The Washington Nationals exchanged numbers with their six remaining arbitration-eligible players since Mason Thompson came to terms earlier in the offseason. Today, the Nats came to terms with four more players, and leaving just the newly acquired Nathaniel Lowe and Luis Garcia Jr. as the final two players to come to terms with. If the two sides cannot come to terms, they will head to separate arbitration hearings.
Going into the offseason, here were the Nationals’ arbitration-eligible players sorted by service time, their MLBTR projected value, and what they actually received:
- Derek Law (5.081): $3MM/$2.75MM
- Nathaniel Lowe (4.145): $10.4MM/TBD
- Luis Garcia Jr. (3.142): $4.8MM/TBD
- Josiah Gray (3.075): $1.4MM/$1.35MM
- Mason Thompson (3.046): $800K/$770K
- Riley Adams (3.005): $1.1MM/$850,000
- MacKenzie Gore (3.000): $3.5MM/TBD
You hope that Nathaniel Lowe, who was acquired last month in a trade, can come to terms with the Nationals and avoid an arbitration hearing. No team wants to go to an arbitration hearing, but it would be awkward to have to do it with your top offseason acquisition.
Both Josiah Gray and Mason Thompson are recovering from TJ surgery, and they were expected to get deals with slight raises, which they did, and will be placed back on the 60-day IL in Spring Training.
You may hear the term “file and trial” and that was popularized by teams with the firm stance that they treat the arbitration figure exchange date as a hard deadline, and -if- you don’t agree to a salary, they will head to an arbitration hearing. Remember, when both sides exchange numbers for a potential arb hearing, it does not mean you have to go to a hearing. The Nats are not one of those “file and trial” teams.
In their history, the Nationals have rarely gone through the arbitration hearing route. There was the time that reliever Jerry Blevins thought it would be cool (true story) to go to an arb-hearing and a month later Rizzo traded Blevins to the New York Mets for Matt den Dekker. Some say that if you take a team to an arbitration hearing, it creates friction. It seems that players who do that with Rizzo do not get many favors going forward — or like Blevins, do not stay around to see Opening Day. Before the 2019 season, Rizzo went to arb hearings with both reliever Kyle Barraclough and Michael A. Taylor which the Nationals side won. Barraclough was DFA’d during the season, and Taylor headed to free agency after the season.
In 2012, John Lannan had his arbitration hearing before Spring Training camp opened and was supposed to be the fifth starter on that squad, and his manager, Davey Johnson, publicly named Lannan as his fifth starter, but days later, Lannan was sent to Triple-A Syracuse as Rizzo went with Ross Detwiler as the team’s fifth starter. Maybe that arb hearing had nothing to do with it — but maybe it did. The Nats list is small on players who go to arbitration hearings, but the warning is don’t push Rizzo.
First off, let’s explain that arbitration rules generally cover players with at least 3-years of MLB service time and not on a long-term contract like Keibert Ruiz. These arb-eligible players have a chance to negotiate a set salary for the upcoming season and get paid above the league minimum salary of $760,000. There is also the Super-Two rule for players with less than three years of service time to become arb-eligible and a player must rank in the top 22 percent in terms of service time among all players who have amassed between two and three years of service time in the Majors. CJ Abrams just missed the Super-Two limit by less than a weeks service time — and it had nothing to do with his demotion at the end of the last season as Abrams had already earned a full-year of service time for the 2024 season.
The whole arb-eligible process is multi-faceted. The Nationals will want to get Lowe and Garcia under contract sooner than later. Garcia earned $1.95 million last year, and Lowe earned $7.5 million. The MLBTR numbers have become a very good guide for an approximate salary number. Again, they had Garcia at $4.8 million, and Lowe at $10.4 million. While we would expect both sides to hammer out deals, time will tell on this. We will update if anything changes.
UPDATED: Luis García Jr. agrees to his 2025 contract.
