The Nationals, in addition to their 20 rounds of picks, have generally signed a 1-2 Undrafted Free Agents (NDFAs) at the end of each draft. The last few years it’s been just a couple guys per year, but this year they signed a whole slew of them, some frankly promising, and were incredibly active in the days immediately following the draft. Not since 2022 have we seen this many NDFAs come on board.
This amount of guys is notable, because by and large each additional NDFA means someone has to make way within the organization (either to a dev list, or to the 60-day DL, or to get released altogether). I discussed in a comment on Nationalsprospects.com the below, but it bears repeating and cleaning up.
Farm systems under the latest Collective Bargaining Agreement are capped as to the number of players you can have rostered, both by level and overall. By level, the limits are:
- AAA: 28 active, 33 roster-able
- AA: 28 active, 33 roster-able
- High-A: 30 active, 33 roster-able
- Low-A: 30 active, 33 roster-able
- FCL: no actual defined limits; up to the total domestic cap roster-able. Target 33 players roster-able.
- (Note: there’s no limit or restrictions on DSL: these limits are domestic only)
So, 33 rostered players (either active or on the 7-day DL)*5 domestic levels = a total domestic limit of 165 players. Anyone in the following situation does not count against the 165 limit:
- 60-Day DL guys
- Developmental List guys
- 40-man Roster guys.
- Rehabbing players (who would otherwise get double counted on the big board).
I try to keep track of the running totals per team and for the system via XLS macros on the Big Board. As of this writing and as of the 2026 Draft I have us at 160 ( it was at 161 earlier this week before the Robert Hassell trade).
However, that 161 figure includes 40-man guys who are in the minors, who don’t count against that limit (11 guys in AAA on the 40-man right now before any call-ups post All-Star Break), so we have exactly 149 active players in domestic minors. We just drafted 20 guys, we’re probably going to sign 17-18 of them (which would put us at 167-168, meaning we’d have to shed a couple guys to get under the limit by the end of the month. However, if we have a slew of NDFAs, it’s one in, and one out. So, the more guys we sign, the more room we have to clear.
Now, players on 60 day/full season IL don’t count, nor do restricted list guys. So, it would probably be very easy to move 3 guys to one of these two lists. Just this week Erik Tolman for example moved off of the Developmental list where he’d been sitting for weeks. Hayes in AAA has spent most of the season on that list, pretty typical for backup/bullpen catcher types. There’s 3 catchers on the High-A roster; one of them can go on the dev list. And, there’s 8 guys on the 7-day DL in Low-A, some of whom who have been there since Mid April, so it seems that making space by moving guys to 60-day will be pretty easy.
However, at some point we’ll start to see some releases, since we’re adding the below NDFAs
Back to the NDFAs. Let’s run through them; these guys lasted the entire 20 round draft w/o getting picked, but who can now sign for a $20k bonus figure. I’ll do some stat-analysis and background per what info I can find.
We may add a few more NDFAs to this list, if so I’ll update.
- Tony Neubeck, College grad/5th year senior LHP Starter from Indiana: Neubeck was in Indiana’s rotation all year, serving as their Ace/Friday Starter. 3rd team all Big-10. 3.95 ERA with 75 strikeouts to 27 walks over 70.2 innings. He features a Low-to-mid 90s fastball with carry, a slider, a plus-changeup and cutter. I mean, how does a Friday night starter for a major conference team completely fall through the entire draft? He sounds like someone we should have drafted in the mid-teens.
- Miles Smith, Redshirt Senior RHP reliever from Kansas State. So, the interesting thing about NDFAs is that they’re lottery tickets for just $20k. Smith’s college numbers were, frankly, awful his entire career. Freshman/Sophomore years in Juco: 8.38 ERA. Jr year: 19.29 ERA. Sr. year 7.01 ERA. So why did we sign him? Because he looked pretty solid in the MLB Draft League going on right now, where he’s had 8 games, 14IP with a 3.21 ERA and 19Ks in 14IP. So what the heck.
- Ciaran Caughey, Senior RHP starter from Kent State. Caughey was Kent State’s Saturday starter all year, posting a 8-2 record with a 3.39 ERA and 1.08 whip. 77/23 k/bb in 77ip. That’s solid. He finished his career with a 7ip/2h masterpiece in the MAC tournament, but Kent State fell short of the NCAAs in what many thought was a bit of a snub. Another excellent NDFA pick. He’s another who has been pitching in the Draft League.
- Cooper Carlgren, Senior RHP Swingman from Lamar. Made 19 appearances and four starts with a 2-1 record and 4.44 ERA in 48.2 innings pitched with 53 strikeouts this year for Lamar. Had a solid start in the MLB Draft league to bolster his showing. He bounced around during his college career, playing two years of Juco, then one year at Washburn before finishing up at Lamar.
- Tyler Papenbrock, College Grad/5th year Sr LHP swing man from Louisiana. He was a 4-year starter in NAIA before trying one year with the Rajun’ Cajuns, where he served as a long-man/spot starter this season. He was 4-0 with a 5.36 ERA, a 1.56 whip. He had 29/25 K/BB ratio in 40ip. Hilariously, on his bio page at Louisiana, his major is listed as “undeclared” despite being a Grad student. That’s code word for, “majoring in baseball.”
- Trevor Moore, College Senior RHP reliever (closer) from Stanford. He pitched to a 3.92 ERA with 48 strikeouts to 23 walks over 43.2 innings. Mid-90s with cut-ride and a good slider. The Nats have a good history taking Stanford closers (Drew Storen).
- Signed 7/20/26: Kaleb Kantola, a College Grad/6th year RHP reliever from Lipscomb. Kantola ia a big dude 6’7″ who missed most of two full years with injury, so he’s finishing up his 6th collegiate season. He had a 1.95 ERA as a reliever out of Lipscomb’s pen,
Note: D1baseball’s NDFA tracker lists a 7th player to us at this time, but the source has him signing with another team. BA’s NDFA tracker has us with these 6 players for now.
Thanks for the intel on these NDFAs. There’s indeed quite a few in here who look better than quite a few of our draftees.
On the roster numbers, as I said over at NatsProspects, this isn’t a problem. The FCL Nats have an absurdly old and bad pitching staff. The average FCL pitcher is 21 years old. They’ve average FCL Nats pitcher is 23. An incredible 47 players have pitched for the Nats. Only 8 of them were below FCL average, and only a few of those 8 performed better than average. While not all 47 are on the active roster, by my count there are 19 on the active roster, not counting many currently rehabbing. You could release a dozen of them tomorrow and we wouldn’t miss a thing.
And that’s just the arms. There’s a few easy releases among rhe bats, and another huge batch of roster filler in Fredericksburg that could easily be culled.
But Todd, as you rightly point out, I expect the Nats will kick the can down the road and shift a bunch of guys from the 7 day IL to the full season. Or, actually assign some MIA guys to the IL. Brenner Cox, remember him?, hasn’t pitched (or hit) since May and is still on the active roster. There are 7 guys in Fburg on tbe 7 day IL, several of whom haven’t pitched in months (Owen Puk for example got injured in the first week of the season, and has been out since)
Will
17 Jul 26 at 2:24 pm
Re-doing my arithmetic: 160 on active rosters minus 10 40-man guys = 150. Lets say we sign 18 guys plus the 6 NDFAs thats 22 slots. 150+22 = 172. So we’d need to “find” 7 spots in the minors without releasing anyone. If i had to do this right now:
– Tolman in AAA -> Dev list
– Farmer in High-A -> dev list
– Puk, Moore, Hughes in low-A -> 60day
– Cox -> dev list
– FCL’s 3rd catcher -> dev list
And, actually as i was looking at guys in FCL, we had a 27yr old Tyler Schoff listed; well turns out he got traded to Atlanta on 6/20 and I had no idea. And I had Juan Abreu on there too; we released him in May. Damn. So we’re actually starting all of this at 158 players, so we really only need to find 5 spots.
Todd Boss
17 Jul 26 at 3:21 pm
Damn, found another player on FCL now gone. The Minor League transactions page sucks. They released Linares yesterday. So now the system sits at 157 – 10 40-man so 147; they’re nearly cleared up enough now to sign the entire draft class.
Todd Boss
17 Jul 26 at 4:10 pm
Continuing this whole System Arithmetic logic; the team over the weekend made some moves (some that we predicted) in preparation for draft pick signing:
– Puk/Hughes->60-day DL
– two arms released from Low-A in Aldonis and Otanez
– Chivilli to 60-day in FCL.
So, as of this writing the Big board reports 154 players. Take away 11 40-man guys and 3 rehab arms in the minors (Irvin, Swan, Williams) so we don’t double count and now we’re down to 140 total. 165 is the limit, so we now have 25 spots for the entire 2026 class (of which they’ll probably sign 17-18) plus the 6 NDFAs; guess what; 17+6 exactly equals 25. So, looks like we’re ready to start bringing on the new guys.
Todd Boss
20 Jul 26 at 8:37 am
Zuckerman reporting first four picks all signed.
Chris Hacopian $5.7 million
Chase Brunson $1.8 million
Luke Williams $2.5 million
Cooper Harris $1.5 million
FredMD
20 Jul 26 at 8:39 pm
Oh wow, that’s a lot more underslot than I expected for Brunson, $590k! That plus Hacopian’s $430k savings, gives the Nats $1.2m to work with, which went directly into Williams’ bonus, which was $1.43m overslot, and Harris being $760k over, means we’re at a deficit of $990k.
Will
21 Jul 26 at 7:06 am
Sorry, too early. My quick back of the napkin math is way off. That should’ve been $1.02m, which shifts everything by $180k, so we are currently $1.17m overslot.
Will
21 Jul 26 at 9:24 am
I’ve updated the Draft board 2026 tab with these signings.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY/edit?usp=sharing
I can’t believe how far under Brunson went … that’s going to give the team enough to throw $500k or more at a HS kid in the teens. I’ve got the what-if analysis in the tab.
Todd Boss
21 Jul 26 at 10:04 am
Todd, thanks for adding the drafted players’ socials. It’s always a good source for intel on whether some of especially the later round guys signed. Francisco Rivero’s team is already churning out content about his future with the Nats org, so I have to assume he’s signed, officially or unofficially.
While it’s not a perfect science, almost every guy has @’d the Nats in their Insta bios, all except Anthony Murphy, Isaiah Galason and Anson Seibert, which is a pretty good indication of who we’ll sign, so this more or less tracks with your predictions. With Ortiz being a modest surprise, and Seibert being a not-unexpected miss.
Will
22 Jul 26 at 4:45 am
Todd, looks like all signed except for the two you said wouldn’t.
now on to placement and development!
FredMD
22 Jul 26 at 12:05 pm
@Will; thanks you bet. Yeah that’s exactly why i grab them, to kind of read the tea leaves on whether they’ll sign or not.
@FredMD: thanks for the heads up; https://www.baseballamerica.com/draft-results/ shows 18 of the 20 signed, lemme do the math on the Draft Board and start filling things in.
Todd Boss
22 Jul 26 at 2:21 pm
Super curious, looking at these bonus figures on BA; they’re all exactly $2,500 “off” of an even number, and i’m wondering if that’s a typo.
The two prep kids who got big money; their bonuses are 2500 less than what Zuckerman reported, and 8 other guys are 2500 short of an “even” number. Take those 10 2500 bonuses and it comes up to 25000 in total, which is right around the amount the team “left on the table” if these were whole numbers. I think i’m going to assume the numbers are meant to be the even numbers and change them versus what’s on BA’s draft database.
Todd Boss
22 Jul 26 at 2:29 pm