The Nationals haven't made many roster moves so far this offseason, and those they have made don't exactly have a lot of wow factor.
César Hernández? Lucius Fox? Francisco Pérez? Andrew Young? These aren't names that are going to inspire a fan base to believe the club is bound for big things in 2022.
These are, however, exactly the kind of moves the Nationals should be making at this stage of their rebuild. And there will probably be more to come once the league-enforced lockout of...
Well, there's not a whole lot going on right now in the baseball world, as you probably are painfully aware. The sport's first work stoppage in 27 years has brought a halt to the hot stove league, though those final 48 hours leading up to the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement sure were eventful, weren't they?
In our continuing quest to keep everyone engaged throughout this downtime, we're going to fire up the Q&A machine this morning and take your questions. On the...
Baseball organizations and baseball players make countless decisions that impact their short-term and long-term success. Many have no real significant bearing on a franchise's ultimate fortunes, but some really do wind up having major implications that affect not only the player involved but several others either already on the roster or perhaps arriving in the future.
You never know which of these decisions are going to have lasting repercussions and which ones won't. It often takes years to...
For a good decade, the Nationals would take their seats at the Rule 5 draft, the annual event that always wraps up the Winter Meetings, and sit back and watch as other clubs either selected or lost players. As a perennial contender, they didn't typically have roster room to devote to a longshot prospect, nor did they tend to have many young players of their own coveted by other organizations.
Now that they've entered a full-scale rebuild of their entire operation, both at the major-league and...
The Nationals of the last half-decade boasted as veteran-laden a roster as you'd find in baseball. Yes, there were a handful of young, rising stars mixed in, but general manager Mike Rizzo always made a point to surround them with heavily experienced players who weren't about to get caught up in any moment that became too big for them.
And nowhere on the field was this more true than behind the plate. The Nats featured almost exclusively veteran catchers for years, from Kurt Suzuki to Yan...
We spend the majority of our time here talking about major leaguers, but with the lockout now preventing teams from making any transactions involving players on 40-man rosters, let's take an opportunity to delve deeper into some of the Nationals' top minor leaguers. We'll start this weekly series with the organization's No. 1 prospect ...
RHP CADE CAVALLI
Height/weight: 6-foot-4, 230 lbs.
Age on opening day 2022: 23
How acquired: First-round pick, 2020 draft, University of Oklahoma
2021...
Because the baseball world was on the verge of shutting down when it happened, we didn't really get a lot of time to process Max Scherzer's decision to sign with the Mets and wonder what kind of reaction he'll get when he returns to Nationals Park to face his former team.
But since we've now got nothing but time on our hands, let's return to the subject and contemplate the scene that ultimately awaits the three-time Cy Young Award winner when he emerges from the visitors' dugout next...
Watching college football the last two weekends, I couldn't help but keep asking myself: Why does that sport still only allow four teams into its top-level playoff? How much better would it be if every major conference winner automatically qualified, plus two at-large teams and the highest-ranked team from one of the other conferences, making up an eight-team bracket?
Which also got me thinking how baseball really does have its postseason system right at the moment. Ten of the sport's 30...
In anticipating the negotiations between owners and players leading up to the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement, everyone assumed there would be two major areas of dispute: baseball's economic model and potential rule changes to the sport.
Turns out the two sides really only discussed money before the CBA expired late Wednesday night and owners instituted a lockout.
Commissioner Rob Manfred, during his Thursday news conference with reporters in Dallas, revealed the rule change...
The baseball world came to an abrupt halt at midnight Thursday, and we don't know when the machine is going to be turned back on again. It would be weeks. It could be months.
Which leaves every club and a whole lot of players feeling helpless for the time being. Normally, everyone would be gearing up for the Winter Meetings, which were to begin Monday in Orlando. Trades would've been made, free agents would've been signed, Scott Boras quips would've been trotted out to a throng of reporters...
And so we have entered uncharted territory. Uncharted, that is, for the last 27 years.
For the first time since the infamous 1994-95 strike, Major League Baseball is now officially in a work stoppage. When the collective bargaining agreement expired at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday with no new deal in place, owners enforced a lockout of players.
How long will it last? What are they fighting over? What does this mean for the Nationals the rest of the winter? Let's try to address as much of this as we...
After an awfully quiet start to the offseason, then a furious 48 hours of nonstop news, now baseball has fewer than 24 hours to wrap up any remaining business before the collective bargaining agreement expires and a league-imposed lockout is expected to commence.
All of this has made for an unusual couple of days as clubs around the sport rushed to make moves both big and small before a transactions freeze brings a stop to all activity until owners and players can agree on a new CBA.
It could...
Only 90 minutes after clearing three spots on their 40-man roster, the Nationals filled one of them with a veteran infielder who could help in a variety of ways next season: César Hernández.
The Nats signed Hernández to a one-year contract tonight, making the 31-year-old only their second major league free agent addition of the winter to date, with only one more day left to make any more moves before Major League Baseball is expected to institute a lockout of players.
Hernández...
The Nationals chose not to tender contracts to relievers Wander Suero and Ryne Harper, plus minor league first baseman Mike Ford, before tonight's league-wide deadline, making all three free agents only 28 hours before Major League Baseball is expected to begin a lockout of players that could stretch through most of the winter.
The Nats did tender contracts to all other unsigned players on their 40-man roster, including seven arbitration-eligible players - Juan Soto, Josh Bell, Joe Ross, Erick...
The Nationals have added to their infield depth, claiming Lucius Fox off waivers from the Orioles and signing former Blue Jays shortstop Richard Ureña to a minor league contract.
Fox immediately joins the Nats' 40-man roster, which for the moment is full. That very well could change by the end of the day if the club chooses not to tender contracts to any of their nine unsigned arbitration-eligible players before the league's 8 p.m. deadline.
Fox was acquired only two weeks ago by the...
After a frantic Monday that saw a handful of clubs handing out hundreds of millions of dollars to free agents like candy, every major league club now faces a busy Tuesday deciding whether or not to retain a bunch of its own players.
By 8 p.m. today, teams must tender contracts to all arbitration-eligible players. Those who don't receive offers are non-tendered and immediately become free agents.
So while the Nationals have been awfully quiet on the transaction front so far this winter, they...
The Nationals got a jump start on what should be a hectic Tuesday in advance of Major League Baseball's non-tender deadline and Wednesday night's expiration of the collective bargaining agreement, agreeing to terms with Andrew Stevenson on a 2022 contract to avoid arbitration.
Stevenson, who qualified for arbitration despite having not yet accrued three years of big league service time as a so-called Super Two player, stands to earn a modest raise from his 2021 salary of $579,100.
The...
Max Scherzer is going to be a Met for at least the next two years, possibly three. He's going to make more money each of those years than anyone who has ever played baseball has made. And he's almost certainly going to make his New York debut against the Nationals franchise he helped lead to their first championship.
Happy Monday, everybody!
What was percolating late Sunday night was finalized early this afternoon: Scherzer is signing with the Mets, a massive three-year, $130 million contract...
As Dec. 1 creeps ever closer, we're finally seeing some movement around the baseball world. With the collective bargaining agreement set to expire in two days and an owners' lockout of players looming, a group of prominent free agents is now motivated to get deals down as soon as possible and avoid falling victim to what could be a two-month stretch with zero transactions completed.
And there may be no player more motivated to know where he's going to be playing in 2022 right now than Max...
Four Nationals players will qualify for salary arbitration this winter despite having yet to accrue three full years of major league service time because each has crossed the lower threshold used to designate each year's so-called Super Two players.
MLBTradeRumors.com reported Saturday the cutoff for Super Two qualification this winter is 2 years, 116 days of service time. That means Ryne Harper (2 years, 135 days), Austin Voth (2 years, 127 days), Tanner Rainey (2 years, 127 days) and Andrew...