The rumor mill has not tied the Washington Nationals to any significant free agent in years … until now. In the span of a few days, the Nats have been tied to three of the top free agents in baseball with reports from ESPN, ESPN again, and the USA Today naming the Nats having interest in Alex Bregman, Juan Soto, and Christian Walker — with the two infielders earning Gold Glove this year — and of course all three players had good offense as well.
From what a source told us today, “the Soto discussion (with Boras) was more cursory to let Boras know [the Nats] are of course interested, and will check in [later] as to what could be done.”
This certainly feels like the time that the Nats are going to spend this offseason and acquire at least one long-term piece of the puzzle to go with all of the young core of players on the current roster.
“I think it’s important to supplement that good, young group of players — and surround them with some talent.”
— general manager Mike Rizzo said to the media at the GM Meetings this week
“We think our time is coming. We’re getting closer. This thing is cyclical. There was a time they were looking up at us, and now we’re looking up at them. We feel the time is coming that we can play in that end of the pool.”
“When I get a feel for where we’re at after these meetings, we’ll meet with ownership and construct a plan.”
While we wrote an article on the Bregman rumor this week, we were pleasantly surprised to see Walker’s name tied to the Nats in a rumor. Since September, we have written about Walker as a top target since he was the best first base defender in the National League, and he can hit. We also made a chart — and look at the names in the Scenario #2 chart that we constructed back in the beginning of October.
In that Scenario 2, we assumed that Juan Soto does not come to the Nationals. Bregman was 28th in all of baseball in WAR this year at +4.1 and would slot at 3rd base. He has also said that he would consider a position switch if ever needed. Why do that now? He ranked 4th in 3rd base defense, and he would replace Jose Tena in this scenario and Tena would shift to the primary DH. Walker was 64th in baseball at +3.0 WAR and just below Luis Garcia Jr. in the rankings. Walker ranked 1st in the NL in 1st base defense and won his third consecutive Gold Glove. Today, I would change that Scenario #2 and add back Trevor Williams to save money and then add a good bullpen arm instead of the suggestions I had in early October.
Maybe general manager Mike Rizzo is seeing the light that he has a good pitching staff right now that would be even better with improved defense, and a few tweaks to the personnel. His pitching staff finished the season with the 9th best FIP in baseball at 3.94 while turning in an horrific season as a defensive team. What is FIP? When your defense is bad, you wish that was your ERA because the Nats might have been in the postseason even with Patrick Corbin‘s stats included there. The FIP is directly affected by defense, and the Nats were the 5th worst defensive team in baseball.
On top of that, the Nationals also had the second highest WAR for pitching in all of baseball. Again, that included Corbin and some other pitchers who were DFA’d.
By adding great defense, the pitching will improve in the win column. The team already has the best defender in baseball with Jacob Young who should have won the Gold Glove, and in right field is the Dylan Crews who rightfully won one-of-the-three Gold Gloves awarded in all of the Minor Leagues. On top of that, Garcia turned into a plus defender at second base, and James Wood showed improvement in his left field defense except for coming in on balls which we believe he an greatly improve on.
If you add both Bregman and Walker, the weak spot would be at shortstop where CJ Abrams turned in the worst season on defense. By the way, Nasim Nunez‘s defense was the 3rd best of all shortstops in the month of September — but Nunez only started 13-games. He was the best defensive shortstop if you extrapolated his numbers for a full month.
To try to figure out why Abrams regressed so dramatically on defense could be a combination of many factors. At some point, you have to go back to the basics with him and coach him up. FanGraphs is bullish on Abrams for the 2025 season. They see him as a player who will improve. Much of that depends on Abrams and his dedication to baseball and fixing what was wrong in his personal life that got him demoted at the end of the season.
Of course if the budget isn’t there to get both Bregman and Walker, you could look for the older Carlos Santana on a 1-year deal as he was the best first base defender in baseball. Yes, he is getting old, but really figured out his defense and won his first Gold Glove this year. Figure you could sign both Bregman and Santana for $14 million less than Bregman and Walker if money was a major factor.
“We need some offense [in new acquisitions]. We need a couple of bats that can hit in the middle of the lineup and take the onus off some of these good young core players and assist them in the run creation of our offense.”
“We have the core players to be middle-of-the-lineup hitters. If we add a bat or two into that group, it takes a little bit of pressure off everybody — and everybody can relax a little bit more and develop into the players we think they’re going to be.”
— General Manager Mike Rizzo said in September to William Ladson at MLB.com
That quote from Rizzo in September might have evolved to recognizing that he needed not only a couple of impact bats — but needed batters who also excelled at defense.
While the Nationals have additional needs like adding another competent starting pitcher and another good set-up man, we know that the Nationals are not going to spend in the Top-10 of payrolls this year. We expect one, and hopefully a couple of big signings to go with some lesser deals. This would be a great if Rizzo was able to improve the infield corner positions with impact players on offense and defense.
