While we enjoy watching the MLB postseason, the Washington Nationals are once again playing golf in October. And that means it’s time again for our annual look at how each National performed in 2024.
Players here are assigned a letter grade or an “incomplete”. I would encourage you not to read too much into minuses or pluses, and to keep in mind that there is somewhat of a grading curve in effect. The expectations for a journeyman pitcher are and should be entirely different than the expectations for an established member of the team. Similarly, the expectations for a rookie aren’t the same as the expectations for a veteran. And, indeed, the expectations for a guy making the major league minimum are less than they are for a guy raking in tens of millions of dollars. (You know of whom I speak.)
Let’s start with the pitchers. I’ll grade position players in a future post…yes, including Ildemaro Vargas.
Joan Adon: D-
Adon logged by far his fewest major league innings since 2021, including just one spot start. He pitched to a 6.75 ERA over just 10⅔ innings. The part of me that is kind considered an “incomplete” grade here, given the overall health/durability of the Nationals’ rotation this year. But let’s face facts: Adon now has a career 6.66 ERA in 132⅓ innings pitched. He hasn’t done what he needs to do if he wants to establish himself as a legit option at the major league level. And while this evaluation focuses on players’ contributions to the Nationals and not to another team, including any minor league affiliates, it’s worth noting he struggled to his worst season yet in a trilogy of seasons spent mostly with Triple-A Rochester.
Adon has interesting stuff and was surprisingly effective his first time through the order in 2023, which led me to think maybe he could break out as a reliever in 2024. But that didn’t happen, and his place on the 40-man roster looks awfully tenuous heading into the offseason. He is out of minor league options.
Jacob Barnes: C+
Barnes made the team after being a non-roster invitee to spring training. He ended up contributing 66 innings to the Nationals this season. In some of his appearances, he did yeoman’s work, like when he collected eight outs (half of those on strikeouts) on one hit in a one-run win over the Brewers on July 13, a week after picking up the win over his former team, the Cardinals, with two strong innings of relief. Too often for comfort, though, he gave up runs, some of which led to a loss. This inconsistency kept him out of Davey Martinez’s “A bullpen” and relegated him mainly to middle and long relief. The final toplines bear that out. A 4.36 ERA just isn’t that good. Barnes also was collared with three blown saves and just two holds, validating Martinez’s decision not to use him often in protecting a lead.
On the flip side, Barnes did earn eight wins against just three losses this season, for anyone who still pays attention to pitcher wins/losses. And it’s worth noting that if not for a disastrous September that at one point saw him give up at least one run in five consecutive appearances, Barnes’ ERA would be a full run lower.
Barnes is a pending free agent, and the Nats probably won’t bring him back, but it’s not impossible to imagine him getting a major league deal somewhere this time around.
Matt Barnes: D-
The other Barnes made the team out of spring training after signing a minors deal midway through. Maybe he just couldn’t kick off the rust with an abbreviated spring showing. He struggled to a 6.75 ERA over just 13⅓ innings pitched before the Nats DFA’d him. He didn’t catch on elsewhere for the rest of the season, and at 34 coming off two partial, ineffective seasons, it’s fair to wonder if his professional baseball career is at an end.
With his 47 career saves, the Nats initially hoped to use Barnes as a back-end reliever, but it soon became clear he was not cut out for high-leverage situations in 2024. After Barnes posted three-run innings in two of his last four games, the Nats cut him loose in early May. You could make the case they were a bit too quick on the trigger in DFAing him, as his ERA stood at 3.86 before that disastrous sequence. But with a diminished fastball and a few early blowups, it was clear the Nats hadn’t gotten the player they were hoping to get in Barnes.
Zach Brzykcy: INC
This might be a bit of a generous “incomplete” grade given his 14.29 ERA over six appearances. But the Nats slow-played Brzykcy, one of their top relief prospects, all season before finally giving him a September cup of coffee. Coming off Tommy John surgery that wiped out his 2023 campaign, Brzykcy can’t be faulted too harshly if he was simply out of gas by the time September rolled around, even with just 35⅓ innings pitched across the minor leagues in 2024. He flashed good stuff but abhorrent command that put him in some bad counts, and he learned that it’s a lot harder to get major league batters out than it is in the minor leagues.
The Nats will almost certainly give Brzykcy another shot in 2025, maybe even a real shot to make the squad out of spring training. We’ll see if he can put his September struggles behind him and build off what was overall a successful comeback season (2.04 ERA in the minors).
Patrick Corbin: D+
Now, there will undoubtedly be people in the comments who are up in arms over this and say Corbin at least deserves a passing grade. What I say is that Corbin led all of MLB in earned runs allowed for the third time in the past four seasons (and in hits allowed for the third time in the past five), he regressed from last season with an ERA nearly half a run higher (5.62) and four fewer wins, and he enters free agency with the dubious distinction of being the worst full-time pitcher in MLB of the 2020s now halfway through the decade.
I understand the counterarguments here: Once again, Corbin took the ball every five days, making 32 starts. His FIP was actually the lowest it’s been since 2020, suggesting he was the victim of some crappy luck and bad defense. Four of his last seven starts were good ones that led to pitcher and team wins, boosting his win/loss total from a dire 2-12 before Aug. 22 to a still-crummy but more respectable 6-13 to end the season. My view? He made those good starts with the Nats firmly buried and free agency on the horizon. Why did he have to wait until the end of the season to be his best self? And every pitcher has to deal with adversity on the mound. Sometimes Corbin was able to recover. Most of the time, it was way too late.
Corbin served his function as an innings-eater, and if you want to grade him on that curve, you could assign him a C or maybe even a low B grade. I’m grading him on the curve of having earned $35.4 million this year — by far the biggest paycheck among active Nationals. Even if sub-mediocrity is what Corbin has led us to expect in the years since he helped the Nats to their first World Series title in 2019, sub-mediocrity from one of the best-paid pitchers in baseball does not a passing grade make, in my book.
José A. Ferrer: A
Coming off an uneven but intriguing rookie season in 2023, Ferrer was expected to be a big part of the 2024 bullpen from Opening Day forward. But he suffered a left lat strain during spring training and didn’t make his 2024 MLB debut until after the All-Star Break. He came out misfiring, giving up three earned runs while collecting just one out. After that, he pitched to a 2.56 ERA while taking on increasingly high-leverage opportunities throughout the second half, including his first career save plus six holds.
Ferrer’s stuff was good in 2023 but looked utterly dominant at times in 2024, with a rising fastball up to 100 mph and a nasty diving changeup. I think few who watched him didn’t come away from this season thinking he’s a future closer.
Ferrer still could miss more bats, with a surprisingly pedestrian 19.4% strikeout rate, and his 48.4% hard-hit rate is a bit of a red flag. But there were some strong positives. His command improved dramatically. A 4.7% walk rate is excellent, especially for a hard thrower. He was also exceptional in high-leverage spots. Opposing batters went 1-for-13 with a walk against him with two outs and RISP, and 2-for-25 in Baseball-Reference’s definition of high-leverage at-bats. In a disappointing second half of the season for the Nationals, Ferrer was a bright spot.
Kyle Finnegan: B
Let’s start with the obvious: Nationals closer Kyle Finnegan did his job in 2024. In save situations, he pitched to a 2.08 ERA, held opposing batters to a .224/.615 slash line, and earned 38 saves — second-most in the National League and third in MLB. He made the All-Star roster for the first time in his career. Overall, Finnegan is the picture of consistency, with 2024 results that closely mirror his career numbers: a 3.68 ERA (3.56 career), a 22.1% strikeout rate (23.5% career), an 8.9% walk rate (9.5% career), a .715 OPS against (.711 career).
So, why am I not giving Finnegan an A grade? He did his job. He was the same pitcher he’s always been. He’ll almost certainly begin 2025 as the Nationals’ closer. Well, for that answer, let’s look at why he’ll almost certainly begin 2025 as the Nationals’ closer, even though the team could conceivably fish for more dominant relief talent this winter.
In 2024, Finnegan seemed to need the unique adrenaline of a save opportunity to have any success. That’s not an exaggeration: His 7.08 ERA in non-save situations, which accounted for 22 of his 65 appearances, stands a whopping five runs higher than his ERA when he was called upon to “do his job” and close out ballgames. Opposing batters whacked him for a .298/.903 slash line in those non-save situations. One of those dreaded non-save appearances on July 29 conceivably cost the Nats an opportunity to flip Finnegan for prospects at the trade deadline, as he gave up five earned runs to get walked off in Arizona, after entering the ninth to protect a four-run lead.
Finnegan isn’t the first or only closer known to struggle when a save opportunity isn’t available to him. But those struggles were especially pronounced on a team that didn’t do a whole lot of winning in 2024. Finnegan did his job, yes — but he didn’t go above and beyond the call of duty. And that’s what A grades are for.
Dylan Floro: A-
The Nats picked up Floro coming off a mediocre 2023 season. He raised some eyebrows in spring training and early in the season with a fastball that hovered around 90 mph. But Floro used his pedestrian arsenal to great effect, becoming a trusted member of the “A bullpen” and handling multiple high-leverage situations. By the time the Nats traded Floro in a literal last-minute deadline deal, he had posted a 2.06 ERA over 52⅓ innings pitched. The Nats received a defensively limited, 25-year-old minor league slugger named Andrés Chaparro, who hit his way into a part-time role with the major league team down the stretch.
Floro was one of the Nationals’ best relievers in the first half, and his ERA would have stood under 2 if he hadn’t given up a run to take the loss in his final appearance in the curly W, a July 28 outing against the Cardinals. Notably, his oeuvre also included two appearances in June in which he failed to retire a batter while giving up two and three earned runs, respectively, and two more in July in which he got one out but gave up a run on multiple hits.
Perhaps those wobbles toward the end of his brief Nats tenure presaged the struggles he went on to have with the Diamondbacks, who ultimately DFA’d him in September as he slumped to a 9.37 ERA as a Snake. At any rate, a few to-be-expected blowups aside, Floro was one of the Nats’ most effective offseason acquisitions — and while Chaparro was a somewhat underwhelming return, at least he did fetch an MLB-ready piece.
Robert Garcia: B-
At times, Garcia looked like a future relief ace — maybe a closer, certainly a staple of the Nats’ bullpen for years to come. And then at other times, he looked totally lost. His struggles were most pronounced in high-leverage situations, where he was rapped for a .318/.770 slash. Finishing an inning was sometimes a particular challenge for Garcia, as opposing batters had a .781 OPS against him with two outs that rose to 1.077 when there was at least one runner in scoring position.
Garcia finished with slightly negative rWAR (-0.2) but strongly positive fWAR (1.5), one of the largest such splits on the 2024 Nationals. That reflects one of the largest differences in how Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs calculate WAR (wins above replacement) for pitchers. B-R weights a pitcher’s results most heavily, while Fangraphs strongly devalues attributes like ERA in favor of FIP, which discounts batted-ball outcomes that are beyond the pitcher’s control (in other words, everything but home runs). Garcia’s 4.22 ERA this season wasn’t terrible, but it also wasn’t particularly good. His 2.38 FIP was a much more bullish metric, aided by his high strikeout rate (29.9%) and fairly low walk rate (6.4%).
Overall, my take is that Garcia’s actual performance lies somewhere between B-R and FG’s evaluations. Garcia had a 5.04 ERA in the first half and a 3.38 ERA in the second half; meanwhile, his FIP barely changed, from 2.61 in the first half to 2.14 in the second half. Interestingly enough, the southpaw actually did more for his team during the first half, as just two of his thirteen holds came after the All-Star Break, while he was saddled with three of his four blown saves in that period.
Garcia will almost certainly be with the Nats again in 2025. They’ll look for him to find some consistency in whatever role he occupies, as it’s still plain to see there’s a potentially very good reliever here.
MacKenzie Gore: B-
Either #1 or #2 on the list of most frustrating young Nationals, depending on how you slice it, Gore had a rollercoaster ride of a season. His overall numbers are…fine? A 3.90 ERA (and 3.53 FIP; both marks a notable improvement from 2023), a 1.42 WHIP (slightly up from 2023), strikeout (24.8%) and walk (8.9%) rates broadly comparable to 2023, and a 10-12 win/loss record for those who pay attention to such things. Best of all, Gore made 32 starts this season — a significant achievement for a guy who came to Washington with the unenviable “talented but fragile” tag on him.
But checking under the hood, Gore’s decent-not-great season really contained about three seasons in one. By the end of May, Gore owned a 2.91 ERA (despite a sky-high .353 BABIP!) and looked like a shoo-in for the All-Star Game. Then, through mid-August, he collapsed to a 6.18 ERA, walking or hitting two-thirds as many batters as he struck out over that stretch. In just one start in July did he avoid giving up multiple runs, and in none did he make it through six innings. Determined to turn things around, Gore knuckled down and pitched to a 1.55 ERA over his last seven starts of the year — albeit while enjoying a meager .229 BABIP against.
It’s really tough to assign a season grade for Gore, and some might come in higher or lower than me, but a B- feels about right. It’s not a bad grade, but it could be a lot better; just as Gore didn’t have a bad season, overall, but with more consistency (especially when driving toward the trade deadline!) and sharper command, it could have been a lot better. 2025 will be a very important year for Gore to establish himself either as a frontline starter or more of a #3/4 type.
Josiah Gray: INC
Gray started for the Nats on Opening Day. That was his second-to-last start of the season, as after just two appearances, he was forced to undergo Tommy John surgery to replace a torn elbow ligament. While both of his starts went very poorly (he gave up seven earned runs on Opening Day and six a few days later), given the nature of his injury and the limited sample size, I firmly believe it would be unfair to assign Gray an actual grade.
Gray’s recovery will likely keep him out for most of the first half, at least, in 2025. The Nats will have to hope he returns relatively quickly and regains his form, even as an uneven 2023 season rapidly fades into the rear-view mirror.
Hunter Harvey: C+
So, the way I see it, there’s kind of two ways of looking at Harvey’s season. On the mound, Harvey authored 45 innings of relief for the Nats, pitching to a 4.20 ERA. That’s about a run and a half worse than his 2022-23 output, and it led to Harvey’s worst-performing season of his six-year career. While his FIP was about a run lower than his ERA — and predictably, Fangraphs’ WAR calculator thinks he was a lot better than the replacement-level player assessed by Baseball-Reference — there’s no getting around the fact Harvey was pretty hittable in 2024, in a way he hadn’t been before. His hard-hit rate jumped by over 6 percentage points. His strikeout rate ticked down by over 2 percentage points. His OPS against jumped by about 150 points. But most of Harvey’s struggles came in low-leverage situations. Notably, he led the team in holds with 26. He blew only two saves. And while Harvey wobbled pretty badly around the season’s midpoint — his ERA stood at 2.68 on June 20 before skyrocketing over his next several appearances — perhaps those results led to the other way of looking at Harvey’s season. Namely, Harvey was a salable commodity in July.
The Nats traded Harvey to the Royals a day before the start of the MLB Draft, acquiring the 39th overall draft pick and using it on catching prospect Caleb Lomavita. They also received third baseman Cayden Wallace, then the Royals’ second-ranked prospect, who is now playing in the Arizona Fall League.
So, overall, I give Harvey a slightly-above-passing grade for his season. He wasn’t a brilliant pitcher, but he mostly did his job. Even though the wheels came off before he was traded (his season ended due to injury after just six appearances for Kansas City), he was still able to be traded, and for a strong return. He did alright.
DJ Herz: A-
The pitching line probably doesn’t merit a grade this high. Herz ended the season with a 4.16 ERA, which is OK but not really good. His FIP was about half a run lower, at least. But I’m not all that focused on numbers here.
Herz entered the year as a midlevel prospect at Triple-A Rochester, working as a starter for the Red Wings but seen by most evaluators as a likely reliever at the major league level. Command was seen as his biggest obstacle, with a career walk rate over 15% in the minors. But when Trevor Williams hit the injured list, the Nats called on Herz. He endured a few rough outings, but through it all, he looked like…a major league starting pitcher. He reined in the wildness, getting his walk rate under 10% at the major league level, while still striking out about 28% of batters faced. In just his third start as a major leaguer, he took a no-hit bid into the fifth inning, ultimately turning in six innings of one-hit, shutout ball while striking out thirteen. And prior to getting blown up by the scorching-hot Mets in his penultimate start on September 18, Herz had been the Nats’ best pitcher since the All-Star Break — by the eye test, certainly, but also with a 2.76 ERA and 57 strikeouts over those ten starts.
No one is going to mistake Herz for Paul Skenes, but after a fine rookie season, he looks like found money as a legitimate MLB starter — something the Nats badly need.
Jake Irvin: B
Statistically, Irvin had a rather lackluster season. His 4.41 ERA (exactly in line with his 4.41 FIP, which is rather remarkable) doesn’t inspire much confidence that he is going to be fronting the rotation next season.
And yet I’ll make the case for Irvin. I had some homework for him when I did a (much briefer) report card for the 2023 season. And, indeed, he cut his walk rate by one-third after it hovered just above 10% in 2023. His strikeout rate bumped up above 20%. He should have been an All-Star; he was statistically one of the very best pitchers in the National League at the time of selection, with a 2.80 ERA and a winning record(!).
Unfortunately, that was an inflection point in Irvin’s season, and not for the better. You could chalk it up to a loss of confidence or motivation after that All-Star snub, or perhaps fatigue after he allowed one run over eight innings in a 1-0 win over the Mets on July 4, or perhaps it was none of those things. But that 2.80 ERA was Irvin’s zenith, and it was mostly downhill from there through the end of the season. Once again, home runs were a major issue, and Irvin struggled to avoid the dreaded “big inning” that blows up a start. Irvin nearly replicated his earlier heroics as he held the Mets to one run on September 16 while pitching into the eighth; this was his finest start of the second half, although he made three other quality starts in the same period. Even including those performances, though, he was basically Patrick Corbin in the second half, with a 6.30 ERA and a 3-7 win/loss record.
Bottom line: Irvin entered this year with something to prove. At his height, it suddenly looked like the Nats might have found their ace. The rest of the season didn’t bear that out, but I don’t think it’s fair to grade Irvin against those expectations. We would have been pretty satisfied at the start of this season to know Irvin would make 33 starts and produce the results he did.
Joe La Sorsa: C-
Sort of a surprise return to the 2024 Nationals after losing his roster spot last winter, La Sorsa was called up down the stretch as an additional lefty in the bullpen. He was…OK. Pitching almost exclusively in low-leverage spots, he posted a 4.58 ERA over 17⅔ innings. Much of the damage against him came on home runs, as he gave up four over his sixteen appearances (three of those, at least, were solo shots). He also wasn’t especially effective against left-handed batters, with small reverse splits in very limited sample sizes.
As with last offseason, La Sorsa’s roster spot is less than secure. The Nats could do worse than to bring him back, but he’s no world-beater, and if they’re looking for a guy to counter the likes of Bryce Harper, Matt Olson, and Kyle Schwarber, La Sorsa probably isn’t him.
Derek Law: B+
It’s becoming kind of a theme here: Grading these pitchers on their full season is tricky because on the one hand, [GOOD THING], but on the other hand, [BAD THING]. Yes, that theme continues with the Duality of Law. His pitching line says he was maybe the Nats’ best and most consistent pitcher all year. Despite a late-season arm injury, he led the National League in innings pitched by a reliever with 90; among pitchers who didn’t make a start in 2024, only Rays long man Ryan Yarbrough pitched more. Through that robust workload, Law recorded a 2.60 ERA.
So, not only was Law the NL’s most productive reliever, but he was one of the NL’s most effective relievers. Seems like an easy A grade. So why am I giving him a “mere” B+? Well…because Law here is kind of the anti-Finnegan.
I gave Finnegan a B grade because while he was a great closer, he was pretty much awful when called upon to do something other than the job he was great at. Let’s be clear that the obligatory scattering of blowups aside, Law was generally excellent when he was brought in for a clean inning of relief. But no reliever in baseball allowed more inherited runners to score than Law, on whose watch 23 crossed the plate. That’s not just a function of Law’s productivity, either. He tied for the major league lead in inherited score percentage, too, as a whopping 64% of runners Law inherited came around to score. So, while Law kept his own ERA low, he habitually blew up his teammates’ ERAs. He was not at all good at the job Davey Martinez kept asking him to do.
After overusing Law in the fireman role in the first half, mercifully, Martinez wised up a bit. Law inherited 29 runners prior to the All-Star Break (he allowed 20 to score). Just seven runners were bequeathed to Law after the break. Undoubtedly, a change for the better. And not only did Law do less damage to his teammates’ numbers in the second half, he had better results himself — pitching to a svelte 1.62 ERA.
Mitchell Parker: B
Stop me if you heard this one earlier: Needing a starting pitcher, the Nats turned to a largely unsung left-handed pitching prospect most people had tabbed as a future reliever, calling him up from Triple-A Rochester and plugging him into the rotation for the rest of the season. In that role, he pitched better than expected, largely resolved the control issues that had held him back as a prospect, and finished the year with an ERA in the low 4s.
You might be forgiven for thinking of Parker and Herz as carbon copies. That’s an oversimplification. Herz effectively improved upon his minor league profile to find major league success; to put it plain, he got better. Parker, by contrast, practically reinvented himself.
I noted in this year’s spring training field guide that Parker racked up strikeouts but was held back by inconsistency and poor command, and I opined that the Nats probably ought to just convert him to relief already. Well, as a major leaguer, Parker had an unassuming strikeout rate but also a low walk rate; and in a season characterized by some very volatile performances by Nats starters, Parker was arguably the most consistent of the lot. Yes, there was the July 13 debacle against the Brewers in which he couldn’t get out of the first inning, and the August 15 implosion against the Phillies when Davey Martinez hung him out to dry for three excruciating innings of nine-run ball. But while other starters endured lengthy runs of poor performance alongside streaks of brilliance, Parker didn’t, really. Aside from July, when he made two excellent starts and three crummy starts, in no other month did he post an ERA above 4.45, and in no full month was his ERA under 3.15. Herz just got better; Parker effectively reinvented himself from the guy he was in the minor leagues.
You probably noticed I’m giving Parker a slightly lower grade than Herz. That’s mainly because of the demonstrable improvement Herz showed over the course of the season. Parker came out looking solid, and that’s the way he looked the whole way through. Put another way, I have a reasonable degree of confidence Parker can be a #4/5 starter going forward, but I think Herz showed mid-rotation upside. Both, of course, are far better than what we thought we had in these young pitchers this time in 2023.
Tanner Rainey: C
I really have no idea how to evaluate Rainey’s season. And it’s for a completely different reason than why I’ve struggled on a few of these pitcher grades.
Coming off a 2023 campaign all but lost to Tommy John surgery, Rainey did pretty much one thing all season long: pitch in low-leverage situations, when the game was already out of hand and there weren’t any runners on base. In fact, he appeared in 50 games in relief this season, and in precisely one of those games does Baseball-Reference consider it to have been a high-leverage situation. All 49 of the rest are categorized as low-leverage. That is essentially unprecedented. As a point of comparison, Nats Rule 5 pick Thaddeus Ward only appeared in 26 games last year, as the Nats tried their best to avoid using him in serious game situations; even of those, two were high-leverage appearances and one was medium-leverage, according to Baseball-Reference. Needless to say, no other pitcher in baseball this year made as many relief appearances without facing more than one high-leverage situation. How do you evaluate a season like that?
It’s almost tempting to give Rainey an “incomplete” and move on. But he spent the entire year on the roster, so I can’t really do that. I have to grade him. And his overall pitching line, a 4.76 ERA with a 1.49 WHIP, isn’t very good.
Just about everyone in the comments here was howling for Rainey to be DFA’d or for the Nats to find a reason to stick him back on the IL by Memorial Day, after he plunked two of the four batters he faced in his third and final outing of May. What the hell was this guy doing on the roster? But the Nats stuck with him, and Davey Martinez stuck to his plan, using him almost exclusively in situations that did not matter at all. By the end of June, his ERA was down to 7.43. By the end of July, it was 6.60. It was 5.36 as August ended. And it was 4.76 after he gave up a run in his last appearance of the year, accounting for the Phillies’ lone score in a September 27 blowout.
So, credit to Rainey for sticking it out. With his diminished velocity and still-shaky command, Rainey doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence that he can be a real relief option in 2025. But he lasted the whole season, and he got a little better every month, and well, that’s something. And it’s enough to earn him a passing grade.
Orlando Ribalta: INC
It’s not fair to grade Ribalta here. He only appeared in four games, all in low-leverage situations. While they didn’t go well, and he didn’t look all that good, it’s just too small of a sample size to assess. Nothing more to say here, really.
Jackson Rutledge: INC
Same as the above, but it requires a little more explanation. Rutledge is a more established prospect, and you could argue he should be graded on the same basis that Adon was: The Nats should have been able to count on him, and because he didn’t perform very well in the minor leagues, they couldn’t (or at least didn’t).
For what it’s worth, when Rutledge actually did appear in a Nationals uniform this season, he was fine. He gave up a run in relief as the 27th man for a May doubleheader. He made one spot start in July, giving up two runs while pitching into the fifth inning. In September, he appeared in long relief and kept the Phillies off the board. I don’t grade based on minor league performance, and I can’t grade on a sample size of three games. I do think the Nats need to think this winter about whether they still believe in Rutledge, who turns 26 in April, as a starting pitcher. It would be extremely disappointing if he only pitches thrice for the major league team again in 2025.
Eduardo Salazar: B+
Expectations were low when the Nats picked up Salazar off the waiver wire. He wasn’t a touted prospect and didn’t have much of a track record. They eventually called him up and enjoyed 27⅓ innings of 2.96 ERA relief from him down the stretch.
Still, there’s reason to think Salazar is less than he appears. He allowed more than a baserunner and a half per inning, and his FIP was nearly a run higher than his ERA. He generally made good pitches with men on, but it’s almost like he needed to have that pressure; including his brief time with the Dodgers, he had a .996 OPS against with the bases empty. But lest you think the Nats may have found the guy they wanted Derek Law to be, he wasn’t exactly automatic when used as a fireman, either. Of thirteen runners inherited by Salazar, five scored. That’s a pretty small sample size, and still a substantial improvement over Law. But ultimately, Salazar will need to limit hits a lot more effectively if he is to sustain his success in 2025. He did enough this season for the Nats to give him the opportunity.
Jordan Weems: F
The Nats really wanted Weems to be good. He sort of backed into being one of their more trusted relievers in 2023, despite a scary 4.90 FIP and a walk rate north of 12%. This season, his strikeout rate nosedived, with a whole lot of those Ks turning into hits. Not much else changed for Weems, but for a pitcher who was already getting by mostly on luck, it was enough.
Weems staggered to a 6.59 ERA, appearing less and less frequently, before the Nats found a reason to put him on the injured list for a near-minimum stint in late July, ostensibly for shin splints. He came off the IL, walked four of his six batters faced in a final appearance on August 11, and was finally, mercifully DFA’d.
Why does Weems get an F when Joan Adon and Matt Barnes did not? Simple: Weems got more chances. Adon nor Barnes spent enough time with the Nats this year to do much damage (particularly Adon, who pitched mostly in low-leverage situations with the Nats already out of contention). Weems was a -1.0 rWAR (and -0.5 fWAR) relief pitcher because he was 1) bad and 2) spent over half the season on the roster. That has to be an F grade, in my book.
Trevor Williams: A
I’ll say it: The Nats’ best pitcher this year was Trevor Williams. Unfortunately, Williams missed much of the year with an arm injury, but even the thirteen starts he made were more than a lot of people here would’ve expected.
The Nats publicly flirted with the idea of adding another starter to bump Williams out of the rotation last winter, and they picked up Zach Davies during spring training to push Williams for the fifth starter job. Williams outpitched Davies and entered the season with rock-bottom expectations. All he did was pitch to a 2.22 ERA through his first eleven starts. Nats fans learned quickly what they could expect from Williams, who had struggled in his first season with the Nats. He would take the ball every fifth day, throw about 80 pitches (or however many he needed to get through five innings, or ideally into the sixth), and walk off the mound with his team still having a good chance to win. (In fact, his win/loss record was 5-0 over that span.)
Then, at the start of June, he abruptly went on the IL. This gave DJ Herz his opportunity, which was nice, but it was a big blow to a team that was overachieving expectations at the time. Williams returned in September and picked up right where he left off, allowing one run over two five-inning starts to finish the year with a 2.03 ERA. Williams is a free agent this winter, although the Nats could have interest in bringing him back. Wherever he ends up, he’s certainly earned the opportunity.
Amos Willingham: INC
After doing little to distinguish himself as an up-and-down piece of the 2023 bullpen, Willingham only got one chance to pitch for the Nats in 2024. He gave up two runs in a solitary inning of relief. Otherwise, he spent the year at Triple-A Rochester. Obviously, there’s not enough here for a letter grade. Willingham’s odds of sticking on the roster through the winter are not great.
