With all of the talk about the Washington Nationals potential 2025 lineup, there could be additions of a new rotation arm and bullpen arms for the 2025 season. While it is possible that the Nats could fill those spots from within the organization, the team still could use a true No. 1 starter to seed in front of MacKenzie Gore, Jake Irvin, and DJ Herz. That would allow Cade Cavalli and Mitchell Parker to compete for the No. 5 spot in the rotation. On top of that, the team could always use another upgrade in the bullpen.
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.
The Washington Nationals’ playoff run in 2025 was a cinematic masterpiece, a Cinderella story for the ages. Against all odds, they defied expectations, winning a series of thrilling games and ultimately claiming the World Series title.
You can see pictures of the swag delivered to the YBA from the previous RCR points drives in the links above. With continued thanks to everyone who has participated in the past, we’re happy to announce the RCR Points Drive for 2024.
The Washington Senators had a rich history of baseball in the nation’s capital for over 70 years.
The Bregman family lived in Washington D.C. before the Washington Senators were founded in 1901. His great-grandfather, Bo Bregman, was a boxing promoter and later became part of the ownership group with George Preston Marshall that moved the Boston Redskins to Washington, D.C. to become the Washington Redskins. Bo’s son, Stan Bregman, was chief legal counsel for the Washington Senators. He was also part of the recruitment to get Ted Williams to manage the Washington Senators in the late-1960s and successfully did that. Also in the 1960s, Stan’s son, Sam, was born. He would attend Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and later play baseball at University of New Mexico. His son, Alex, would take the family’s love of baseball to the next level.
All MLB teams had to add back their 60-day IL players to their 40-man roster yesterday. For teams without open 40-man spaces, they had to make room on their rosters. The Washington Nationals made several moves yesterday that began with the Baltimore Orioles announcing they claimed pitcher Thaddeus Ward who the Nats had placed on waivers, and the O’s snatched him up. Also gone are Joey Meneses, Michael Rucker, and Ildemaro Vargas.
The players reinstated from the 60-day IL were: Joan Adon, Cade Cavalli, Josiah Gray, and Mason Thompson. Once Spring Training starts, players can be placed back on the 60-day IL like Gray who is recovering from UCL elbow surgery and will miss most or all of the 2025 season.
Most roster moves were expected — although some were not expected at this time. Technically, the Nationals did not need to clear 40-man spaces with the DFAs, but they did this housecleaning, sooner than later to open up four spots on the roster.
With no spin on the Washington Nationals defense, it was awful overall in the 2024 season. The Nats ranked as the 5th worst defensive team in baseball, and that includes having the best defender in all of baseball with Jacob Young in center field. Young was named a finalist for the Gold Glove Award, and was robbed in the final vote. By the way, in Nats history, only Ryan Zimmerman in 2009 and Adam LaRoche in 2012 had won Gold Gloves previously.
The phrase, “Takes Two to Tango“, actually came from a song that was written and composed in 1952 by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning, and sung by Pearl Bailey in 1952. Since, it has been used in a lot of sports idioms. LeBron James recently said, “In free agency it takes 2 to tango.” Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo has said the same before James, and what it means is that the team and player must both agree to “dance” to get a deal done. So here we are at the first weekend of Juan Soto‘s free agency, and contemplating who will be on Soto’s dance card.
While most think it is all about the money for Soto, there are always other factors such as team history, current status as a winner, taxes, friends, and family. The Nats have several advantages if the money is equal as the team has a history with Soto, building towards being a winner, reasonable taxes, and Soto’s brother, Elian Soto, is a minor leaguer with the Nationals. Maybe that won’t matter like it did with James and his ability to play with his son, Bronny, but it is a fact that the Soto brothers can only be together with one team — the Nationals. If you have that sense of déjà vu here, yes, the Nats had a minor leaguer named Bryan Harper, and he did not cause Bryce Harper to stay.
Say what you want about the frontrunner fans in Philadelphia. That team went through 10, yes 10 consecutive non-winning seasons from 2011-2020, even with Bryce Harper on their roster for 2019 and 2020, and they came back to the ballpark as soon as they signed Harper. Their attendance skyrocketed from 2.158 million to 2.728 million, year over year. They didn’t wait for winning. They were there to support ownership that spent “stupid money” and signed Harper which was really smart money.
The money spent on Harper at a bargain price of only $25.38 million per year was paid off two times over with that attendance increase. That was an increase of nearly 570,000 and that equated to 7,000 more fans for every game that season. The last two years they went over 3 million in attendance.
Today marks exactly five years from the day the Washington Nationals hoisted the World Series championship trophy. Since then, the Nats have started their offseasons on the same day as their regular season ended. Hopefully, the future has meaningful Octobers for the Nats.
Not much is going on in Natstown right now. They had already extended all of their coaches and left little to do publicly on their MLB calendar. All the baseball talk right now is about the World Series, managerial changes with other teams, and free agent speculation. In Washington, D.C., the talk is mostly about the first place Washington Commanders football team, and the beginning of the NBA and NHL seasons.
