Despite having a few days to go until the 7/27/26 deadline for signing its 2026 draftees, the Nats have gotten everything done well ahead of schedule, and according to Baseball America’s draft tracker have now signed 18 of their 20 draft picks. Based on the financial accounting, there’s no more bonus money to dole out, so this is the 2026 class.
With this post, I have updated the Nats Draft Tracker main page for the 2026 class, and have finished off the 2026 draft tab, where you can see signing bonuses compared to slot values and the running arithmetic of the entire draft bonus usage. If you’re interested in a players’ college stats, new this year i’ve got direct links to their college stats page to save you some googling. I also have links to their social media pages (X and IG) if you wanted to follow them.
I have also added all 18 draftees and the 7 known NDFAs to the Big Board in the XST section. As they’re assigned we’ll move them to a full season or FCL roster. With these 25 signings, as well as with all the moves we’ve made in recent days, the Minor League roster now sits (as far as I can tell) at exactly 165, or the target limit. Any new signings (MLFA or NDFA) from here on out will require a corresponding minor league move as the system is full (either a move to 60-day, a move to the Dev list, or a release).
Let’s talk about the signing bonuses, and who signed for more or less than predicted. Slot values are on the Draft tracker, and for the whole draft are here. You can go back to my two review posts for my quick predictions on what the players would sign for, which i’ll draw in here.
- 1st rounder Hacopian took a $433k haircut on his bonus, not surprising and about what one would expect. Most of the 1st rounders, especially in the top 10, don’t sign for slot, as teams basically play their “floors” against where they get picked and enact some savings. Hacopian signed for $5.7M, which is a bit more than the 13th overall slot value, and he probably would have slipped well past 13th overall had he not signed with us (the next three picks after #11 were HS picks, then a college catcher, then more prep picks). So Hacopian probably said, “well I can say yes to $5.7 now, or run the risk of falling into the mid teens where the slots are in the $4.8M-$5.2M range, so might as well say Yes to the Nats’ offer right now.”
- 2nd rounder Brunson ended up signing for $588k under slot, a big surprise for me since he was drafted #42 overall and sat right in that range on most of the draft boards. I thought this was a slot pick for sure. Nonetheless, big savings here and from Hacopian that then go to the next two kids.
- 3rd and 4th rounder Prep kids get big over-slot deals as expected: Williams got $2.5M, about $1.5M over slot and the equivalent of a early 2nd round pick. Harris took $1.5M on a slot value of $740k to buy him out of college, about the equivalent of a later 2nd rounder.
- This is what you do: we now have a 1st rounder and three 2nd round talents thanks to working the bonus figures properly.
- 5th rounder Cuvet signed basically for slot as predicted.
- 6th rounder Allen took about what I thought he’d take for a discount: I predicted $250k savings, he signs for $220k less than slot.
- It took more than I thought it would to sign 7th rounder Peterson: I thought he’d go for the $150k standard 11-20th round money, but it took $250k.
- Our 8th and 10th rounders both went for the standard Senior sign figure of $10k; honestly I’m happy the Nats do $10k and not the pittance of $1k that other shops do for these guys.
- 9th rounder Duger signed for exactly slot. I thought we might get $75k of savings here, but they didn’t need it with the big savings on Brunson, and at that point in the draft the team was probably just calling guys on their board and saying, “will you sign for slot right now?” until they got a Yes.
The 11th-20th rounders had some interesting bonus figures; in many years we just give everyone $150k and move on. Not this year.
- 11th and 12th rounders Moss and Dallas each got $25k more than the standard $150k, as I surmised in the review.
- 13th rounder Howard, a college grad student whose drafting we all questioned at the time, got $100k. This seems like a graduation gift on behalf of the team for a senior sign who at best should have gone in the 10th round for $10k. Why give him $100K? Something’s amiss here. But hey, its not my money.
- 14th, 19th, and 20th rounders were all college guys who took the standard $150k. 14th rounder Konstantinovsky makes sense for that figure, but the other two were odd. 19th rounder Brooks was a college senior (ok, technically a redshirt Junior) with a miserable batting average and little leverage; did it really take $150k to sign him, when they could probably get him as an NDFA next year for $20k? Our 20th rounder Siebert was a juco guy with a Tennessee commit who gook the $150kto my surprise; must not have had a great NIL deal on hand.
- It ended up taking $250k to get the IFA gambit Rivero, $100k over slot. Whether or not you think Rivero is “good,” this is still a big savings over the $750k he was offered by the Dodgers in the IFA market a year ago. If the Dodgers, who I think are the preeminent player development team in the sport, were willing to pay that much and we got him for a third less, I’ll take that as a win.
- The “last guy to sign who gets all the left over bonus money” seemed to be 18th rounder Ortiz, who I thought might be tougher to sign. He ended up getting $215k for an overslot deal, a weird amount that essentially was all the remaining leftover bonus money under the cap.
- As expected, once the two upper prep kids signed, the two prep kids drafted in the teens (#16 Murphy and #17 Galason) got cut loose; they’re the only 2 players not to sign in this class.
Bonus pool overall usage: If i have my calculations correct, and If I ignore all the BA reported signing bonuses that seem to be exactly $2,500 off for most of the bonuses, then the Nats left just $1,115 dollars on the table. Perfect usage.
- Total slot amount of $12,278,300
- plus 5% overage cushion of $613,905
- Total amount to spend: 12,892,225
- Total bonus dollars spent plus overages on the $150k/player in the 11-20th rounds: 12,891,110
- Left over: $1,115
That’s our 2026 class.
One last note: Baseball America released its updated top 100 including 2026 draftees, which included 10 players from the 2026 class …. but not Hacopian, who just missed their top 100. But, to give you an idea of where Hacopian likely fits into our system, there’s 5 Nats in the BA top 100 right now:
- 15. Willits
- 39. King
- 55. Susana
- 68. Fitz-Gerald
- 87. Cruz
Outside the top 100 but who have been there before: Sykora, Ford, and Fein.
I’m guessing Hacopian will start at #6 in our system, just ahead of Sykora, Ford, and Fein, and just outside the BA top 100. If he pops immediately upon starting his pro career, he should push into the top 100 quickly.
Thanks for all this, Todd.
At some point I’d love to see someone do an analysis of “pick-order” vs “bonus size” in terms of predicting career WAR (or rookie contract WAR).
My sense is that bonus size is the more determinative of the two, but that’s not based on a lot.
Also, while I agree that $10k is a better de minimus bonus than the $1k or whatever we sometimes see, it still really bothers me when a player gives away more than a decade of professional autonomy for basically nothing. I know this is two consenting legal entities agreeing to terms, but the structure of this deal was collectively bargained without the input of one of the parties and resulting power differential is intense. So I don’t feel comfortable just saying “well, they don’t have to sign if they don’t want.”
What I’d like to see is a rule like “you only have access to the full value of the slot in the pool if you sign the pick to at least 25% of slot.”
No team should get a player’s draft rights for $1k or $10k. If a player wants to sign for that and that’s the most any team is willing to offer, let him do so with a team of his choice as an UDFA.
SMS
23 Jul 26 at 12:16 pm
@SMS you’re welcome: i love the draft and all its strategy and what not.
Draft bonus versus pick: yeah. that kind of analysis would take for-ever to do, and I’m not sure it would tell us a lot about the Nats drafts b/c we’ve blown so many 1st and 2nd rounders in the past 15 years. I’m not sure i even know what I “think” a successful draft would look like anymore. I wrote this in 2014: https://nationalsarmrace.com/?p=9594 when it was still 40 rounds.
a. 1st rounder: future MLB above average regular to all-star
b. 2nd rounder: future MLB regular
c. 3rd-5th: expect at least one future MLB player in at least a backup/bullpen role
d. 6th-10th: hope for at least one player to reach the MLB level.
e. 11th-20th: hope for at least three players who matriculate to AA or higher
f. 20th and above: hope for one-two players to matriculate to AA or higher
I’d probably change this to account for the new reality of the 6-10th picks and the way 11-20 are now used. either way, This puts the benchmark for a “good” draft at 4 guys who reach the majors, with at least 1 above average player and 1 starter. without doing the massive analysis a quick peek at our drafts starting in 2023:
– 2023: 1 starter (Crews), several producing in AAA
– 2022: 1 starter (Bennett for Red Sox), 3 bench/bullpen guys (Lipscomb, Lord, Cornelio)
– 2021: 3 starters (Lile, Young, Alvarez), 1 former starter (House)
– 2020: 1 starter (Cavalli), 2 bench/bullpen guys (Henry, Parker); not bad for 5 rounds
– 2019: 0 starters, 4 bench/bullpen guys (Alu, Rutledge, Ribalta, Willingham)
– 2018: 1 starter (Irvin), 1 bullpen (Lee)
– 2017: 0 starters, 6 bullpen guys (Romero, Crowe, Raquet, Tetreault, Cousins, Klobotis). Yes Romero counts.
– 2016: 2 starters (Dunning, Luzardo), 8 bench/bullpen guys (Kieboom, Neuse, Johnson, Barrera, Noll, Sharp). Too bad Dunning & Luzardo did it for other teams.
So, that’s 20 years of drafts and its hard to even squint and see the “above average to all star” for any of these drafts. Crews has potential sure. Bennett for someone else. maybe House can rebound. Cavalli finally healthy and producing, maybe 2027 all star? Luzardo made this year’s All star game.
My thoughts on $10k or even $1k (the lowest we’ve gone is $2k for a couple guys in 2024, then when we were in the 40-round area lots of guys would get $2500): I think these are guys who know where they stand; they weren’t drafted out of high school, the weren’t drafted after their junior year, and if they still want to play after their senior year, they take what they can get. Is it worth it to sign for 10k in the 10th round of a draft versus saying no then signing for $20k as an NDFA? Is that risk worth it? Is there any value to your ego to be able to say, “I was drafted.” I dunno.
Todd Boss
23 Jul 26 at 12:45 pm
Pretty solid draft class. I wasn’t sure they could get all of Rivero, Ortiz and Seibert, but I’m glad they did!
I said earlier I wasn’t worried about the squad numbers, but on second glance, I’m still not worried, there’s too many really bad players still in this org, especially the pitchers. But I am worried about how we fit them all in and get them playing time. Our depth is wildly unbalanced. We have way too many bats at the lower levels (and almost a complete void of pitching talent), and now we’ve just brought in quite a few more bats to occupy A ball, and I don’t really see how it works out.
For example, where does Brunson get assigned? Logic says he’d start in Fredericksburg, but they could be ambitious and send him straight to Wilmington. But these are their current outfields:
Fburg: Gavin Fien, Dashyll Tejeda, Elian Soto (plus Nick Peoples and Jordan Williams)
Wilmington: Yeremy Cabrera, Elijah Green, Jack Moroknek and Jorgelys Mota (plus Elijah Nunez and Teo Banks)
Ok, so you can bench Tejeda or Soto, or Mota or Moroknek to make room from Brunson. Tough luck for them.
Where does Hacopian fit? You’d presumably want to give him a run out at 2B and 3B before committing to his future at 1B. And we know how much this org loves positional versatility.
At Fburg you have Dickerson, James and Rafael Ramirez (and Manuel Cabrera) rotating between 3B and 2B (and SS). And even at 1B you have Juan Cruz, Elian Soto and Hunter Hines fighting for playing time.
In Wilmington, you have Willits, Feliz and Ronny Cruz doing the same rotational game at 3B/SS/2B, plus Mota and Villaroel in the mix too, and Walsh at 1B. You could pretty easily bench Walsh for Hacopian, but that seems like under-utilizing him, when he should be getting reps at 3B and 2B. Maybe you sit Feliz an extra game per week, to free up a bit more infield time for him.
Ok, so we’ve found 2 spots for Brunson and Hacopian. What about for Daniel Cuvet, also a 3B? What about Nick Williams and Jack Brooks, also OFs?
There’s going to be some tough decisions about playing time to be made.
Will
24 Jul 26 at 4:14 am
In case anyone was curious (though I doubt it), Boston Smith, who we traded for Curtis Mead, is currently the 3rd best hitter in all of full season minor league baseball. His 169 wRC+ is narrowly behind Mike Sirota (172) and Owen Ayers (171).
Smith is destroying AA pitching with 1.303 OPS through his first 14 games there, which is even more remarkable that he’s doing this as a catcher.
I’m glad Mead is playing well for us, but Smith is one to keep an eye on.
Will
24 Jul 26 at 4:26 am
If you want to judge a draft, I think you need to work backwards. Just empirically, are about 3.7 above average regulars (3+ WAR) and 5.6 decent regulars (1.5-2.9 WAR) per team. About 35% of those players are folks with more than 6 years of service time, and another 15% came in as IFAs. So the average draft should produce a decent regular or better most years (about 3 out of 4) and a 3-WAR borderline star about once every 3 years.
By that standard, our drafts in the late teens were failures, but the drafts since 2020 have been pretty good, though not admittedly more Bs than As.
SMS
24 Jul 26 at 1:24 pm