#washington-nationals

#washington-nationals

The primary reason the Nationals should look to sign Rojas is his premium defense. For almost his entire career, Rojas has been a premium defender at shortstop and second base. This past season, Rojas' outs above average ranked in the 91st percentile of all qualified players. While defensive statistics like outs above average can fluctuate from season to season for many players, Rojas has consistently been an elite performer in this metric. He has ranked around the 90th percentile since 2021.

The Nats learned that their internal philosophies must change. Ownership recognized this and fired both Mike Rizzo and Davey Martinez in July of 2025. The timing of the firings was unexpected. Most Nats fans expected Darnell Coles and Jim Hickey to be let go before Davey. Almost all fans could've agreed that none of the firings would be in-season. It showed an urgency from ownership that change needed to happen, and fast.

The Nationals have interviewed Red Sox's Double-A manager Chad Epperson as part of their managerial search, reports Spencer Nusbaum of the Washington Post. He joins Brandon Hyde as the only known interviewees. The Post's Andrew Golden wrote this afternoon that the Nats have informed interim manager Miguel Cairo that he is no longer in the running. Golden reported that the Nationals were interested in speaking with former Twins skipper Rocco Baldelli and Dodgers bench coach Danny Lehmann, but it's not known if either of them have formally interviewed.

After a 3.5 WAR season with 18 home runs in 114 games, Bregman indeed chose to opt out, placing himself back in the free agent market entering his age 32 season. In spite of his relatively advanced age, he will be one of the better hitters available for the rest of the league to acquire this offseason, particularly due to his high-leverage and leadership experience.

The Nationals are set to hire Justin Horowitz as an assistant general manager, as first reported by Joe Doyle of Over-Slot Baseball. Previously the Pirates' director of amateur scouting, Horowitz will now work under Washington's new president of baseball operations, Paul Toboni. Toboni, like Horowitz, has a background in amateur scouting. In fact, Horowitz worked under Toboni in the Red Sox's amateur scouting department for several years. That's surely no coincidence.

Arguably the biggest obstacle the new front office will need to tackle and address moving forward is player development, which was called out as being subpar by ace lefty MacKenzie Gore before the end of the season. Anyone who watched or paid attention to the Nationals this past season at any level could tell that the team had talent, but lacked proper infrastructure to be able to adequately support high-end development.

Fortunately for the Nationals, change is on the way ahead of the 2026 season, as they have officially hired a new President of Baseball Operations in Paul Toboni, who came over along with some rave reviews for his tenure with the Boston Red Sox. He has a tall task ahead of him in determining who the long-term building blocks of the team should be, and one of the tougher decisions he has to make will be concerning Jacob Young.

The day we realized that Finnegan might be a fixture in a high-leverage relief role was when he struck out the side against the Angels. In a game early in 2022, the Nationals had a 4-2 lead in the seventh inning, but the top of the lineup was due up for the Angels. That meant someone had to face the star-studded trio of Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, and former Nationals standout Anthony Rendon.

The Washington Nationals are set to undergo a lot of changes from the way they entered the 2025 season. After the previous regime, lead by General Manager Mike Rizzo and Manager Dave Martinez declared the rebuild over, the Nationals failed to even reach as many wins as they did in the last couple seasons. In fact, there is a very legitimate argument to be made that the 2025 season was the worst and most disappointing one in Nationals history,

Mitchell Parker emerged in 2024 as a major surprise, debuting in the big leagues after just four appearances at Triple-A Rochester before going seven scoreless innings with eight strikeouts in just his second start at the MLB level. Things looked good from there--minus a July 13 disaster where he was unable to escape the first inning, Parker managed a 4.01 ERA in just over 150 innings as a 24-year-old.

Paul Toboni speaks and acts like a modern president of baseball operations, with a first-day swagger and commitment to building a " scouting and player development monster." He said everything he should have said Wednesday morning, when he was introduced as just the third head of baseball in Washington Nationals history. Take him at his word, and it's easy to fall in line behind him and believe he'll update the front office and develop a thoughtful, organized, clear structure

The Washington Nationals' tumultuous 2025 season will finally draw to a close this afternoon, and for many of us fans who have endured the hardships of this season, it's a huge relief. It should be an emotional afternoon, as the Nationals have a chance to send longtime legendary announcer Bob Carpenter into the sunset on a high note, but now another layer has been added to the game.