while.
- They now have 7 healthy starters for 5 spots to open the season, and Herz in particular may have just lost his starter role. We’ll have a good old 5th starter competition all spring.
- No, I don’t see them doing a 6-man rotation.
- I’m guessing we go Gore, Williams, Irvin, Parker, Soroka as the rotation to open the season, with Herz in AAA and Cavalli either on the DL or in AAA himself.
- Yes, Soroka was in the bullpen last year; they didn’t spend $9M to have a middle reliever; he’s gonna be tested as a starter to see if he can reclaim his prior starting glory.
- No, I don’t believe they’ll put Williams in the bullpen; not on a 2yr deal and not after his all-star level performance to open last season. They’re going to see if he can repeat his performance of 2024. And if he can, he’ll be trade bait unless this team is in the Wild Card race in July. He should be the #2 starter of this squad behind Gore going opening day.
Bats prognosis with moves so far:
- Lowe for a reliever we got off the garbage heap is found money (Robert Garcia == waiver claim in August 2023 from Miami). Fantastic trade. I don’t care if Lowe isn’t a long term solution at 1B; we can replace Garcia easily enough (he had a negative bWAR in 2024).
- Bell clearly will be the primary DH, and since he’s a switch hitter he could slot in at 1B when the team faces a lefty and put a RH bat like Chapparo or Yepez in the DH slot for the day.
- Bell was a solid 3-win player for us a couple years ago but has now played for 5 teams in 3 years and i’m sure wouldn’t mind some stability. But, he also has to know exactly what he’s signed up for with a one year deal; a chance to shine first half and earn a trade to a contender.
- These two moves probably dump Chapparo or Yepez to AAA; neither should start at 3B (Tena for now) and there’s not enough bench bats to go around. Assuming we’re looking at Adams as the backup C (no options), Baker as one utility infielder (Nunez can go hit .200 in AAA), either Garrett or Call as the 4th OF, and then either Chapparo or Yepez as that 1B/DH bench bat, there’s just one bench spot left, and we havn’t talked about House winning the opening day 3B job and/or acquiring a veteran 3B.
Do these moves make us better in 2025?
- Williams alone should be a 6-win player if he pitches as he did last year. But that’s rare air; lets assume he regresses from his 2.03 ERA of last year but still gives us 5-win pace performance all year.
- Soroka would replace Corbin’s -0.9 bWAR season with something positive; even his 4.74 ERA season was positive on the bWAR stable, and if he falters we replace him with Herz (who put up a near-1 win season in his 19 starts).
- So that’s a swing of at least 4 full wins just in the rotation, before considering expected incremental improvements from guys like Gore and Irvin, who were improving all year.
- Meanwhile on the bat side; we got negative bWAR out of both 1B and 3B, two of your most important bats on the field. We should get something positive out of what we have now for 3B, and we’re clearly improving 1B so that’s a 2-3 win swing right there as well.
- This is how you go from 71 wins to 77 wins without much fanfare. Then you count full seasons and growth from Wood and Crews and suddenly you’re a .500 team.
Lastly…
- As much as I don’t want to admit it, the signings of Bell, Williams, Soroka, the acquisition of Lowe … these are not “we’re competing in 2025” moves. These are “i’m acquiring flippable assets for the 2025 trade deadline” moves once again. There does not seem to be a 9-figure FA signing in the cards to shake things up, because .. well why would we at this point? There’s no reason to spend money unless you can see the target in sight. That’s what we learned in 2011, the last time Rizzo was architecting a dynasty.
I’m not convinced Rizzo is done. the two starters make Herz, Parker or Irwin expendable if they suit another teams’ fancy as part of a deal.
FredMD
30 Dec 24 at 4:52 pm
Am I reading this right? Are you making a conservative project that Trevor Williams is a 5 WAR pitcher? Or do you mean he will be a 5 win pitcher just like Patrick Corbin was a 6 win pitcher in 2022 (i.e. 6-19)?
There is NO scenario where Williams is a 5 WAR pitcher. There were only 8 pitchers in all of baseball this past season with 5+ WAR. Williams has only exceeded 3 WAR once in his 9 season career. He’s had more negative WAR seasons (3) than he has >2.0 WAR seasons (2). If we get 1 WAR out of Williams, we should consider ourselves lucky. Which is why, like Soroka, I don’t see him staying in the rotation long. In typical Nats fashion, they’ve moved on from refusing to convert their own failed SPs to relief, to now refusing to keep modestly successful failed-SPs-converted-to-RPs in relief. First, Williams had a remarkably good season in relief with the Mets, before signing with the Nats to throw exclusively in the rotation. It was a giant bust for the first year until Williams caught lightning in a bottle for 2 months. Now they’ve recruited Soroka in the same situation. Let’s hope we see an imitation of 2024 Williams and not 2023.
Bell is another uninspired signing. He’ll be better than what we currently have, but much like Williams, I don’t really understand the point of all this. Even with a wildly optimistic projection, these moves bring us to a win total in the high 70s. Where are the other 15 wins going to come from that are needed to get us into the playoffs if ownership refuses to spend big on free agents? James Wood and Dylan Crews immediately turn into perennial All Star/MVP candidates, sure. But even then, we’d still need to find another 5+ wins somewhere.
What’s the end game here? Are we supposed to be placated by not being the worst team in baseball, but still far from playoff contention?
Since 2025 is clearly another write off with any significant spending off the table, what’s the plan for 2026? What’s the realistic scenario for what 2027 looks like? Because after that, this team’s core begins to dismantle, Garcia, Gore and Gray will depart to free agency (not to mention Lowe, Bell, Soroka and Williams). Then Abrams the following year. While the clock is ticking on our young core, we’ve just written off another year of our increasingly narrow window. I really don’t understand what the team’s plan is here.
Will
30 Dec 24 at 5:16 pm
I agree with the tenor of Todd’s last point. I said in my comment on the last post that between these moves and hoping for more out of Wood and Crews, and more maturing from Crews and Ruiz, it feels like the Nats have inched to close to a .500 team. That’s not making the playoffs, but since they’ve lost at least 90 for the last four seasons, it certainly makes the team more watchable.
Random thoughts:
— Trevor Williams is by far the best bang-for-buck starting pitching signee in the majors. Even if the wheels fall off, there’s not much invested in him. I mean, Buehler got $21 million??? And every single long-term pitching FA scared me, either due to injury history, long contract + regression (particularly Burnes), or both.
— That’s been the problem all offseason with looking at “9-figure FAs” — none of them really fit what the Nats need, within the logic of the expected contracts. Lowe is as good an overall player as Alonso is. Overpaying Bregman for seven years of regression when one of your top prospects plays 3B, as does the top draft prospect, doesn’t make much sense.
— I’m not as sold on Irvin being a demi-lock for the rotation as others seem to be. He had the same FIP as Corbin, even with a very friendly .273 BABIP. I think Irvin is more is-what-he-is as he approaches his age-28 season than Herz (24) or Parker (25) are. And they were both half a point better in FIP than Irvin last season.
— As I commented on the last post, I’d be looking to trade from among Irvin/Parker/Herz for a league-average or better 3B who is controlled for a year or two. If you’re truly intent on getting the band back together, a Candy reunion wouldn’t even cost one of those guys. Taking on Arenado’s contract probably wouldn’t either. (Not sure I would advise that, but at least you’d get the plus defense. And he has a full no-trade so would have to be offered some extra incentive.) Would the Dodgers be willing to move Muncy to save a little money? There’s been some speculation that Bohm would be available from the Phils. There’s an ongoing debate at NatsTalk of signing Josh Rojas or DeJong, but other than good defense, they wouldn’t move the needle much at the plate. Some rumbling that the Mets might move either Vientos or Baty. (The Nats did trade with them in the Winker deal and got what looks like an excellent return in Stuart.)
— Others seem more concerned about Bell’s splits than I am. They’re not incredibly skewed. And if you’re worried, Yepez hit LHP pretty well. Bell may or may not have anything left, but they didn’t invest much to find out. I’m certainly more fine with it than giving Santander $80M.
KW
30 Dec 24 at 5:30 pm
I see that Will was making a glass-more-than-half-empty post at the same time that I was trying to convince myself that it’s close to half full. I also have been frustrated with the lack of willingness to spend . . . but for this particular offseason, there haven’t been many guys who have interested me enough to spend on, particularly for contracts of five-plus years. I certainly agree that the “clock” on the “window” has started ticking. But I also never thought they’d sign Burnes, Bregman, Alonso, and Santander, even though they have the money to do so. Nor would doing so particularly make them a playoff team.
KW
30 Dec 24 at 5:38 pm
I have a few points I’d like to add to the mix.
First, as far as whether we should expect Trevor Williams to get Cy Young votes, I think all Todd did was extrapolate his bWAR from last year to 150 innings. As a projection, I believe that’s wildly unrealistic. Even in samples as long as a full season, FIP (TW’s was 2.79 last year) is more predictive of future ERA than ERA (2.03). That differential was the 21st most favorable out of 170 pitchers who pitched 50 or more innings.
In fact, in samples this small (67 IP), we should really be using xFIP (3.82) and especially so because no one thinks TW’s true talent HR/FB is 4.1%. That number, by the way, ranked 1st among the 170 and was a full 2 percentage points better than the 2nd, Chris Sale.
I don’t mean to shit on Williams. Even 3.82 would basically tie with Gore and Herz for the top of our rotation and would be an absolute steal given the contract. But that would probably top out around 2.5 or 3 WAR, even assuming perfect health.
Also, I just want to say that is the optimistic take on TW. That’s the “I believe last year was real and sustainable and the league can’t meaningfully counteradjust” perspective. Steamer and Zips both project him to put up less than 1 WAR with an ERA around 4.60. That outcome is possible too. So is worse.
Second, I want to wholeheartedly second KW’s suggestion about trading from our SP depth. Baseball Trade Values is far from perfect, but they have Herz ($35M) and Parker ($21M) with more surplus value than any non-Crews prospect in our system. House and King are just under Parker, and then there’s a bunch down around 10-12M.
You could get a real top-drawer trade target like Royce Lewis with a package like Parker + House + Vaquero/Lile. Maybe that’s a bit short, but it’s Bazzell short and not Sykora short. A trade like that would be a really good use of this depth, and that’s the pipedream I’m holding onto instead of the one about signing Bregman.
And that brings me to point 3. I share the general agreement that most of these specific moves were good decisions, taken in isolation. But if the budget is not there now, will it ever be? And if the longterm plan is to put together .500 teams on a shoestring budget and hope to luck into the occasional wildcard, I’m not sure I can justify giving them as much attention as I do. I’m definitely not there yet, but I don’t want to root for a team trying to be the Rays.
I mean, they could have spent serious but reasonable money and we’d be projecting to compete for a wild card. Not a favorite, but in the mix and likely to play meaningful September ball. They chose to do it another way. A more efficient way, but one that leaves the team fundamentally worse. I get the offseason isn’t over, and maybe it’s just been about geo preferences and Rizzo being out on a couple of specific players, but it hasn’t been 1 or 2 players, it’s whole set of this year’s FAs. The simplest explanation is the budget isn’t there. And that’s hard to be optimistic about.
SMS
30 Dec 24 at 8:26 pm
SMS, you’ve said well, what I struggled to. In the absence of substantial free agent spending, what’s the objective of this team? How do we make ourselves into a playoff contender without spending?
Tanking doesn’t even work anymore as a rebuilding method with the top 10 draft pick penalty for a team with the market size (and thus earning potential) of the Nats. The Nats got extremely fortunate this year, but next season the best we can hope for is picking 10th, so the 2026 draft isn’t going to be particularly beneficial. And in any case, even if we draft for immediate need, that our 1-1 pick in 2025 isn’t going to meaningfully contribute to the team until 2027 at the earliest.
Rizzo does indeed have a knack for acquiring talent via trades, but he’ll need to be perfect, making Turner-for-Souza tier trades regularly, and never make any Scherzer/Turner-for-Ruiz/Gray mistakes (which one could argue is a big part of the reason why our rebuild has come up short). But with the talent on the team and in the system, and more generally there being far fewer dumb GMs to rip off than a decade ago, I just don’t see where the trade value in return is going to come from.
I just don’t see a path that – compared to the 29 other teams – generates us significantly more talent and makes us a ~90 win team, besides by spending via free agency. This was a really good SP free agency market, arguably the best in years (and for years to come). Instead of investing in an arm or two to anchor the youth core we’re building, we invested a modest sum in reclamation projects, who – if they succeed – will price us out next winter and sign with high payroll teams, or – if they fail – will continue to perpetuate the team as unserious having put up another 90+ loss season.
So again, I pose to the optimists here, what’s does a 2026 Nats playoff team look like? I’m genuinely curious how others see this. Are we counting on the Phillies/Mets/Braves utterly collapsing, and we sneak in with a high 80s win total? Do we need Crews and Wood to turn into MVP candidates? Or Sykora to be the second coming of Skenes, and nearly win a CYA in his rookie season? Or is the playoffs out of the question in 2026?
Going into the offseason, I thought we were at a point where if we signed, say, Kim (+4 WAR at 3B), Walker (+4 WAR at 1B), Fried (+4-5 WAR at SP), and a reclamation SP like Buehler, Bieber or Soroka (+2 WAR at SP with some significant upside), we’d have made ourselves playoff contenders, and if the cards fell the right way with our young guys, we could’ve been frighteningly good.
While Kim hasn’t yet signed, if we estimate he gets $17m/year, signing those 4 free agents would’ve cost about $75-90m in AAV, or $44-59m more than our budget signings (Bell, Williams, Soroka and Lowe cost $33m), elevating our payroll to between $150-165m, smack dab at the median, between the Giants in 14th ($167m) and the Cardinals in 16th ($147m). I think that’s perfectly reasonable.
Instead we signed Josh Bell, who’s been worth -0.2 bWAR combined in the past two seasons (compared to Walker at 6.4). Trevor Williams who’s been worth 2.4 WAR (compared to Fried at 6.1). Lowe 5.3 WAR (compared to Kim at 8.4 WAR). And instead of a 14 win boost, we’re looking at somewhere around a 4-6 win boost. And on top of that, they’re all to short team deals, meaning we need to go back to the FA cast offs heap next winter again. If you thought this winter’s free agent class was unimpressive, just wait til you look at 2026’s. After Vlad Guerrero and Kyle Tucker, who are certainly out of our price range, the next best hitter is… Kyle Schwarber? 36 year old Marcell Ozuna? Bo Bichette, who was worth negative WAR this season? And the best pitcher… Zac Gallen? Ranger Suarez?
Will
31 Dec 24 at 5:00 am
I would like to see the Nats make effective deals, not just cost-effective deals. Many fans seem on board with the idea of saving money, but is it really saved money (from an owner’s POV) when you look at franchise value and sales potential of a more attractive club for fans? And by the way, just because you sign Trevor Williams for two years and $14 million doesn’t mean that you can’t make him a relief pitcher. That’s only big money by Nats’ standards.
Anonymous
31 Dec 24 at 9:08 am
when I look for improvement in the short term I see 1,000 PAs that will not be taken by Gallo, Meneses, Rosario or Senzel but rather Wood, Crews and Lowe.
I see a young pitching core with working in a system that seemed to bring out the best in each of them albeit for short stretches in some cases.
when I look long term I see a team finally committing the dollars to the minor league system. these dollars don’t pop up in the headlines but you don’t get up and coming people here without it.
and when I really dream big I see MLB or some other deep pocket finally fixing the MASN mess and setting up the team to be an upper mid-level spender. that’s all it will take to be a 90 win team and that’s all you have to be to be in the playoffs.
FredMD
31 Dec 24 at 10:08 am
@will: Trevor Williams was worth 2.6 bWAR in just 13 starts last year. Yes, if he pitches like he did in 2024 for an entire year, he’ll be BETTER than a 5-win pitcher. Yes that’s a ridiculous “if.” But its the truth. Simple math/projecting his performance last year to a full season.
Do I think Williams will replicate his 2024? no way. Not for an entire season. If he’s got a 2.00 ERA again at the ASB he’ll be in high demand and won’t deliver 5 wins to us anyway.
Also, those making an xFIP based or Steamer/projection based argument should know that unless you’re a 12 k/9 guy, xFIP thinks you’re worse than your performance. FIP ignores 70% of outcomes in the sport, and drastically over rates high-K guys/underrates pitch-to-contact and ground ball guys. I have a real problem depending on FIP for any argument related to pitchers unless these limitations are noted, and even more so xFIP.
Todd Boss
31 Dec 24 at 10:34 am
I’m happy to defend FIP and xFIP, not as perfect models by any stretch, but as more reliable predictors of future ERA given sample sizes of one season or less. It just consistently is.
And the reason that it is, is that the results of those 70% of outcomes that FIP ignores are mostly not controllable by the pitcher.
Yes, in cases where you have 1000 inning samples, you can make the case for some pitchers (or classes of pitchers, if you’re analyzing pitch shape or something) to be meaningfully better or worse than their FIPs, but that’s just not the case for TW. He’s had 9 seasons in the majors. He beat his FIP by 0.50 or more 3 times and underperformed his FIP by 0.50 or more twice. Null hypothesis cannot be rejectd. And, really, for him, the bull case has to begin in 2024 – he figured something out, the team committed to strict usage practice, etc. So you’re only working with 67 innings, and using ERA, or even worse RA, over a sample that small adds way way more noise than signal.
Eventually, a metric like xERA will replace FIP, I think. But those models aren’t robust enough yet. The best custom stat that I can think of would be something structured like FIP, but any batted ball event with a 5% or less chance of being a hit would be counted as an out, and any batted ball event with a 95% or greater chance of being a hit would be counted as a fractional HR based on its xSLG. But I can’t pull a table of that instantaneously on FG or BR.
SMS
31 Dec 24 at 11:42 am
As a general note, lamenting that the Nats did not sign Burnes, Fried, Walker, Pederson (etc.) for the deals they signed runs into a serious problem: it’s not at all clear that those players would have signed those deals to play in DC. How much higher would you have been willing to stack the money to try to buy a player out of an otherwise better circumstance? Burnes lives in AZ and reached out to the Diamondbacks because his family just had twins and he wants to be home as often as he can. Walker not only signed with a contending team, but to play in a ballpark that suits RH power and is located in a state with no state income tax. Pederson has never signed with an East Coast team (he was traded to Atlanta for a couple of months and beat feet west). Just looking at a deal and raging that “the Nats should have done that!” misses these facts. Much less stacking such deals. Just saying “well, they should overpay!” doesn’t answer the question of how much they should overpay in terms of $$ or years. One thing for certain: if they were to sign Bregman or Santander, we would smoothly pivot from “why aren’t they spending?” to “why did they sign [player] to that [contract]?”
John C.
31 Dec 24 at 1:48 pm
As for the question of what a 2026 Nats playoff team look like, my answer is “beats me.” There are too many variables. It’s foolish to think that all of a team’s youth are going to be stars, but if 1-2 of them turn into stars (Wood is off to a strong start) and another 3-4 become solid MLB regulars than that’s the core of a potential contending team. Given the reality of trades and free agents it’s hard to pin down what the roster will look like in 2026 even in a “better case” scenario.
What the 2025 team is to me is interesting. Can Wood and Crews continue to build on their promise? Can Garcia continue his? Can Abrams bounce back from his focus issue? On the mound, the Nats finally seem to have a real pitching pipeline set up, with young starters at MLB and prospects at the AAA, AA, and A+ levels. The bats aren’t quite as advanced, but there’s enough there on which to hope.
John C.
31 Dec 24 at 2:07 pm
@John C – that’s all fair enough, so specifics.
I go a fourth year for Walker and up the guarantee to 75 or 80 million, and I think that gets him. But that’s also the one for whom the Nats apparently had the best Plan B.
I match the Burnes deal, but agree we don’t know how much we’d have had to beaten it by. Probably at least 20M and I think I do that, but just barely. And I recognize that might not have been enough.
Bieber might have rejected it to bet on himself, but I’d have given him a high 8-figure guarantee to get a long term team option. Like 70/2 with a team option for 90/5. Santander hasn’t signed yet, so we’ll see on him.
I don’t match Fried’s deal. I probably wouldn’t match, and certainly wouldn’t beat, Snell’s.
Look, I agree that we’re trying to understand a process with imperfect information. I am not certain about my conclusions. But Walker is to me a relatively clear datapoint. It was public that he wanted 4 years. We could have given it to him. Yeah, maybe that still wouldn’t have been enough, or maybe Rizzo thinks he’ll fall off a cliff, but neither of those seem as likely to me as “the team is trying to keep its budget as small as possible”.
SMS
31 Dec 24 at 2:16 pm
FIP/xfip: here’s Greg Maddox Career numbers: 3.16 ERA, 3.26 FIP, 3.73 xFIP. His actual ERA outperformed his xFIP by more than half a run for his career. this is what happens when you take a guy with career 6 k/9 numbers and wash it through a stat that ignores 70% of his AB outcomes.
In his two greatest seasons (94 and 95) his era/xfip numbers were:
– 1995: 1.56 era, 2.39 xfip
– 1996: 1.63 ERA, 2.26 xfip.
All this tells me, at the end of the day, is that xfip is a stat that poorly attempts to extrapolate on another stat that drastically underrates pitch-to-contact guys and ignores 70% of outcomes.
Todd Boss
31 Dec 24 at 2:20 pm
I stipulate that Greg Maddox was a better pitcher than his FIP would imply.
I strenuously disagree that it is reasonable to use peak Maddox to help guide your expectations for TW’s upcoming season.
This study has been done. It’s a solved question- over small samples FIP is more highly correlated with future ERA than ERA. If you want to make case why TW is an exception, fair enough. Exceptions exist. But “he beat his FIIP last year” is an incredibly weak case that he’ll do it again.
SMS
31 Dec 24 at 3:01 pm
Fried had a TJ in 2014, so he’s on borrowed time according to most estimates. He’s 31 years old and just got an eight-year contract. Of course this being the Yanks, when he falls apart in two or three years, they’ll just eat the rest of the contract and buy someone else. There’s no effective punishment for teams that operate like that. And until there is, there won’t be any leveling of the playing field.
Frankly, I’m as or more frustrated with the reality of baseball’s new economic world order as I am with the Nats’ lack of participation in it. But I don’t think the upcoming CBA fight will put a dent in the disparity.
KW
31 Dec 24 at 3:33 pm
FWIW, xFIP has always seemed skewed to me. I trust FIP more than ERA, particularly with a team with suspect defense like the Nats.
With hitters, I rely a lot more on OPS+ and wRC+ (which usually track very closely) than I do on WAR. There was a big SABR discussion recently that ripped WAR apart. I don’t think it’s completely useless, but it’s terribly over relied upon. And it becomes almost silly when you add projected WAR to get projected team win totals.
KW
31 Dec 24 at 3:43 pm
This is an excellent discussion, perhaps THE discussion worth having this winter. The fundamental question is how do the Nats get back in playoff contention? How do they close the gap? Or are they even trying?
Let’s start with what playoff contention is. Since MLB expanded to three wild card births in 2022, the last slot has gone to teams that won 87, 84, and 89 games. The D-Backs also had 89 wins in 2024 and didn’t make it. It should be pointed out that if you have 9 out of 15 teams win 89 games or more, several of the rest really suck. So if some of the sucking six improve, the threshold goes down.
Can the Nats get back into contention without spending more? No, at least not anytime soon. Just ask the Pirates, who have had years of high draft picks but only won five more games than the Nats. The Pirates should be at least two or three years ahead of the Nats in rebuilding, but they clearly aren’t.
The Nats have made some defensive improvement with Lowe, and with the likelihood of a full season of the young speedy OF. SS and 3B remain big question marks, though. They seem to have improved their starting pitching, if nothing else by the addition-by-subtraction of Corbin. There’s not much left of their bullpen at the moment, and that’s a discussion I think we’re underestimating. Spend on the bullpen. Do it now. That literally could be worth five-plus wins next season, not “WAR” wins, but the kind that happen when you don’t blow winnable games. Reliever contracts are shorter and not as expensive.
Anyway, getting back to contending, I think there will be enough improvement in the NL to bring the WC threshold back down to 86-87 wins. The moves that the Nats have made thus far have improved them to 80-81 or so, best case. Bridging that gap is sort of the “last mile” in team building, though.
I will speculate that Rizzo doesn’t want to make a big move on the left side of the infield until he sees how things play out this season with House, Abrams, and Seaver King in particular. Bell is a bridge to see if Morales can develop. It seems clear that while he’s made some minor improvements with the MLB roster, he’s mostly playing for 2026. And really, with the suspect and overpriced FA crop, he didn’t have a lot of options. As much as we may carp at “only” signing Bell, it’s the “only” two years that are the bigger deal. Why tie yourself up for Wood’s entire “window” with someone like Bregman or Alonso who is already regressing?
I don’t consider myself a Nat optimist or pessimist, just more of a melancholy realist. But I don’t know that we’ll REALLY know how tight the purse strings are until the next offseason. But I still wouldn’t give Soto’s contract to Vlad Jr.
KW
31 Dec 24 at 3:45 pm
(My wild card discussion was NL win totals.)
KW
31 Dec 24 at 6:29 pm
I also had the Josh Bell deal in my head as two years, but it’s only one. That’s nothing. If he’s toast, he’s toast. The reason for optimism is that in his final 41 games with Arizona last season, he played to a 123 wRC+/121 OPS+.
Alonso: 122/123
Bregman: 118/118
C. Walker: 119/121
N. Lowe: 121/120
Now, would I bet even 50 cents that Bell will out-produce those guys in 2025? Of course not. But I also don’t think Alonso and Bregman are worth nearly as much as Uncle Scott claims they are.
KW
31 Dec 24 at 9:22 pm
Happy new year, everyone! Here’s to hoping for a 2025 filled with some of these best case scenario predictions!
@KW, on playoff contention – you’re probably right that a win total somewhere above 85 will do it, in a particularly competitive NL. Only the Rockies and Marlins are going to be really, really bad next year, so the good teams will struggled to really rack up wins. But the same holds true for the Nationals, it’ll be harder to get easy wins against the bad teams, since there’ll be so few of them. Moreover, we have 39 of 162 games (24%) against the Braves/Mets/Phillies. Our strength of schedule is going to be rough, which won’t do us any favors in inching towards that 86 or so win mark. I think in a much weaker NL Central, the Brewers are the favorites, but a team like the Cubs or the Reds, with some better injury luck, could surprise everyone.
I don’t really see a likely scenario where any of the Dodgers, Mets, Phillies, Braves, Padres or Diamondbacks finish behind us. Basically, the Braves just had their worst case scenario season in 2024, and still finished 18 games ahead of us. Then one team from the NL Central has to get a playoff spot, which leaves the last spot for us to compete for. We have to be better than every other NL Central team, as well as the Giants. It’s going to be really tough to make the playoffs. I just don’t see it happening, even with consistent improvements across the board, plus some huge leaps from our prospects still in the minors, like Morales, King and House.
And that doesn’t even really touch on the development risk associated with the current group of young players in the major leagues. We just witnessed how after April, CJ Abrams turned into a replacement level player, or how Keibert Ruiz has now been for 2 seasons below replacement level, after looking like a potential star in 2021-2022. God forbid this prospect regression rubs off on Wood or Crews, or Young or Garcia, or any of the SPs. Or that any of them get injured for any substantial period. Overlooked from las season was how remarkably lucky we were with injuries. Trevor Williams was the only player to get injured, among the rotation and bats. It’s unlikely we’ll be this lucky next season.
Altogether, it feels like the only path to success seems dependent on every player developing somewhere in the top range of outcomes with no set backs to injury or stalled development. It feels extremely risky and low likelihood, but I really hope I’m wrong.
Will
1 Jan 25 at 9:25 am
Re xFIP, I get the skepticism. It has a much weaker theoretical foundation than FIP because pitchers absolutely have control over crushed baseballs. I wouldn’t really look at it in most situations, The exceptions are very short sample sizes and extreme HR/FB outliers, both of which are in play for Trevor Williams.
Re Bell, totally agree that $6M/1 is nothing to worry about, even if I don’t expect much from him. Like I said, I think each of the moves is reasonable in isolation and part of what makes the Bell move reasonable is that’s an amount that a team should be willing to happily eat if, say, Santander becomes available at terms you’re comfortable with. In fact, that might be my exact plan if I were the GM and the owners had greenlit the budget that I think the team deserves (ie ~$190M on opening day in full contention years and probably around $150M for next year, once Soto got bid out of our range). Lock up plan B while I can, and keep trying to get better.
Re playoff expectations, I think I’m pretty aligned with folks here that we’re about an 80 win team as currently constituted, if we assume a couple of reliable bullpen signings. But teams routinely over and under perform their true talent expectations by 10 wins due to batted ball and run sequencing luck. So, being in the wild card hunt next year wouldn’t surprise me. But I also agree with Will and KW that pretty much every one of our players has question marks, and if we get some bad luck with injuries and development, we might not be even better than we were this year.
SMS
1 Jan 25 at 1:53 pm
Happy 2025 to all, a year in which I also highly doubt that the Nats will make the playoffs. I’m hoping that it will be more the equivalent of 2011, where they are around .500, are competitive, and can see what holes need to be filled to make the next steps.
As the Nats improve, there’s the flip side of other teams regressing. In 2011, the Phils won 102 games and looked untouchable. But they wouldn’t even make the playoffs again for 11 years. By 2026, Zach Wheeler will be 36. Just sayin’. The Braves have lost Fried and Morton and look mortal on the mound. The Mets have lost Severino and seem to have cut corners on the guys with whom they’ve filled out their rotation, and their bullpen already was suspect. Again, I’m looking ahead to 2026 and where they’ll all stand then. Milwaukee lost Adames and traded Burnes last year. The Padres haven’t really made improvements.
I certainly agree with Will that the Nats don’t know what they’ve got in so many of the young players, even Abrams and Ruiz. This is definitely a sorting out year. Will the young outfielders all click? Will House make the adjustments to become an MLB hitter? Can guys like Morales, Hassell, and Wallace bounce back from injuries to look like legit MLB prospects? Will the steps ahead that Garcia made in 2024 stick?
And yes, there’s definitely a risk that the house of prospect cards could crash. The 2011 season, and the way ahead, would have looked a lot different if Desi, Espy, Storen, and Ramos had struggled, Bryce had hit snags in the minors, and Stras had a slow, Cavalli-like recovery. As it was, first-round pick Chris Marrero failed his audition, Corey Brown didn’t look like the stud at AAA that they thought they had acquired, and Henry Rodriguez couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Even with young starters like J-Zim, Detwiler, Lannan, Milone, and Peacock showing showing some promise, they decided that starting pitching would need a boost for the 2012 season beyond just Stras’s full return.
So I’m expecting 2025 to be a sorting year, but sorting with a better level of players than we’ve been seeing. It’s also worth noting that the Bell signing indicates that Rizzo is still talking to Boras, and still sorta doing him favors, so who knows who might fall into the Nats’ lap over the next few weeks if Boras ends up needing a pillow contract.
For now, sign several relievers. That’s the area where affordable upgrades can be made, ones that literally could win them 5-7 more games in 2025.
KW
1 Jan 25 at 9:55 pm
Which Trevor Williams will we see in 2025? Is it 5.55 ERA/5.98 FIP guy we saw in 2023, or is it 2.03 ERA/2.79 FIP guy we saw in 2024?
Nobody knows. I see a lot of comments here that say “there’s no way he can replicate his 2024.” Why not? All your arguments are based on assumptions that he HAS to regress back to his career mean. But you have no proof to support that claim. If you really KNOW what his 2025 numbers are going to be … well then go ahead and tell me what the Powerball numbers are for next week too, since clearly you can predict the future.
Lets try to figure out WHY Williams was so good in 2024 versus 2023. Something had to change. And then see if that change is sustainable. We know, to start, that he started working with a new voice in the Nats coaching staff, one who seems to be imparting good results in a lot of the s taff.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/willitr01.shtml
https://www.fangraphs.com/players/trevor-williams/16977/stats?position=P
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/pitch-movement?year=2024&team=undefined&min=q&pitch_type=FF&hand=R&x=diff_x_hidden&z=diff_z_hidden&sort=6&sortDir=desc
Digging into his advanced pitching figures, we see some interesting things: I’ll list his 2023 and 2024 values for some things:
– Hard Hit %: 38.9 to 39.6 His HH% actually went up, usually a bad thing. His LD% basically stayed the same, and his EV actually went up a tick. But, his barrel% went way down (more on that later)
– Babip: .316 to .267: ok so his babip was unlucky in 2023, and lucky in 2024. Is this sustainable? read on.
– HR% 5.2 to 1.2, while his FB% stayed almost the same. How is that possible?
– K% went up, BB% went down: he’s throwing more strikes.
– GB% went up 39% to 44% while FB/LD percentages stayed the same.
– Pitch types used: he nearly doubled his slider usage, going from 18% to 34%. He did this by abandoning the curve altogether and throwing fewer FBs and CHs. He also took a tick off the slider velocity.
– He’s also taken a couple of ticks off his fastball in the last couple of years; what has this resulted in? A near league-leading vertical drop on his FB, making it one of the best sinkers in the game with 23.5″ of drop.
So, he’s abandoned a weaker pitch, taken a tick off FB to let it get more natural movement and turned into one of the best sinker ballers in the game (4th best vertical drop on FB in the sport). This lets him throw with less effort (88-89 vFA versus 91 for his career), allows him to throw more strikes (K% way up, Bb% rate way down), and force batters to swing. This has led to more grounders (39->44%) and fewer of his fly balls leaving the yard (HR rate way down). Because he’s throwing more GOs, his BABIP will look inflated since grounders turn into outs more frequently than fly balls (you can’t hit a ground ball over the fence).
Ok, so all of that is a way to say … clearly he’s adjusted his approach, and its working. Now, read all of that and ask yourself … is that sustainable for 2025 for a guy entering his age 33 season?
I think it is. I’m bullish that he will be closer to 2024 Williams than 2023 Williams, assuming he’s healthy and everything else is equal.
Todd Boss
1 Jan 25 at 10:36 pm
@Todd – I think you’re misunderstanding my argument. I am not claiming TW will regress. I’m claiming that the results we should expect from him in terms RA, ERA and especially HRs are going to be drastically worse than his 2024 stats even if he maintains that level of quality.
Last year TW was both lucky and good. The good may well continue – I’m not as optimistic as you are about that, but I’m closer to your take than to those Steamer and Zips projections. What you can’t count on continuing is the luck. It’s not exactly impossible; you’re right that I don’t know the future. But it’s extremely unlikely.
But, again, this isn’t actually an argument against TW being good. I’m just pretty sure that no one’s true talent can suppress home runs to 1 per every 24 fly balls. Even if TW somehow did it again next year, I’d still bet against him doing it in 2026.
SMS
2 Jan 25 at 1:19 am
I’ll bite, and say I think Williams will both regress AND be less lucky. It seems 30 teams agree with my assessment, otherwise someone would’ve offered him something better than $7m a year. I was incredibly pleased with Williams’ 2024, and I hope it continues into 2025. And you’re both right that he did start doing something different, which makes a strong argument that he’s not the same guy he was in 2023. However, he’s objectively not a top 5/10 pitcher in baseball, as his 2.03 ERA/2.79 FIP would suggest. He was just lucky to start the season hot and get injured before the inevitable regression kicked in. You know who else looked like an ace in early June? McKenzie Gore, who had a 2.91 ERA/2.84 FIP on May 31.
Mark me down for Williams posting a ERA/FIP in the mid-high 4s, good for 1ish WAR, which is indeed a big improvement on the 5.27 ERA/5.38 FIP he posted from the rotation in 5 seasons before last. But I’ll happily eat crow, when Williams gets crowned with a CYA in his age 33 season 🙂
@KW, thanks for comparison, and I hope you’re right. I guess where I’m getting hung up is that I thought 2024 was the sorting season. There were big questions surrounding Gray and Gore, and whether Irvin could sustain him promising 2023. There were big questions about Ruiz, Abrams and Garcia. And a whole year later, do we have any more certainty to these questions? There were people posting to DFA Garcia, so his turnaround has been a huge improvement, but is it sustainable? He’s certainly done nothing like this before, especially defensively. Meanwhile, Abrams, Gray and Gore are even bigger question marks now than they were last year. All that to say, we just spent a year sorting things out, and came away basically in the same position we were a year ago. That lack of answers, to me at least, is a pretty clear message: the core of this team isn’t good enough. There’ll be ups and downs, but very few of these guys, among the elder core, are good enough to carry this team to the playoffs, and we NEED them (or free agents) to do some heavy lifting, because I don’t think Wood, Crews, Herz and Parker are good enough by themselves to do it, and I don’t think the nearly ready prospects are very likely to ever be “ready”. But I see this is where my perspective diverges from others, and while I was high on DJ Herz and Jacob Young, I didn’t expect them to have the seasons they did in 2024. So maybe someone like Stuart or Pinckney will surprise us all next season, and make up for the inevitable regressions and stalling outs of many of the other players.
I guess I need to come to terms with 2025 being yet another season to invest in following the prospects than our win percentage. Only 4 of the 30 teams in MLB haven’t made the playoffs in the last 5 seasons. I wonder if the Pirates can sneak into the playoffs, because it doesn’t look like us, the Rockies or Angels are very likely to.
Will
2 Jan 25 at 4:36 am
As I said earlier, this is an excellent discussion, with many good points and counterpoints.
I have no idea why other teams didn’t bid on Trevor Williams. I thought it was unlikely that he would return to the Nats specifically because I thought he would be offered a significantly better deal. Look, we have no idea how well he’ll do, but EVERY pitching contract is a major gamble. The Mets gave 2/$34M to Frankie Montas and his 4.84 ERA. Buehler got $21M (plus an option/buyout) from the Bosox despite a 5.38 ERA and significant injury risk. To me, Buehler looks a lot riskier than Soroka, yet they paid him twice as much. The numbers say that Flaherty deserves a better contract than Buehler, but much like Williams, the buyer will have to believe the significant improvement in his 2024 numbers.
Look, for what little Williams is being paid, he would earn his keep pitching to a 4.50 ERA/FIP. I agree that his 2024 start very likely is unsustainable, but I do think that he’s “figured something out” enough to stay in the 3.50-3.75 range, which would give him at least $20M in value on the current market.
Perhaps remembering the good ol’ pre-DH days, people seem to have unrealistic expectations of pitcher quality. Among qualified starters in 2024, there were only four with a FIP under 3.00 and 17 with a FIP under 3.50. (Gore was next at 3.53, followed by the $210M of Burnes at 3.55.) Only 37 were under 4.00, with Nola and his $172M at #37. There were 50 qualified starters under 4.50.
Shifting the baseline to 100 IP, there were 9 under 3.00, 31 under 3.50, 63 under 4.00, and 96 under 4.50. There were 126 pitchers who threw at least 100 innings. Montas was #106 out of the 126 and yet got $34M guaranteed.
If Williams would have made it to 100 IP, his 2.79 FIP would have ranked 7th.
I’m shocked to see that only four pitchers in the majors topped 200 IP. 32 made it to 175, and 71 to 150. The Nats had four of those, although Corbin is gone.
KW
2 Jan 25 at 9:19 am
@Will, I also thought we were farther along with rebuilding, and that 2024 was supposed to be a sorting year. I really thought it was going to be a sorting year with the pitching . . . but I wouldn’t have bet a nickel that they’d have Parker and Herz as starters for a good chuck of the season! We wanted to know more about Gray, but he got hurt. We wanted to know more about Cavalli, but he stayed hurt a lot longer than he should have. We thought that Rutledge and Adon would be the next guys up, but it didn’t work out that way, mainly because they were sucking so badly at AAA.
Irvin proved to be a workhorse (11th in the majors in IP) and considerably lowered his MLB FIP and WHIP from 2023, but the improvement still only got him to about quality 4th-starter level. There’s value in that, but I think he’s about at the level we can expect.
Gore’s numbers are somewhat confounding. A 3.53 FIP and 9.8 K9 indicate that he’s still capable of being the #1/2 starter we’ve hoped he would be. He also continued the trend of lowering his walk rate. But he got crushed by the bad “luck” of a .340 BABIP.
As for the field players, I had a lot of hope in Ruiz that hasn’t been rewarded yet. Team patience waned to the point that they used high draft picks on two catchers, but of course those guys won’t help immediately. They’re to the point that they might have to trade for a catcher if Ruiz doesn’t improve in 2025.
They also might have to trade for or sign a shortstop. Abrams has flashed a lot of talent, and he is still only 24. Will he get his head screwed on straight, maximize his talent, and actually learn how to play SS? Stay tuned.
KW
2 Jan 25 at 10:15 am
thinking of the outcome for the Williams signing and hoping for the best I though of Charlie Morton and his later career transformation. he was a replacement level pitcher at roughly the age Williams is now.
as I looked at their histories what surprised me was how much more successful Williams was to start with, even pitching with the same team in his early years.
Morton got a two year deal in 2017 for the same money Williams got now so evidently he was more valued.
while I still am having trouble with my crystal ball I’m feeling a little better.
FredMD
2 Jan 25 at 10:46 am
As for why Williams signed (relatively) cheaply with the Nationals, it’s been reported that he very much wanted to return to the Nationals and I’ve also seen reports that he took less to do so. So there’s that.
John C.
2 Jan 25 at 12:42 pm
That’s a really interesting point, John C. I hadn’t seen those reports, but was thinking there could be something along those lines when I heard how team-friendly the deal was.
It seems like many more FAs this year are prioritizing non-financial considerations than in the past. I think it makes perfect sense – I would imagine for a lot folks the utility of the 3rd or 4th $10M, let alone the 20th, just isn’t worth living or working in worse conditions. But in past seasons, it felt like there was just a handful of deals were hometown discounts and the like, and this year it’s maybe half.
I wonder if the actual decision matrixes have changed, or if the incentives / practices about publicizing those elements have. (Or, I guess, if I’m just remembering previous years badly and it’s common that around half of all FAs have always signed for decent amount below their top offer.)
Also, one last note on the TW projections. I think KW’s guess is as optimistic as can be reasonable. I’m projecting a bit worse than that, in the 3.90 – 4.10 range. Probably about a 2 WAR season, assuming health. And the FG/Steamer/Will take – which is incidentally the rate at which he’s being paid – is probably the pessimistic end of reasonable. I guess we’ll see. And if Todd is right and he comes in 4th in the Cy voting, well, I for one will show up here and take my medicine.
SMS
2 Jan 25 at 12:58 pm
If Williams comes in at around 4.00 FIP, he’s still in the top third of starters in MLB. For $7M, that’s still a heck of a deal. Starting pitching ain’t what it used to be, and a lot of teams are overpaying for mediocrity.
I had wondered if Williams might have an interest in coming back to the Nats specifically because they helped him figure things out. John C’s intel seems to confirm that hunch. Doolittle was the new piece to the coaching puzzle last year, perhaps pushing the analytics approach that Todd discussed in his last comment. In return, Williams can play a key role as the “veteran starter presence,” all the more with Corbin now gone.
KW
2 Jan 25 at 3:29 pm
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/01/latest-on-financial-dispute-between-nationals-and-orioles-masn.html
finger and toes crossed
FredMD
3 Jan 25 at 12:57 pm
On what to expect from Williams over a full season, one little wet blanket is that, while he was not excellent the first two months of 2023, he was not bad: 3.93 ERA, 5.15 FIP, 55 IP, .268 BABIP, 2.50 K:BB, 13.2% HR/FB. So, high home run rate, some BABIP luck, and an ERA substantially better than his FIP over comparable innings to Williams’s 2024 before his injury. The HR/FB looks like the big difference. Todd makes a decent case that there’s a reason for some improvement due to different pitch selection in 2024, and we all recognize that 4% HR/FB is not something to bank on, but I think we need to be concerned about Williams sustaining better early season performance throughout the year. For me, I’d be very happy if he had a 3.9 ERA, or roughly double his 2024, over a full season.
JCA
4 Jan 25 at 7:01 pm
To reiterate, an ERA/FIP of 4.00 or less means you’re in the top third of starters in MLB now. Heck, the O’s just gave 1/$15 to 87-year-old Charlie Morton, whose FIP the last three years has been 4.46, 3.87, 4.26. Morton will make slightly more for one season than Trevor Williams will for two. The Nats seem to have gotten a great deal . . . unless the 2023 version of Williams reappears.
The thing that Morton does have is that he’s been a consistent innings eater. I do have some question of how many innings Williams will be good for after posting only 66.2 in 2024. Soroka threw only 79.2. Cavalli pitched 16.2.
KW
5 Jan 25 at 8:25 am