As of 5:45pm, I thought perhaps our all-star starter Foster Griffin may be sticking around, since we hadn’t heard of any moves ahead of (what I thought was the ) 5pm EST deadline for trades. I guess it was 6pm EST, because we jammed in one last trade.
Griffin heads to Cleveland for four guys:
- Josh Hartle, LHP AA starter with a 3.86 ERA in 19 starts this season
- Will Dion, LHP reliever with some MLB and a solid 25/3 K/BB ratio
- Kendeglys Virguez, a RHP reliever with a 14.3 K/9 rate this year who just got moved to AA
- Nick Mitchell, a 22yr old OF with decent numbers in AA (.240 with some power, some speed)
The best prospect of course is the AA starter Hartle, who slots just into the back of our top 30 prospects on MLBpipeline.
Is this a great return? No, not really on the face of it. Is it an understandable return? Yes it is. Yes, Griffin was an all-star, one of the best pitchers this season by most measures. He’s also a FA in two months and rebuffed extension talks before getting moved, because of course he did. He toiled in Japan for years to get this shot, now he’s in his age 30 season and he has one big chance in open free agency to get that “one big career deal” that sets him up. He doesn’t want a one-year QO; he wants a 4-5 year deal that sets him up for life.
Should the Nats have kept him, offered him a QO and taken the comp pick instead of what they got? Maybe. As a “large market” team that’s stayed below the luxury tax, under the current system our comp pick would have been just before the 3rd round starts in 2027, somewhere around the 75th overall pick. Would that be better than what we just got? Debatable. Our 3rd rounder this year (Luke Williams, drafted 78th overall) is a prep SS who we probably don’t see until 2030; is that the kind of player you’d rather have instead of the four we got, all of whom are already in AA or higher?
The ship sailed on keeping these guys on Sunday night, so we were going to move him for something, and this sounds like the best deal we could get.
One last side note: the Nats also made an under the radar smart trade, moving the buried AAA outfielder Franklin for another arm.
Clearly there’s a trend here: the bullpen construction project in the off-season of MLFAs and waiver claims just didn’t work. Now they’re going to try building a bullpen from prospects and (hopefully) some strategic FA signings for 2027.
Working on the big board updates and 40-man machinations now.
Btw, I hate that my July rotation piece got buried by these two trade pieces; it takes a significant amount of time to do that post. Bummer 🙂
Eno Sarris of The Athletic just wrote of nine young players he expects to have greater roles. two are Nats. Yovanny Cruz and Abimelic Ortiz.
FredMD
4 Aug 26 at 10:59 am
I agree that moving Franklin was good, even if the return for him was minimal. He was at least a 40+ when he entered the system and, while he didn’t break out significantly, he didn’t crater either. I was hoping he’d still be worth a 35+, but I’d rather take a lottery ticket arm than to hold on to superfluous depth.
But I could not disagree more that Griffin shouldn’t have commanded a better return. Rizzo got Franklin and Ronny Cruz for Soroka. Does anyone prefer this package? Does anyone prefer Soroka to Griffin (at the time of the trades)?
I also don’t understand the obsession with discounting prospects that are far away from the majors. Baseball will be played in 2030. We will still be fans of the nationals in 2030. I 100% would rather have an 18 year old FV45 on the complex than 4 fringe prospects to add to our bullpen shuttle. Don’t forget – a team is allowed to sign FAs to fill holes; you don’t actually need to have the entire roster built from your farm system.
And, Todd, for what it’s worth, I always read and appreciate your rotation writeups. And that’s true even if these trades are demanding more of my attention right now. Thanks for writing those.
SMS
4 Aug 26 at 12:22 pm
Your rotation summaries are how I discovered the site and are some of my favorite Nats content online so big thanks for those and please keep writing them.
I echo my earlier statements, “disaster” may be too strong a word but this return is weak. Comparable traded starters on expiring deals: Robbie Ray is older with worse performance, peripherals (the biggest argument against Griffin), and expensive even with the Giants covering part of his salary and he was traded for Mendez (top 5 Padres prospect to open the year) and Joniel Hernandez (top 20ish prospect and 13th ranked player from this year’s international class $1.4M sign who is hitting .323/.445/.528 with more walks than strikeouts in rookie ball). Casey Mize was traded for top 3 Padres prospect LHP Kash Mayfield and an exchange of throw-ins, Mize is a flashier talent than Griffin as a former 1st overall pick but he’s roughly the same pitcher-is the margin between them enough to justify this kind of disparity?
I’m not sure any of the guys we got for Griffin are actually prospects:
-Hartle is barely a prospect 25th MLB.com, 18th Keith Law, 24 FGs, not in BA top 30 for the Guardians-and projects as a 5th starter/long reliever type with no fastball.
-Dion throws 91, after the Guardians labored to add velocity, and is probably low leverage relief help at best he was unranked everywhere (FGs ranked 46 guardians prospects)
-Virguez FG 43, RHRP throws 100 but has some control concerns *Rule 5 eligible so he costs a 40 man spot
-Mitchell FG 36, slap hitter with solid walk rates propped up by his nonexistent swing rate of 40%-we are surely hoping to add loft to his groundball swing (54.6%).
AG
4 Aug 26 at 7:15 pm
@AG: I think the Griffin return demonstrates three things primarily:
1. He’s got 2 months of control, versus additional years, when you compare his return with, say, Garcia’s or even Gores.
2. Not everyone is convinced he’s suddenly a top-line Ace in this league. I’m not: I think this season is awesome for the player, of course, but his FIP is a full point higher than his ERA, and he’s been pitching to a .250 BABIP. They were never going to get “Ace” returns.
3. The Nats may have waited too long. The Fangraphs guys especially picked on this, noting that the primary buyers of pitching made their moves before the Nats really had decided whether or not they were really selling … and then they had to take the best deal they could get from Cleveland.
Todd Boss
5 Aug 26 at 9:04 am
@Todd
1. Yes, he’s a rental. But so was Soroka. So are AG’s comps (Ray and Mize). This return is poor for a rental.
2. Yes, he’s not an ace. And Mize kind of is, or at least has been pitching like one this year. But Ray is not. Soroka was not. Would you argue that either of those pitchers are better than Griffin? Would you rate this package in the same ballpark as Franklin and Cruz or Mendez and Hernandez? This is just an objectively bad trade.
3. Maybe they did wait too long (which would explain but not really excuse it), but they did not have to take the best deal they could get. They could have kept him and played slightly better baseball. And maybe QO’d him, or whatever. But they did not have to give him away for nothing and send the message to all future GMs that Toboni considers his BATNA to be absolute zero. Nothing good will come from that.
I think it’s OK to say that this FO is doing some things really well and that they got their asses handed to them on some of these trades.
SMS
5 Aug 26 at 11:17 am
My take on the Griffin trade is the same for pretty much all of the team’s moves: I hope that it works.
John C.
5 Aug 26 at 12:21 pm
@SMS: I don’t compare Griffin to Ray or Mize for one simple reason: track record.
Ray has been in the league for a decade. 109 career ERA+, 129 this season. he won a Cy Young. He’s no fluke. He’s also lefty. Mize more of the same: 6 years track record, 107 career ERA+, dominant this season … fair or not, this matters. Griffin is a 7pitch soft tosser who gets by on guile and chicanery, not power. yeah, i’d say both are “better” than Griffen, and I wouldn’t have expected as much in return for them as rentals.
Waiting too long: it then comes down to what’s better: a 3rd round pick in 2027 versus the 4 guys we got.
Brittany Ghiroli had an interesting video put up last week when talking about the trade deadline. She intimated that, at the end of the day, the way these front offices do trades is by distilling every player down to a dollar figure. I couldn’t even begin to think how to try to do that; what is Griffin’s “dollar value” for the next two months to this team? It has to be some combination of current salary, future value, future WAR production, etc etc. But to play this knowledge game: all these are in quotes as “theoretical” values.
– Griffin’s salary the rest of the way: call it “$2M”
– Griffin’s project WAR to us the rest of the way: he’s at 3.5 bWAR now, call it 1.5 bWAR.
– What’s the value of 1.5 bWAR at $9M/war? Call it “$13.5M”
– Less his owed salary: he’s now valued at “$11.5M”
We got 1 40-man roster lefty reliever with 6 years of control, and 3 minor leaguers each with between 7-8 years of control. How do you value that? I dunno. A whole bunch of future value accounting. Is a #25ish starter in AA worth “$5M?” is a #30ish reliever in AA worth “$2.5M?” Are these other guys worth “$1M” each? In the aggregate now we’re really close to Griffin’s “11.5” figure.
Toboni has certainly made a lot of trades so far. Per my notes:
* 2025: Harry Ford, Isaac Lyon for Jose Ferrer
* 2025: Luis Perales for Jake Bennett
* 2026: Cash for Jake Eder (he had been DFa’d)
* 2026: Cash for Tyler Schoff
* 2026: Cash for minor leaguer Marcus Brown (minors)
* 2026: Cash or PTBNL for Robert Hassell
* 2026: Connelly Early for Curtis Mead
* 2026: Cruz, Bird, Cebert, Grable for Luis Garcia
* 2026: Curtis Mead for Boston Smith
* 2026: Fein, Rosario, Fitz-Gerald, Cabrera, Ortiz for MacKenzie Gore
* 2026: Granillo for Soriano in DFA limbo
* 2026: Hartle, Dion, Virguez, Mitchell for Foster Griffin
* 2026: Joe Glassey for Christian Franklin
* 2026: Jorbit Vivas for Sean Paul Linan
* 2026: Kyle Nicholas for Randal Diaz
* 2026: Richard Lovelady for cash
* 2026: Tom Cosgrove for cash (minor league deal)
* 2026: Zack Short for Cash
I didn’t like selling Eder for cash, Obviously the Perales/Bennett trade has sucked, I questioned the Linan for Vivas deal, and think we needed more for Griffin.
Then, looking at this same list, Ford/Lyon for a reliever looks solid, I like the Early deal, I like the return we got for Gore, and I think i like the Garcia haul. Flipping the buried Franklin for Glassey works for me as well.
Todd Boss
5 Aug 26 at 12:39 pm
I’d sort it as:
Trades where Toboni fleeced the other team.
None
Good trades where we received a bit more value than we sent, or we got equivalent value in a way that fits better with org needs.
1. Ferrer for Ford, Lyon
2. Mead for Early
Underwhelming trades. We got the worst of it, and I likely wouldn’t have made them if I were the GM, but I can see the logic and they are more disappointing than enraging.
1. Gore for Fein, Rosario, Fitz-Gerald, Cabrera, Ortiz
2. Bennett for Perales
3. Garcia for Cruz, Bird, Cebert, Grable
Bad trades where we got fleeced.
1. Griffin for Hartle, Dion, Virguez, Mitchell
The rest were all roster management / DFAs etc, and I don’t think setting those up requires the same negotiating skills, so I don’t think they belong in this analysis.
(I will say that one of them turned out incredibly well. Mead wasn’t on my radar, and trading Boston Smith for him was a great move, Smith’s ascendancy as a legit prospect notwithstanding. I give the Toboni full credit for that, but it’s a scouting and development success and not a negotiating success, and that’s what I’m trying to isolate.)
I expect that, at a minimum, you’d bump up the Gore trade to that second bucket, and since that was the single biggest trade Toboni has made in terms of total surplus value, that’s obviously going to mean that you see a very different overall pattern than I do. Fair enough. I suppose we’ll have to just see where it all ends up.
SMS
5 Aug 26 at 1:25 pm
I appreciate the responses and discussion. I’m not totally out on Toboni as a trader and agree the timing probably hurt him-for what its worth Mize was traded within the final minutes of the deadline and it may explain his price some as a last ditch effort to make a deal by AJ Preller who never met a prospect he wasn’t willing to deal.
The bright side is these do feel like the sorts of players our revamped development systems should be looking for: starters who need to add velocity/pitch quality to stick in the rotation, high velocity relief arms needing polish, Mitchell has similar weaknesses to JY’s bat path issues prior to the new regime. I just worry Toboni was a little too willing to deal for the project players he loves and didn’t optimize the value of those he shipped out. The Gore trade (ignoring his value relative to Garcia/Griffin) was a quantity type deal but Toboni managed to get 4 top 20 players from the Rangers including a recent 1st rounder in Fien he was reportedly all in on drafting for the Red Sox if he had fallen, so he didn’t completely sacrifice quality in the deal while still targeting profiles he likes. Garcia and Griffin returned much lower ranked type returns even if they are good fits-all we can do now is root for the guys we got and be grateful we didn’t deal CJ for peanuts!
AG
5 Aug 26 at 5:51 pm