Here’s the End of Season 2026 check-in on rotations. Since the various minor league seasons ended at varying points during the month of September, and since the Rochester “rotation” turned into basically a string of bullpen games, these are going to be season-long stat analysis instead of a “hot cold” analysis of just a couple of possible September starts.
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, etc.
Important Pitching stats links for this analysis (I like the Fangraphs stats when looking up Fip, Babip, etc).
- Big Board, Draft Tracker, and IFA Tracker
- Nats MLB stats: at baseball-reference.com, Nats MLB stats at fangraphs.com
- AAA Rochester stats at milb.com. AAA Rochester Stats at fangraphs.com
- AA Harrisburg stats at milb.com, AA Harrisburg Stats at fangraphs.com
- High-A Wilmington stats at milb.com, High-A Wilmington Stats at fangraphs.com
- Low-A Fredericksburg Stats at milb.com, Low-A Fredericksburg stats at fangraphs.com
- FCL Nationals Stats at milb.com
- DSL Nationals Pitching Stats at milb.com
All Stats quoted are as of 9/27/26, the final game of the MLB season.
We’ll start with the Majors.
Final record: 77-85, 4th place NL East. 21st out of 30 in the league (projecting to 10th pick next July)
- Opening Day 2026: Cavalli, Griffin, Mikolas, Littell, Irvin
- End of April 2026: Cavalli, Griffin, Mikolas (with Poulin opening sometimes), Littell, Irvin
- End of May 2026: Cavalli, Griffin, Mikolas (still with openers), Littell (also with openers), Alvarez.
- End of June 2026: Cavalli, Griffin, Mikolas, Littell, Alvarez. Still using Openers in key spots
- End of July 2026: Cavalli, Griffin, Mikolas, Littell, Irvin (with frequent openers)
- End of August 2026: Cavalli, Irvin, Alvarez, JKent, and bullpen games
- End of Sept 2026: Cavalli, Irvin, Alvarez, JKent, and then the return of Herz and Early.
Changes since end of last Month: Cavalli got shut down with one start to go, which worked out with the timing of the return of three of our 60-day DL starters in Gray, Herz, and Early. Herz got 2 final week starts, Early one, and Gray came into pitch in relief and get a save.
Rotation Observations: Cavalli finally pitched to his promise when taken in the 2020 draft; 13-5, 3.02 ERA, 142 ERA+. 32 starts, only missing the final start of the season. 200 Ks in 169 IP. And a new long-term contract buying out all his arb seasons and 1-2 of his FA seasons. Can’t ask for more. Irvin finished 2-10 with a 5.48 ERA and a 79 ERA+. His final appearance was basically his season in a microcosm; looked great for 2-3 innings, then gave up multiple bombs to take the loss. Alvarez finished with a 2-6 w/L record in 25 appearances/17 starts, basically used as a long reliever despite his 2nd straight season with excellent numbers (125 ERA+). Kent gave us 7 starts with a 5.94 ERA; he’s not ready. Herz’ 2 starts back were not great, Early’s looked excellent.
2027 way too early rotation prediction: Cavalli, Early, Gray, Alvarez, and a FA acquisition. Send Kent back to AAA, along with Herz and Perales to stretch him out. Keep Cornelio, Lord, and Dion as 2-inning relievers. Non-tender Irvin. I’ll take this sentence along with the same analysis cascading down the system and post this in a week or so once the dust settles.
Next guy to get cut/demoted:
- April 2026: Mikolas
- May 2026: Irvin (but he got hurt)
- June 2026: Littell but they’ll never cut him and his salary, so i’ll go back to Mikolas
- July 2026: turned out to be Alvarez, should have been Mikolas.
- Aug 2026: With both Mikolas and Littell whacked, next in line is Irvin.
- Sept 2026: Irvin. He’s now got more than 100 MLB starts with an ERA north of 5.00.
Quick bullpen thoughts: After amazing churn the entire season, to go with their 42 blown saves the team ends the season with this bullpen, sporting these stats (note; lots of these are SSS, but my point will be made soon):
- Tolman: 2.93 ERA, 150 ERA+, 5 saves in a month
- Sinclair: 2.45 ERA, 181 ERA+
- Cornelio: 3.68 ERA, 118 ERA+
- Dion: 3.00 ERA, 116 ERA+
- Lord: 3.78 ERA, 114 ERA+
- Cruz: 6.75 ERA, 66 ERA+
- Lovelady: 4.23 ERA, 103 ERA+
- Varland: 6.55 ERA, 66 ERA+
- (15 day DL) Ribalta: 3.77 ERA, 115 ERA+
Additionally, In the last 2 week they sent down these three to free up space for Early/Herz starts:
- Perales: 11.45 ERA, 39 ERA+
- Simpson: 10.38 ERA, 45 ERA+
- Yean: 2.45 ERA, 191 ERA+
I mean … yes most of these guys had just a month of work, in September against expanded rosters. But there’s a lot of promise here. After watching this bullpen all year, I’d go into 2026-27 with every one of these 100+ ERA+ guys, especially front lined by the quartet of Ribalta/Lord/Dion/Cornelio, who’ve been doing it for a big chunk of the season. The Nat’s bullpen ended up finishing the season 30th out of 30 in fWAR (-3.3) and 28th in ERA, so there’s no where to go but up.
AAA Rochester
Final record: 90-58, 1st in league, won both halves, won the IL title, lost in AAA final
- Opening Day 2026: Alvarez, Parker, Perales, Lara, Cornelio
- End of April 2026: Alvarez, Perales, Lara, Cornelio, Champlain (with Ogasawara and Penrod spot starts)
- End of May 2026: Perales, Lara, Cornelio, Champlain, Kent
- End of June 2026: Perales, Lara, Champlain, JKent, Penrod as an opener
- End of July 2026: Perales, Lara, Champlain, JKent, then a slew of openers/rehab starts/bullpen games.
- End of August 2026: Champlain, Cebert, Lyon, Herz doing rehab, then 9 different openers/bullpen games.
- End of Season 2026: Champlain, Cebert, Lyon, Herz/Early rehabs, and bullpen games.
Changes since end of last Month: Not much from August: There were 9 different starters for their 18 games in September. Susana was put on the AAA roster to make a playoff start; he hit 104 in the AAA championship game. The team did all sort of roster shenanigans at the end, with guys on/off the Dev list, Cebert demoted to AA, all to do roster management for the playoff games.
Rotation Observations: Champlain’s 2026 season in total was solid; 3.95 ERA with 127 IP and a 1.14 whip. I wonder if they’ll pursue a MLFA reunion for 2027 here. Lara led the team with 20 official starts and 34 appearances; I also wonder if they’ll renew with the player who’s only ever played for the Nats franchise. Cebert was put back to AA as a paperwork move; he should be in AAA next year after a stellar 2026. Lyon had a 1.53 ERA in four AAA starts after starting the season in Low-A; pretty amazing season for him, even though he lost the Pitcher of the Year award to Sime.
Next guy to get promoted:
- April: Alvarez and Cornelio. Verdict: both have been promoted, Alvarez is staying there.
- May: Perales and his sub 2.00 ERA could play in the majors and our terrible bullpen
- June: Kent the only deserving candidate right now, but he’s not getting promoted anytime soon.
- July: Perales; had a good month and is on 40-man so no roster move.
- Aug: Cornelio should go back up; both June and July’s candidate are now in majors. (he did)
- Sept: They’ve promoted everyone worthy out of AAA at this point.
Next guy to get cut/demoted:
- April: none really, Champlain had the least investment
- May: Lara clearly.
- June: Back to Champlain, who looks like he may be stuck at a ceiling of effectiveness in AA
- July: Back to Lara.
- Aug: Zak Kent
- Sept: Lara or Champlain, both of whom are MLFAs.
Quick bullpen thoughts: AAA finishes the season with somewhere in the 16-17 range of relievers depending on how you define them. Eight of them are 40-man guys; ZKent, Beeter, Nicolas, Bird, Schultz, Simpson, Perales, and Palmquist. Honestly, I’m not sure how many of these guys are even worth keeping into next season. We have 5 guys coming off the 60-day DL at the end of the WS and not one FA, so look for all 5 spots to come from this group in the form of DFAs or non-tenders. I’m not sure exactly where we stand with Rule5 at this point (nearly all our Rule5 potential candidates were already added), but between this crew and the uys who finished the season on the MLB roster with ERAs in the 6s we should have plenty of room to make moves.
AA Harrisburg
Final record: 67-67, 3rd place in their division.
- Opening Day 2026: Clemmey, Garcia, Luckham, Ogasawawara, Swan
- End of April 2026: Clemmey, Garcia, Luckham, Ogasawara, Kent
- End of May 2026: Clemmey, Luckham, Ogasawara, Lyon, Randall (spot starts from Van Scoyoc)
- End of June 2026: Clemmey, Luckham, Lyon, Randall, Van Scoyoc
- End of July 2026: Clemmey, Lyon, Randall, Maddox, Tejeda (along with 3 rehab starts and a couple of bullpen games)
- End of Aug 2026: Clemmey, Randall, Tejeda, Hartle, Susana (Cebert, Lyon for a bit, 2 rehab starts from Herz)
- End of Season 2026: Clemmey, Randall, Tejeda, Hartle, Cebert, Swan
Changes since end of last Month: Cebert switched places in the last week of the season with Susana to get Jarlin one AAA playoff spot, otherwise no changes in the last few weeks for Harrisburg.
Rotation Observations: Clemmey did a full season in AA, wire to wire. 28 Games/25 starts, 128 IP. 4.64 ERA, 1.47 whip. Second straight season in this general area. No idea what to do with him. He’s too young to give up on, but has stalled. Randall finished with a 5.06 ERA in 17 games for us; probably repeats AA next season to see how he does. Tejeda struggled upon his promotion but should run out in AA again to start 2027. Hartle and Cebert were both excellent in AA upon their arrival and I would think move to AAA next season. Swan made it back to AA after a seemingly endless rehab stint in High-A but struggled.
Next guy to get promoted:
- April: Ogasawara, then Kent. Kent was promoted over Ogasawara
- May: clearly Ogasawara.
- June: Van Scoyoc (and he was promoted on 7/1, but was then demoted back mid-month).
- July: Nobody is ready, but Clemmey probably pitched the best and is the longest-serving AA guy. Maybe another month of this and they could consider him, but at his age, there’s no reason to push him to AAA right now.
- August: Hartle
- Sept: Cebert (who did move up) and/or Hartle.
Next guy to get cut/demoted:
- April: Luckham.
- May: still Luckham.
- June: Chemmey
- July: Luckham, who got removed from rotation. Now likely Randall.
- Aug: Randall still isn’t good, but Clemmey and Tejeda are concerning.
- Sep: Randall and Tejeda may be odd men out next season when injury guys return
High-A Wilmington
Final record: 69-62, 3rd place out of 6 in division.
- Opening Day 2026: Bruni (Sullivan), Maddox, Randall, Tejeda, Polanco
- End of April 2026: Maddox, Randall, Tejeda, Polanco, Lyon
- End of May 2026: Maddox, Tejeda, Polanco, Bruni, Meckley
- End of June 2026: Maddox, Tejeda, Meckley, Sime, Tepper
- End of July 2026: Sime, Tepper, Fischer, Sthele, Sullivan (plus 3 rehab starts, and a slew of one-offs).
- End of Aug 2026: Maddox, Sime, Fisher, Sullivan, Biven (likely Sales coming back into the rotation in Sept)
- End of Season 2026: Maddox, Sime, Fisher, Sullivan, Sales
Changes since end of last Month: Sales came off DL and took the opener/bullpen 5th rotation spot for the end of the season.
Rotation Observations: Maddox finished the year with stellar High-A numbers (a 3.10 ERA and 1.14 WHIP) but got shelled when he moved up. Sime was our Minor League Pitcher of the Year and had a 2.15 ERA in High-A to go along with 76 Ks in 46 innings). Fisher was very solid for the season (3.02 ERA) but seems very much like a pitch to contact guy and probably starts here again in 2027 thanks to a glut of AA candidates. Sullivan struggled post promotion to a 6.10 era. Sales only had 2 starts and probably has to start here again in 2027.
Next guy to get promoted:
- April: Randall: he did indeed get promoted
- May: None. Tejeda if I had to name one.
- June: Maddox (Promoted on 7/1), should have been Tejeda (who was also promoted on 7/22)
- July: Sime
- Aug: Maddox
- Sept: Sime and Maddox
Next guy to get cut/demoted:
- April: Polanco
- May: still Polanco but likely Bruni makes way for Sime. (Polanco indeed finally dumped to bullpen)
- June: Meckley (indeed he was demoted on 7/8)
- July: Tepper
- August: Sullivan
- Sept: Sullivan
Low-A Fredericksburg
Final record: Total: 80-51 (1/6). Won 1st half. Playoffs: Lost in playoffs to Fayetteville 2-0.
- Opening Day 2026: Portorreal, Hughes/Meckley, Sime/Lyon, Harmon/Beck, Fischer/Conradt
- End of April 2026: Portorreal, Meckley/Hughes, Sime/Johnson, Harmon/Conradt, Fischer/Sullivan
- End of May 2026: Portorreal, Sime, Johnson, Fischer, and Tepper doing rehab the whole month
- End of June 2026: Portorreal, Johnson, Fischer, Manning, De La Cruz plus rehab starts from Herz, Williams, Tepper.
- End of July 2026: Johnson, De La Cruz, Harmon, Meckley, Millikan, Reyes (with a bunch of openers)
- End of August 2026: De La Cruz, Harmon, Meckley, Reyes, Portorreal (plus rehab starts from Sales and Herz)
- End of Season 2026: De La Cruz, Harmon, Meckley, Reyes, Millikan
Changes since end of last Month: Portorreal was moved out for Millikan, who got moved up from FCL for the tail end of the season.
Rotation Observations: De La Cruz’ first stint in Low-A ended with an ERA of 6.88. Harmon got 12 starts in Low-A and dominated: 1.60 ERA and a sub 1.00 whip. Meckley was ok, but that’s after failing in High-A. I’m not sure he’s long for any rotation. Reyes was excellent in his 5-6 starts after getting called up from the FCL and should lead the line next season. Millikan got shelled after his callup.
Next guy to get promoted:
- April: Meckley; indeed he was promoted
- May: Fischer
- June: Fischer, who was actually promoted 7/1. Should be Johnson
- July: None. The low-A rotation is a mess. Gus Hughes as a long reliever is best option to promote this month and indeed he was.
- Aug: Harmon
- Sept: Harmon
Next guy to get cut/demoted:
- April: Portorreal: he has turned it around greatly.
- May: Probably Johnson if we had to pick someone; they’ve already settled the tandem starters and demoted guys to the pen
- June: Portorreal (put on Dev list mid-month in July)
- July: Meckley or De la Cruz. Probably Meckey since he’s 3 years older.
- Aug: Meckley again, and De La Cruz again.
- Sept: De la Cruz or Millikan
Rookie FCL
Final record: 26-27 (2/5 in division, 7/16 in league)
The FCL season ended on July 23rd.
- Opening Day 2026: Weaver, Reyes, Martina, De la Cruz, Robles
- End of May 2026: Reyes, De la Cruz, Robles, Lopez, Bothwell
- End of June 2026: Reyes, Robles, Lopez, Bothwell, Gillis, Millikan
- End of Season 2026: Reyes, Robles, Lopez, Bothwell, Millikan, Medina
Rookie DSL
Final Record: 14-40 (7/7 in division, 49 of 51 overall in league. Pretty bad.
The season ended mercifully on August 29th.
- Opening Day 2026: Manzueta, Medina, Sarit, Reynoso, Carela
- End of June 2026: Manzueta, Medina, Sarit, Carela, Salas
- End of July 2026: Manzueta, Sarit, Carela, Reynoso, Thomas
- End of Season 2026: Manzueta, Sarit, Carela, Reynoso, Thomas
That’s it for September and for the 2026 Season.
I’m eager to see some writeups of the 30 or so guys we traded for at the trade deadline and how likely any of them are to pan out. Early looks great, but what about the rest of them? Tough to say.
kevin r
28 Sep 26 at 11:51 pm
AAA & AA pitching coaches both released.
a good number of new arms acquired at the deadline. I expect more trades to come.
I’m sorry they lost Chase Hampton
FredMD
29 Sep 26 at 9:11 am
@KevinR: We acquired 10 total guys at the “trade deadline” this year:
– Early for Curtis Mead (Boston)
– Cruz, Bird, Cebert, Grable for Luis Garcia (NYY)
– Hartle, Dion, Virguez, Mitchell for Foster Griffin (Cle)
– Glassey for Franklin (Balt)
Clearly Early is the best player of these 10. Bird is a 30yr old org guy thrown in b/c we needed bullpen arms.
As for the rest, I have them ranked in the following range from a prospect perspective:
– mid teens: Cebert
– 20-30 range: Hartle
– mid 30s: Dion, Glassey, Grable
– Mid 40s; Cruz, Mitchell
– 70s: Virguez
I think both Cebert and Hartle as the two highest ranked prospects could both turn into legit starters and should be in AAA next year. Dion has already shown what he can do at the MLB level, and Glassey has been unhittable since arriving. Grable is a big arm who blew away AA and could feature very soon for the MLB club. The rest are longer shots.
Todd Boss
29 Sep 26 at 10:11 am
I really appreciate the work that you put into these write ups, Todd. Bravo Zulu.
I’m hopeful, well, in the first place that we have a season in 2027 (given the way that a global pandemic wiped out the Nats’ WS celebration, I’m half expecting a lost season just to hamstring the Nats’ rise). Beyond that continued progress. While the pitching almost has to be better next season, I expect that the offense will likely take a step back. The team had unexpected contributions from a lot of sources (Garcia Jr., Mead, Ruiz, Chaparro) in 2026 that will be tough to reproduce in 2027.
John C.
29 Sep 26 at 12:03 pm
@JohnC thanks! I wouldn’t be able to do what I do on the big board w/o Luke’s work, so god help us if he decides to hang ’em up.
I’ve got some more fun stuff coming in the next week. Rotations done, will do one final prospect review post, then will post a re-ranking of the entire system. I’ve just done the Big Board locking of fy2026 and created out the 2027 versions so that when moves start happening, we’ll capture them. I’m trying to remember what else I do in the immediate post season, but assuming we don’t get locked out we’ll have the regular slate of stuff.
2027: it may be naive but i’m just working as if nothing will change this off-season; QOs, non-tenders, Rule5, everything going off as planned. I agree; i sense we may lose some offense, but I’m cautiously optimistic about the bullpen we ended the season with, plus the starters we’ll go to battle with. Maybe we can get improvements in our key prospects (House, Crews) to make up for the loss of Garcia/Mead. Maybe Morales slugs the crap out of the ball from 1B and makes everyone forget Luis’ career season. Maybe, maybe.
Todd Boss
29 Sep 26 at 2:10 pm
Here’s a “fun” stat: the Nationals pitching staff was worth a cumulative 4.8 fWAR this season, dead last in baseball.
Cavalli, Alvarez and Griffin were worth 8.3 WAR combined.
The other 41 arms were worth a collective -3.5 WAR.
Yuck.
It was mostly the bullpen bringing the team down, as our rotation was 22nd best (still not good), with the aforementioned guys being worth 7.6 of the total 8.1 WAR (there’s a but of funkiness from the use of openers). While the other 16 starters combined for 0.5 WAR.
There’s no silver lining to the bullpen. Just an abject disaster in every way. Dead last in WAR in MLB (-3.3!!!). Which somehow is better than it actually was, as Alvarez accounts for 0.7 WAR, when he was used in long relief or after an opener. 40 players threw in relief. Only 12 produced positive WAR.
I hope Toboni, Butera and Mathews understand what went wrong so that we don’t repeat this next year.
Will
29 Sep 26 at 2:20 pm
On the minor league side of things, this is a good retrospective of the org’s pitching. While the org generally made good strides among the bats, it’s hard to see much immediate progress on the developmental side among the arms. Cavalli and Alvarez were clear success stories.
Then many of the ’25 draft class were impressive too, Sime, Harmon and Maddox. And many of the trade acquisitions too: Lyon, Glassey, Dion, Cebert, etc. This is a good thing, it generally points to good scouting/player identification (but ignore Perales).
But who, like Cavalli and Alvarez at the major league level, upped their game in the minors compared to last season? Evidence of coaches successfully implementing the individual development plans Toboni liked to talk about. There’s not many. Erick Mejia had a break out season. Jackson Kent had a good season. De La Cruz looked special in the FCL but not special in A ball. Same story about Medina in the DSL to FCL… Who am I missing?
Its good progress but theres still a lot of work to be done.
Will
29 Sep 26 at 2:40 pm
The fact that so many replacement pitchers were so much less valuable than 0 WAR, there might be good cause to re-calibrate the stats of “replacement player”.
You’d think, given all the moves we made, a 0 WAR bullpen could have been pretty doable.
kevin r
29 Sep 26 at 6:46 pm