Fix It: How The Nationals’ Rebuild Can Be Saved
Really, the question we’re trying to phrase today is how can the Nationals get back to the World Series? Something that they did not that long ago. It feels, I’m sure, like forever ago to the Nationals fans. But 2019, the Nationals are on top of the world. They win the World Series, but since then, the Nationals have like the rebuild of the Nationals has been long and so far utterly ineffective. Um, they went to the basement the next year in 2020, but that’s 2020, 26 and 34. We’ll give them a pass on that one. But ever since then, 65 wins in 21, 55 and 22, 71 and 23, 71 and 24, 66. And I think that’s the one obviously that is the one that is the that was the last straw because obviously Mike Rizzo and that front office is out and now we have a new front office, the hiring of Paul Tabone. they have made multiple uh uh hires already and I would say that you could say that there is a definite uh Red Sox uh feel you know like that they’re bringing other Red Sox officials other than Paul Demon are coming over which again what normally happens in situations like this is when you leave you’re given like a a number right like okay you can take X or you can take so and so and so and so but you’re not allowed no organization is going to let you just say, “Okay, they’re all coming with me.” You know, but I obviously there there there often is this you can bring someone to be a top lieutenant or someone is clearly getting a big promotion to the new, you know, in the new front office, things like that. But that kind of leads us into, so we’re going to look at first the national strengths as they stand right now and then we’ll get into the room for improvement and the things we would suggest that they need to improve. But so Jeff, to kind of start that off, I would say that this new front office, the Paul Timone front office is kind of right now would, you know, this it is to be determined, but I would say that you could anticipate that that has a chance at least to be a strength. Is is that a fair way to put it? Yeah, I think you know, you look at uh the group that’s coming over, whether it be Tabone, whether it be uh Devin Pearson, um you know, who was also involved in, you know, was leading these these Red Sox drafts over the last couple years where they’ve been able to build a pretty strong pipeline first to position prospects and then seemingly overnight kind of turned into a pitching heavy system, something that we really had never seen uh previously. And you know then you know you look at uh Horowitz uh Justin Horowitz coming over from the Pirates who was there for a couple years you know had previously um been in a position you know in in amateur scouting uh with the Red Sox I think was maybe like a a special assistant to the director um or one of those sort of titles. his first draft with the Pirates. Of course, uh they land a a number one prospect in the entire game and Connor Griffin and they didn’t land him at like one, two, three, four or five. They did land him, you know, in the top 10, but at the back end of it, pretty good pick. He’s got some track record as well. They’re a team that does well, a group of evaluators, I’ll say, that does pretty well at identifying players in the amateur market that can then make a jump uh professionally. And we’ll see how they set things up internationally and and how that structure will change. And then I think also um they’re an organization that understands how you know some synergy and and complete and clear lines of communication between departments particularly the acquisition side of things whether that’s scouting whether that’s analytics um R&D or combination of all of those um with player development is really really important and I think particularly on the Red Sox side over the last couple years they’ve seen how that’s worked on hitting and on the pitching side and uh you know how just having consistent messaging all throughout the system and spring training and then utilizing technology and information to make more informed decisions in player development um I think could really you know um uncover a lot of lowhanging fruit uh for the Nationals just because as we talked about before the show generations wise it may not even be the upgrades that we’ve seen recently have success in terms of the Red Sox pitching development or the Blue Jays each of I think I’ve written about this year they were probably a little bit further along in terms of when they had to improve than the nationals are at this point. So there’s probably a lot of lowhanging fruit and things that they can upgrade process-wise, technology-wise, coaching wise, etc. Other thing I would say that’s the other current strength and we’ll see where this goes with this is is that a lot of the teams we’re going to talk about these four teams we’re going to talk about there’s a number of teams I would say we’re going to talk about where you will start with saying like we’re going to talk about the Rockies and the Rockies have very few players on their current big league roster who you could plausibly make the argument are going to be important members of a successful big league Rockies team. I don’t think you can say that with the Nationals. You can say with the Nationals that they have a number of relatively young players who have at least shown something. Now, they may not have all synced it up at the same time, but Jacob Young, we’ll work our way up. Not for the stars first, but Jacob Young has shown he’s a very good defensive center fielder. Now, is he good enough to be a regular? Maybe, maybe not. But even if not, he’s a very good fourth outfielder. I would say that you could say that Luis Garcia been around a while now, but he is someone who has in his best years been a plausible starting second baseman. I think that you can say that Brady House with improvement. He’s he’s got real power. Maybe he can be a third baseman for you or a first baseman for you. Dylan Cruz was has been very disappointing in the big leagues, but this is one of the best college baseball players of the 21st century. Um, Jane, you know, C.J. Abrams has been a above average shortstop at his best and James Wood has been a all-star level player at his best. You have like Cert Ruiz, maybe you can get him back to being a re, you know, a regular at at catcher who’s at least adequate. All these things are these are like potential block building blocks. Or the other way you could go with this is it’s a new regime. If they want to say this rebuild failed and we’re not close, there also then are a number of players here who would still have value to if you said, “Hey, we’re going to take two steps back to take three steps forward.” There are players here that you could get value for and trade if you wanted to. Obviously, Mackenzie Gore on the pitching staff would be probably the most prominent of those, but so there’s ways you could go with this. There are pieces here, but there’s still a lot of work to do as you would expect for a team that has been basically the basement of I mean the Marlins are in this division and the Nationals have consistently been worse than them in the 2020s. That’s and the Marlins I would say at this point are significantly probably further along crazy enough in their rebuild than the National. This episode is brought to you by Square. Your favorite neighborhood spots run on Square. 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Square. See you in the neighborhood. Get after it, FT fam. That gets us into it. Improve. I will I will say that I do think that, you know, a lot of the players you just named off, they probably have more high-end guys than the Marlins do at this point. The Marlins have gotten a lot more consistency from their players that are maybe a tier below than the Nationals have gotten from Gore, from Wood, you know, certainly from Cruz, but Abrams, but like Abrams, Gore, and Wood, that trio has all shown well above average to plus potential in the major leagues for months to multiple month stretches, but they’ve also had really low lows in the same in on the back end. And I think that lack of consistency is a problem. And that is the perfect, you suggested fix is this team. This is an organization that needs better major league baseball player development. Not MLB here. We’ll get to that. MLB. I don’t know how many nationals you can point to and say they’ve they’ve gotten that player to his close to what he can do. There’s a lot of players who you could say if this is close to what Dylan Cruz can do then then that something went horribly wrong because Dylan Cruz and we can I think we’re both now on more a little bit on the skeptical side. I think we both would describe Dylan Cruz more as a very good complimentary player likely than a star, but he’s got a lot of work to do to be a good complimentary player right now. James Wood with better contact is a star, but 220 strikeouts in a season is going to means that you’re having months where you’re just not producing at the level you need to, even if you are showing power at times and all that. CJ Abrams getting consistency. Like we said, all these players we’re talking about, there is a lot of can we optimize this these players more? Can we get more out of them? And it does not mean no organization bats 750 doing that. But I would say that the national has been lower than the batting average for most organizations. That’s kind of how I see that one. I want to kick the next one to you, Jeff, because this is one that you’re really on to, which is drafting and developing college arms, which is something also that goes back to something as you just mentioned that the Red Sox have done. Why do you lay out that that’s something that they need to do better and need to really work on? Well, I think what we’re seeing um consistently and and I don’t even think this is necessarily a new thing, but I do think in some ways it’s been kicked into hyperdrive as the miners have shrunk, pitching injuries have grown um and the length of a lot of those injuries, um and the return time has grown. So, there’s been a greater need for a lot of college arms to move with just greater immediiacy. And I think when you look at the Nationals, um particularly at the top of the draft and and even this year, you there’s no real college pitching. They didn’t take a college pitcher until round seven. And while you can hit in round 6 through 11, I’ll say on some college pitchers and anything from 12 to 20, I think really if you get any sort of major league value out of a college pitcher at that point, it’s great. Not a lot of like college starters uh that turn into major league starters are coming out of those rounds. Not that it’s unheard of, but it’s obviously less likely. Rounds one through five is really where you’re finding those guys. And it doesn’t have to be your first pick as we saw, you know, with the Red Sox a couple years ago landing Payton to um but you know, over the course of a few years, I think you do need to go after some of those college starters. They’re the guys that are getting to the getting to the big leagues a lot quicker. Um and especially the guys that are early in the draft, whether it’s Chase Burns, whether it’s Trey Savage, Paul Ske obviously is one, but he’s certainly an outlier. We talked about Payton Tullley. Um Nolan Mlan is another one that wasn’t a firstrounder, right? But um you know was somebody that after more or less a year in the minors was really able to make that jump to the big leagues. And you know honestly if the Mets wanted to they they probably could have done that even earlier. And you know, when I look at the Nationals drafts, I see a lot of of hitters in the early rounds, I don’t see a lot of college pitchers with upside. Um, and even the ones that they have, like they took Jackson Kent a couple years ago in 2024 in the fourth round. He had a pretty good year for them. He moved pretty fast for them. And obviously, he had less expectations than others. I think when you’re an organization like this where you do have some hitting talent, you know, you can find those guys in comp rounds, um, you can even take one still early in the first round, but you do need to probably commit at least two to three picks in the first seven rounds on college pitchers. And, you know, it will take a few years. Um, but you have the potential to to really hit some homers if you do that. um you know have some rotation pieces or rotation depth as well as trade assets that you can move to reinforce whatever is needed in your team at a given point in time. But um you know they really haven’t gone after college pitching over the last five years or so. The last draft where they really did that pretty consistently I think was the Cavali draft. Um though I guess they did take Jake Bennett in the second round in in 22 or 23. 22. That was 22. Yeah. But they took Jake Benn in the second round but in a draft where they took Elijah Green in the first. Exactly. Listen in the third, Brener Cox in the fourth and Jared McKenzie in the fifth and Nathaniel Ava in the sixth. Yeah. So like yes they did take a but they took one pitcher in the top 200 picks that year also. Yeah. And you know it was the same in 2021 where it was House Lyle um Ray Bosier. It was Dustin. Yeah. They took Dustin Sz who was like you know an undersized lefty who’s lifted at 5’11 but is probably like 5’9. Um so it’s just they’re not taking sort of these horse guys that maybe have traits and attributes you’re like all right this you know Py was at TCU was a two-way guy and you know we know we can do this and get him on this program and probably add some velocity. they’re not doing that sort of thing. I think it’s probably pretty easy to say, hey, we have people in place that can identify those guys now. It’s just a matter of getting, you know, the right people in the positions and personnel and player development to kind of execute that. So, I do think, you know, that’s one area where the Nationals could put some draft resources toward in the immediate, you know, next year or two and probably see um some pretty quick turnaround wins. So, number three is emphasizing developing better contact skills for the the Nationals young hitters. Focus primarily on the minor leagues here. could be said to big league level too to some extent. But so the thing that is a little bit worth digging into here, we have at Baseball America, I’ll put it in the show notes for this, the Stackcast hitting rankings for all 30 organizations. And one of the things that does stand out for the Nationals and it’s it is not a surprise that the Nationals rank best their their best ranking is they are second of all 30 orgs in 90th percentile exit velocity. The Nationals do not have a problem with having players who hit the ball hard. That is that is what they have selected. That is what they’ve done. That is what they’ve developed. What they’ve had a real problem with is getting those players to hit enough to make enough contact for that power to really play and for that power to matter. And the key thing that really does jump out about this though is it’s not swing decisions. Often you would see with that it would be like, okay, they’re bottom of the barrel in swing decisions. Their chase rates really high. and you would say, “Okay, so what we’re gonna have to do is really work on making better swing decisions, you know, understanding pitch recognition, getting better at that.” They’re 11th in swing decisions. That’s that’s fine. That’s not a giant flaw. their giant flaws is they’re dead 30th in contact percentage and they’re 29th in zone contact percentage, which I do think is actually a more challenging hurdle because you have these players who have real power but and make adequate swing decisions, but they can recognize a fast ball or a breaking ball in the zone that’s where they want it to go, you know, where they want to hit and then they swing and miss. That’s where it’s like, okay, some of that’s going to be some of these players is going to be like, hey, I’m sorry, but we can’t fix this. But you’re trying to like, okay, you’re I would say that you are looking at as you bring in as you try to help your hitting instructors develop these players, you’re kind of looking at trying to reduce length in swings, trying to clean up things as far as setup. like if you have a player who’s particularly noisy and it’s like hey this bat waggle means you’re you know you’re late you know like looking on timing things like that that’s where I think that they’ve really got to make a point of emphasis and this kind of goes to maybe also they have to steer a little bit towards hey we got to bring in some more like more players with bat to ball skills and then develop their power we’re going to put them on bat speed program you want to have a little bit of a a mix I would say Jeff of all this but like they’ve gone too are in the big power, big swings, beatable in the zone. And I would ask you before we move on to the next one, which is a little bit related, how easy do you think that is to fix? Is that something that you’re going to have to kind of go to your next uh wave of of prospects or is that something that you think is fixable? I think it’s going to be on a case-byase basis. And you know, once again, I know I we’ve kind of beating this this drum to death. I sort of feel like it’s going to come down to player development and who is in place in player development, if they have, you know, a history of this stuff, if they’ve had success, if it’s the right message for this group. Um, some of that’s probably going to be taking inventory of the type of things that we’re taught um and focused on. Um cuz I can’t necessarily say that the Red Sox have had great success in terms of improving contact and swing decisions. They’ve tended to draft guys that already had a really good foundation of that and then try to build up bat speed is, you know, sort of been what the focus is. So I do think that um some of the targeting is probably really going to change going forward. That said, not everybody uh that’s in this organization is probably fully lost. And quite often when we see improvements in player development, I think we saw it with the Cardinals and we saw it with someone like Josh Bayz where some processes and folks have changed obviously as as Bloom was kind of put in charge of improving processes before, you know, he took the the top job there. Um, and you know, you see somebody like Josh Bayas make a pretty significant improvement um, year-over-year. And I’m sure there’s guys like that’s probably not necessarily Elijah Green based on how bad that contact is. Um, but, you know, if they could get him to a point where he’s Spencer Jones, I think, uh, I think people would be pretty excited about that player just because of what his defensive ability is. So, I think like the fact that there are EVs there, I think is maybe hinting at some some lowhanging fruit that maybe not all these guys are going to turn to something, but if there’s guys with impact that maybe we can improve how they approach their their at bats and their plan at the plate and kind of attack swing decisions like that and and hopefully hack contact by improving swing decisions. Um, you know, maybe we see better results for these five out of this group of 15 that had these good EVs but kind of crappy everything else. Number four on this kind of segus very nice with that. Like you said, you mentioned Elijah Green. So, Elijah Greens, Brady House, even on the college side, it’s guys like Trey Lipkcom where it’s like, okay, there’s real power here, but there’s length to the swing. There’s questions about contact ability. I think that where the nationals are right now, you do have to ask the question if you’re coming in as the new regime and say, “Hey, do we need to kind of course correct here a little bit? Do we need to approach this a little differently?” Because this is an organization that is, I would say, overweighted towards big power, big swings, swings of miss. And I I am not telling you right now that if Elijah Green had been drafted by another organization, none of these problems would have arose. But I will say that was probably the worst combination I can think of of player and organization because the Nationals have not shown that improving contact ability is a has been a strength of theirs. That’s been kind of a consistent issue for them kind of year after year after year. and Elijah Green who to this day when you talk to evaluators, you talk to scouts who scout Elijah Green, they will tell you really good defensively, can really run real power 10 hit tool. Like it’s the combo where it’s like none of this can play unless you can get to a baseline of contact. And Elijah Green’s baseline of contact has been 42 to 40 to 44% of the time he will step to the plate and he will walk back to the dugout on a strikeout. And no player, you cannot, you just can’t be a successful player if you say I have to do all my damage in 55 to 60% of my plate appearances because the other ones I’m striking out. It doesn’t work for anyone. But it’s not again it’s not just Elijah Green. Brady House fits into this in some ways. There’s a number of players where they’ve kind of emphasized that approach and I think that they would need to at this point I would say it’s fair for the new front office to come in and say is that an approach we want to continue right now or to kind of go to your college pitching you know side. Is it a little bit of a time to kind of emphasize more contact and athleticism and defensive skills to kind of leaven out some of of this? But that leads into our last point. And this one is the one I think that is the most obvious, but it’s also the one that has been the biggest one of the biggest problems for them in the 2020s, which is when we say, “Okay, so the Nationals, the Nationals were a, you know, were a great team in the late 2020 teens. They won the World Series.” and you say, “Okay, and part of that is, hey, if you draft Bryce Harper and Steven Frostber 1-1 overall, you you won the lottery twice.” And I don’t mean because you picked them. I mean because they happen to have the number one picks in years where Bryce Harper and Steven Strawber were available. And it, let’s be honest, the Bryce Harper year, like if they had gotten it quote wrong, it still was like, “Okay, do you want Manny Machado? Okay, that’s fine.” You know, so they did that. They traded for Trey Turner. Great move. But on top of that, they then also they traded for Adam Eaton. Was a useful very useful play for them. But I would say that like on top of that, this is an organization that did spend money at that time. This is an organization Patrick Corbin that money didn’t always work out that well, but they spent big money for Patrick Corbin. They they they had Max Scherzer. They resigned and, you know, extended Steven Strawber. This was an organization that was spending big money at that point on Bryce Harper even before he left in free agency. They had all, you know, free agents like that they brought in and additionally like uh, you know, again, not Kurt Suzuki was a ton of money, but Kurt Suzuki, veterans like Howie Kendrick, they they spent money. And here we are in the 2020s. If you said, “What is the biggest most significant free agent signing that the Nationals have made?” Let’s just say since they traded Wanoto, you really wouldn’t have a whole lot of candidates to uh spell out there. Again, yes, they have. I’m not saying that they haven’t signed any free agents. Yes, they did bring in Nathaniel Low, okay? They’ve, you know, they’ve had guys like that there, you know, briefly in some cases, but that was not a a major signing. If you were going to like, okay, so let me ask you this way, Jeff. Would you spend the money right now? you know, okay, they also signed Josh Bell last year who had a good, you know, was fine for them, but would you spend the money now or is this something where it’s like is the time to spend the money to bring in some guys to kind of go around this young core now, or is it better off to say we’re not that close? We’re going to spend money, but we’ve first got to rebuild this a little bit to even know where to spend the money first. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a good question. Um, you know, I do think that it depends on, you know, what they decide to do at the major league level. Um, because we did talk about there are some pieces here. Um, you know, whether it’s, you know, the combination of Wood, Cruz, Abrams, Garcia, I think Dalen Lyle proved to be at least a platoon, a good platoon player, you know, um, at worst. um if not something maybe a little bit better. You still have Mackenzie Gore. You do have Josiah Gray who’s had moments in the big leagues coming back. Mitchell Parker who not great once again but probably fine as part of your rotation depth. I mean if you wanted to go out into the marketplace and you know shop for another outfielder on a reasonable deal. I think especially with the current market that we’ve had over the last couple of years, we’re outside of the top tier free agents. A lot of guys are sitting on the market a little bit longer. A lot of guys are signing bridge deals for a year at a high number, right? Um to then kind of rebuild value, get back into the marketplace. I don’t think that they’re in such a bad position. um if that’s the direction that they they want to go. Okay. So, you talked about the maybe a veteran outfielder and I do think that there’s going to be available outfielders so at a at a reasonable price. But so here’s the kind of the the core question to wrap this up with Gore Gray Luis Garcia. You’ve got two more years right now before they’re free agents, right? You’ve got the 26 season, you got 27. Then CJ Abrams, you’ve got he’s a free agent in 28. You can obviously try to extend some of these guys, but that’s kind of I would say like part of this core. Do you think that this team I would say it’s a big leap to say that they couldn’t go from sub 70 wins in 25 having not won 75 games any anytime this decade to going to a playoff contender in 26? Is it realistic to say that they should be spending to try to make this team a contender before those guys hit free agency? Or is it more realistic to say your goal is 27 and 28 and maybe some of those guys have to move to try to build towards that 2728 window? Yeah, I mean I think it makes more sense to probably sell some of those guys. Um, I do think that selling wood in particular would be like a a terrible idea in my opinion. You got to have some stars. Yeah. Um, and I think you probably, you know, you would stick with Cruz and see where that goes over the next couple years. I mean, I I wouldn’t be necessarily against potentially trying to hammer out an extension um, you know, with McKenzie Gore. He’s going to be 27 years old entering next year, kind of going into prime years. If you feel as if, you know, there was some issues with player development at the major league level, he’s potentially a guy that that, you know, you could see um on the upswing. On the other side, he’s never thrown 170 innings um over four years in the big leagues and obviously has had some some some health concerns, you know, uh leading up to that point uh as as a minor league player. So, you know, there’s there’s probably some question as to whether it’s even a sound investment. Um, because you’re signing him, you know, probably for, you know, his age 30, 29 to, you know, 33, 34 sort of years. Um, you have to make a determination if you think he’s going to make that jump. It’s possible he does. I mean, that is that is when starters seem to kind of hit their peak. It’s not necessarily at 25 or 26 or 27 like you kind of see with hitters. they kind of go into that window in the late 20s and then I think you know those years in the early 30s if they’re good starters um typically are prime years as well. So age-wise it’s not necessarily an unound investment but I think you can look at some of the history with the player and say is this ever going to be a guy that’s going to give us 180 to 200 innings a year and be you know an ace for us which is probably how I would assume he’s going to want to get paid. So that’s our look that is our prescription for how to try to fix the nationals. I would say to wrap this up on the nationals that it is a it’s a project but at the same time we will definitely talk about organizations that have further to go right there are pieces there like I I would say that probably you just hit on it. The big thing is is if you can get James Wood, you the starting point of any team being having a great team is to have a star and honest to goodness five plus war every year star and James Wood has a chance to be that. If you could say that James Wood can be a five- war player and between CJ Abrams and Dylan Cruz and Brady House, but we didn’t talk even about the other strength of this is there’s some injuries to it, but between Harlon Susanna and Travis Sakura who’s obviously injured and uh Alex Clemney and bringing back Cade Kavali who came back last year, there are some pieces here on the arm side too that could contribute, could be a part of the next good national team. There are pieces here, but there’s also a lot of work to
In the first of a four-part “Fix It” series, Geoff Pontes and JJ Cooper take a look at the Nationals. A new regime led by Paul Toboni is taking over. We take a look at what the Nationals already have, where they are deficient and what can be done to fix a rebuild that quickly ran out of steam.
(00:00) The Nationals Rebuild Has Been Ineffective
(02:00) What Are The Current Strengths
(09:20) The Nationals Need Better MLB Player Development
(10:55) The Nats Should Draft More College Arms
(16:00) This Is A Team With Contact Issues
(21:45) The Nats Need To Draft Fewer Toolsy Prep Hitters
(24:25) Spend More Money
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New owner.