What to watch for as the offseason officially begins

Halloween has come and gone. The leaves have changed colors and are beginning to fall to the ground. Daylight Saving Time is finished for the year, leaving us with the oh-so-depressing 5 p.m. sunset for the next few months.

And the 2024 Major League Baseball season has ended. The Dodgers wrapped up the World Series five nights ago, which means the offseason officially begins today. Free agents are free to negotiate with all 30 clubs. Contract options must be picked up or declined. Rosters must be set. And teams can begin making changes they hope will lead to better results in 2025.

This offseason has long loomed as the Nationals’ most consequential one in several years. There’s nothing really left to tear down from the old roster. Many of the key young players acquired in the rebuild are now big leaguers, with more to come soon. It feels like it’s time for these guys to start adding real free agents to the young core at last.

While technically permitted beginning today, those kind of major acquisitions aren’t expected to occur until later this winter. You never really know how the offseason market is going to play out, but recent history suggests there will be little movement of consequence until at least early December at the Winter Meetings, and quite possibly not until after New Year’s.

But there will be some news nonetheless this month. Here’s a Nats primer for November to help get you into Hot Stove mode. …

* DECISIONS ON CONTRACT OPTIONS
Any players with expiring contracts that include options for 2025 must learn their fate by the end of the day. For the Nationals, only one player fit into this category: Joey Gallo. And that decision came Sunday evening.

You may remember the contract Gallo signed with the Nats last winter was mostly reported as a one-year, $5 million deal. While that’s technically accurate because it did guarantee the slugger one year and $5 million, it was a bit more complicated than that.

The contract stipulated Gallo would earn a $2.5 million salary in 2024, plus incentives based on plate appearances ($200,000 if he reached 200 plate appearances, another $200,000 if he reached 300, then 400, 500 and 600). He wound up taking only 260 plate appearances during an injury plagued season, so that’s an extra $200,000 on top of his $2.5 million salary.

The deal also included a mutual option for 2025 that would pay Gallo an $8 million salary if both he and the club pick it up. If either side declined the option, he would get a $2.5 million buyout.

Now, mutual options rarely get picked up by both parties, and there was no reason to think the Nationals would pick up this one. And indeed they officially declined it Sunday, so they will make that $2.5 million buyout payment to Gallo, whose final income for his services this season will be $5.2 million.

* SETTING THE 40-MAN ROSTER
By the end of business today, all teams also must trim their 40-man roster down to no more than 40 players. Wait, they were allowed to have more than 40 players on the 40-man roster until today? Sort of.

Players on the 60-day injured list don’t count against the 40-man roster, and the Nationals had four players on the 60-day IL at season’s end: Joan Adon, Cade Cavalli, Josiah Gray and Mason Thompson. Any or all of them could go back on the 60-day IL next season, but nobody may go on the IL until Opening Day, so they need to occupy spots on the 40-man roster until then.

The Nats already lost three players from their season ending 40-man roster last week when Patrick Corbin, Trevor Williams and Jacob Barnes officially became free agents. And then they dropped Gallo from the list Sunday, which means they now have 36 players on the roster and four 60-day IL players who need to be added. It’s always nice when the math works out, isn’t it?

So the Nationals will be at an even 40 players on the roster as the offseason begins. Of course, if they want to sign a free agent or trade for a big leaguer, they’re going to have to clear a spot by dropping someone else. So more moves are sure to come in the next several weeks.

* PROTECTING PROSPECTS FROM THE RULE 5 DRAFT
The next deadline of consequence is Nov. 19, the date when teams must add any prospects they want to protect from being taken in the Rule 5 Draft to their 40-man roster.

We’ll get more into this in a couple weeks, but among the notable prospects who are Rule 5 eligible this winter are outfielder Robert Hassell III, catchers Brady Lindsly and Onix Vega, infielder Kevin Made and right-hander Andry Lara. Of that group, Hassell should be a lock to be added to the 40-man roster. We’ll see about any of the others.

But for each player they choose to protect, the Nationals must choose another player to drop from the 40-man. Last November, they dropped veterans Dominic Smith, Andres Machado and Cory Abbott, plus prospects Jeremy De La Rosa and Tim Cate, creating space for them to protect four pitchers from potentially being lost in the Rule 5 Draft: DJ Herz, Mitchell Parker, Zach Brzykcy and Cole Henry.

In the cases of Herz and Parker, especially, that seemed to be a wise decision.

* THE NON-TENDER DEADLINE
The final big deadline day of this month is Nov. 22, when teams must tender 2025 contracts to all of their unsigned players with fewer than six years of service time. The vast majority of these are no-brainer decisions, but there are always a few players who have reached arbitration eligibility and may not be deemed worth the salary increases they’re certain to get through that process.

Among the players to keep an eye on this year are two members of the Opening Day roster who wound up at Triple-A Rochester after struggling: Riley Adams and Joey Meneses.

Adams is arbitration-eligible for the first time and also out of minor league options. So the Nationals either need to give him a raise and keep him on the big league club or consider non-tendering him.

Meneses isn’t arbitration-eligible yet, and does still have options. So he could theoretically just go back to Rochester again. But it seems pretty clear at this point the 32-year-old isn’t part of the Nats’ long term plan, so they may choose to cut him loose and give him a chance to make it back to the majors somewhere else.