Today’s mailbag gets into the Nationals’ offseason approach, the accuracy of preseason win projections, what Andrew Painter will do this year, the Royals’ outfield, how small market teams can compete, the Yankees’ third base situation, the Mets’ rotation, and more.
Steve asks:
The Nationals have now spent over $50 million in this offseason on new acquisitions. Do you like their strategy of building depth with upside players with lower $ risk per player to keep the books clean for the coming years?
OTOH, they could have gone all in and met Bregman’s rumored price of $210 million over 7 years, and had enough money for Nathaniel Lowe and Ogasawara and adding Finnegan, Lopez and Poche for their bullpen and skipped signing Sims for the bullpen and Bell for DH.
Which route do you like better?
Just to review, the Nationals added Trevor Williams, Mike Soroka, Kyle Finnegan, Josh Bell, Shinnosuke Ogasawara, Jorge Lopez, Lucas Sims, Amed Rosario, and Paul DeJong in free agency at a 2025 AAV cost of $38.75MM. They also traded for Nathaniel Lowe, who is earning $10.3MM this year.
Despite adding $49MM in total ’25 AAV, the team’s CBT payroll is only $138MM. The question is whether 2025 is/was the time for this team to pounce. Owner Mark Lerner doesn’t think so, based on comments made to Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post. Referencing GM Mike Rizzo, here’s what Lerner said to Svrluga:
“When Mike calls me in and says, ‘We really need to think about it,’ for next winter, we’ll talk about it,” Lerner said. “Right now, he doesn’t think — and I agree with him: There’s no point in getting a superstar and paying him hundreds of millions of dollars to win two or three more games. You’ve got to wait until — like Jayson. Jayson was right on the cusp of [the team] being really good, and it took us to the next level. That’s the ideal situation. It’s always on our mind.” He paused. “You could get nauseous thinking about it,” he said, laughing.
Despite the additions, FanGraphs projects the Nationals for only 73 wins this year. And even though – as I’ll show later in the mailbag – teams sometimes outplay their projection by a dozen wins, that still might not be enough for a wild card.
The Nationals have three suspect lineup spots: Bell at DH, Keibert Ruiz at catcher, and Jose Tena/DeJong/Rosario at third base. Bregman alone doesn’t make this team a likely contender, and he turns 31 in March. I don’t think he fit as the team’s Jayson Werth move. I doubt Nolan Arenado would’ve accepted a trade to D.C., and he doesn’t sense for this team anyway.
The Nats still owe $40MM to Ruiz and have a few catching prospects in the pipeline, so I can see why they didn’t do anything there. Likewise, adding a bigger bat than Bell might mean 74 or 75 wins instead of 73.
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