After Monday's deal, will deadline day be quiet for Nats?

This trade deadline always promised to be different from the previous two, in which the Nationals dealt away some of the biggest names in club history for premier prospects, four of which are currently on their big league roster.

So as Trade Deadline Day 2023 finally arrives, we already know not to expect those kind of fireworks coming out of the offices on South Capitol Street. The question now is: After Monday’s trade of Jeimer Candelario, will there be any fireworks at all?

Candelario was the likeliest player to be dealt all along, and Mike Rizzo went ahead and made that move with 24 hours to spare, sending the third baseman to the Cubs for minor league shortstop Kevin Made and left-hander DJ Herz. Where does that leave the organization now heading into the 6 p.m. deadline?

It’s quite possible the Nats don’t do anything else. There’s no obvious, slam-dunk name everyone expects to be gone at this point. Besides Candelario, the other players set to be free agents at season’s end are either injured (Carl Edwards Jr.) or haven’t been productive enough to generate much interest (Corey Dickerson).

The asking price, meanwhile, on players with multiple years of control remains quite high, according to sources familiar with Rizzo’s negotiations. Rizzo views Lane Thomas and Kyle Finnegan, in particular, as potential long-term pieces to the Nationals’ puzzle, so he isn’t about to give either away for whatever best offer he receives.

Thomas, who has an .807 OPS and is under club control through 2025, seems unlikely to go unless some other team really knocks Rizzo’s socks off. There might be more of a case, though, to consider moving Finnegan.

The 31-year-old reliever also is under club control through 2025, so the asking price is and should be high. But contending teams in need of bullpen help sometimes get desperate. (Just think about the Nationals circa 2015-19.) And given the volatility of the position, Rizzo might be less married to the idea of Finnegan sustaining his current performance for another two seasons.

It was notable that Davey Martinez, who was instructed to sit Candelario on Monday because of the likelihood of a trade being consummated before game time, did not face such restrictions with Finnegan. He didn’t hesitate to use his closer in the ninth inning of a 5-3 game, and then he watched him retire the side to record his 15th save.

“I talked to him before the game,” Martinez said. “I told him: You’ve got to be ready.”

Finnegan was, brushing off any speculation about his future and putting together a clean inning of relief to lower his ERA to an even 3.00 in his 43rd appearance of the season.

“I felt really locked in today, and had a little extra adrenaline, for whatever reason,” he said. “I felt good.”

Because he wasn’t part of the Nationals’ 2019 run, Finnegan doesn’t feel like he’s been here that long. But he’s actually one of the team’s longest tenured players at this point, signed to a major league contract prior to the 2020 season after spending six years in the Athletics’ farm system without getting called up.

Monday night was Finnegan’s 202nd relief appearance, which ranks eighth in club history. He’s actually pitched more games than any reliever who has been here since 2017, a durable and effective right-hander who has ascended from the last man in the bullpen to the first man Martinez calls upon with the game on the line.

As he finished off Monday’s win and received handshakes from teammates, did Finnegan consider the possibility it might be the last time he does it in a Nationals uniform?

“No,” he insisted. “I’m here, and that’s where my mind is. Until that changes, I’m just going to keep showing up here every day and doing what I do.”