Times flies when you’re having fun. Are you? Fans of the Washington Nationals are still probably a little unsettled at this point in the offseason. Building a roster is tedious work for a team trying to transition out of a rebuild. There still seems to be unfilled needs on the roster. Two weeks from today, the offseason officially ends as the team opens up their 2025 Spring Training camp at the Cacti Park of the Palm Beaches .
Pitchers and catchers are due to report on Feb. 12, and there is still an uneasy feeling that the roster needs another back-end relief pitcher as well as a third base upgrade. Don’t expect the Nats to sign Alex Bregman in free agency due to what general manager Mike Rizzo said over the weekend about weighing decisions on free agents with qualifying offers (QO) attached, as well as not blocking prospects which might refer to third baseman Brady House who got named by Kiley McDaniel today as the №47 prospect in all of baseball.
“Knowing where we’re at right now, the qualifying offer [would result in] losing a high draft pick was something that we took into account, and losing international money. We took [all of that] into account when we made decisions about signing [QO’d] free agents.”
— Rizzo said on Saturday
“I think that we’ve improved our club, and at the same time, we haven’t blocked any prospects.”
Yes, Rizzo has improved the 2025 team slightly on paper. But why didn’t he mention this before about Q.O. players and blocking House? That would have been nice to know before so everyone could have tempered their expectations.
As of now, Rizzo has spent just under $40 million after inking free agent Japanese left-hander Shinnosuke Ogasawara to a two-year deal plus paying a 20 percent posting fee to his former team in Japan. When you consider $40 million in total towards this year’s payroll, that could have landed Bregman, Nathaniel Lowe, Trevor Williams, Jorge Lopez, and Ogasawara most likely for $47 million in new payroll this year. A discussion like that became a hotly contested debate even before Ogasawara was signed.
The point was that there were numerous ways to spend the money, and apparently Rizzo had a budget large enough to sign a QO’d player like Bregman — but decided he did not want to forfeit his top of the second round draft pick this year as well as give up international signing money for Jan. 15 of 2026. The new debate could be: “Was that the right move?”
According to the NY Post’s Jon Heyman, “156 MLB players are still waiting for deals as spring training approaches.” That was two weeks ago, and that number is closer to 140 today. Even if each team signed three more players from that pool, there would still be 50-players looking for jobs. This has become a cruel game of musical chairs that will send many players without a dugout seat in organized baseball.
Players like Alex Bregman, Pete Alonso, and Max Scherzer are unsigned, and so are Ha-Seong Kim, Nick Pivetta, Jack Flaherty, Carlos Estévez, Randal Grichuk, Paul DeJong, Kenley Jansen, and David Robertson. There are others too — but those are Top-10 and Top-50 free agents that are still unemployed.
ESPN is matching up Jansen with the Nationals. For those who remember back to January 2017, the Nats were the highest bidder on Jansen in free agency — but he took less to stay with the Dodgers in free agency. Most probably don’t remember that if Jansen took the Nats’ deal it would have been a record contract for a reliever at the time.
“I probably would have beaten [the record] with Washington, but the best thing for me was to stay in Los Angeles.’’
— Jansen said in January 2017
Just another example of how aggressive the Nationals were in free agency when Ted Lerner was alive. Can you imagine how different the past might have looked with Jansen as the Nats closer? Maybe that happens now in a much different situation.
What are the players and agents waiting for? What are teams waiting for? The Nats have needs to the point that even MLB Trade Rumors was asking whether Bregman makes sense for the Nationals in their latest chat. Of course he did, but short of a miracle, the Nats are not signing him. Maybe DeJong on a one-year deal, or a trade would work. What if Bregman goes back to the Astros, would the Astros be willing to trade Isaac Paredes to the Nats? What about a salary dump trade for Ryan McMahon with the Rockies? If blocking House is a concern, you have to ask the question: Is he a sure thing as a prospect?
While House is the Nats’ top infield prospect, he was removed out of the Top-100 prospect rankings by MLB Pipeline and Baseball America; however, some evaluators like Kiley McDaniel are still bullish on House.
MLB Pipeline ranked House as their No. 7 ranked third baseman in their top prospect pool. He was Top-3 a year ago. He was considered the heir apparent at the Nats’ hot corner. Now it seems apparent that there is no sure thing just like the previous five seasons. Unless you think José Tena is the answer, it could extend the horrific results since 2019 at the hot corner except the four months that Jeimer Candelario was a bright spot for the 2023 Nationals until the July trade deadline that season.
This third base discussion can’t be about wishing on a prayer for Tena or House to blossom into a star. The Nats have tried that route since 2019 when they handed the position to rookies and journeymen. Beginning in 2020, the third base position cumulatively posted a -0.9 WAR when you remove the positive production from Candelario‘s four months on the Nats in the 2023 season. Even if you left Candelario in those numbers, the Nats cumulatively were a +2.1 with all third baseman which is the worst in all of baseball in that time span of five years.
When the offseason started, a key need identified by Rizzo was to find a veteran leader. While we believed that to be a long-term need, Rizzo added a few players on two-years of team control like Lowe, Williams, and Ogasawara. Rizzo also brought back Josh Bell although that was just a one year deal. Those would be considered short-term deals. While those were moves in the right direction, did it go far enough?
“… We’re at a place in our rebuild where you can see the fruits of our labor. You can see kind of what we are trying to figure out here. And when your stars become your stars — that’s when you take-off. You can influx some free agents signings that are really important, and can put you over the top.”
— Rizzo said on Saturday at his Hot Stove event
“I think you can see it with Wood, and Young, and Crews, and Abrams and Garcia, and the young pitching staff that we have. …”
“This is the deepest farm system … we’ve ever had.”
With a young core, the Nationals may have benefited from long-term veteran leadership to guide and stabilize the team, especially in crucial clubhouse moments just like Ted Lerner did with Jayson Werth back in 2010. Sometimes, these moves include a premium in the salary for intangibles — like leadership, and yes, sometimes you have to forfeit a draft pick when you sign a top free agent. That is the cost of doing business in baseball.
When will that time be right is what the fan base wants to know. Most blame ownership, but clearly there was a lot of money to spend as mentioned, the team spent nearly $40 million already, and maybe what Rizzo did this offseason was solely Rizzo’s choice — and not some edict from ownership. Something that most won’t believe, but certainly Rizzo might truly be making these decisions. Of course he had a fixed budget, and did not have unlimited funds to spend just like every team in the MLB not named the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees. You might not want to recognize that as fact, but every other team works on a payroll budget.
“That’s our goal, not to be a fly-by-night to win a division, and [then] go backwards in four years. We want to do what we did starting in 2012 to 2020 with sustained greatness, and with a core group of guys that are going to be with you through those years.”
— Rizzo said on Saturday at his Hot Stove event
Timing is going to be everything in a year when the Dodgers and Mets are spending to be great this year. They met in last year’s NLCS, and the Dodgers were victorious. The future on competing with them is not now, and is not going to be, until the Nats roster has their real stars. The core has to take the next step and move forward to achieve that sustained greatness.
