#washington-nationals

#washington-nationals

While variations of these jerseys were worn in the past, before 2011, the main change made to them was on the jersey sleeve, where the interlocking DC logo was replaced with a Nationals emblem in a circle featuring the team's signature "curly w". The Nationals wore these uniforms during the years when they had their core players, including 2018, when the team featured many superstars such as Bryce Harper, Juan Soto, Stephen Strasburg, Max Scherzer, and Anthony Rendon.

The Nationals' front office continues with aggressive coaching hires, and they made another bold move on Friday by bringing in Andrew Aydt as their new assistant hitting coach. Aydt becomes the second addition to the staff from Driveline Baseball this offseason and carries on a clear trend under president of baseball operations Paul Toboni and manager Blake Butera: youth, analytics and innovation.

After logging a single inning on the mound at Triple-A in 2024, Mejia truly began his pitching journey this past season. He opened the year in Single-A, posting an impressive 33.3% strikeout rate over 12 innings. Mejia earned a couple of saves and a win with Fredericksburg. He moved up to Double-A and delivered a 2.33 ERA across 24 appearances. Mejia's strikeouts tailed off, while his walk rate spiked to 18.6%, but he limited hitters to a .174 batting average.

Toboni and Butera have been hard at work assembling a young and forward-thinking coaching staff since the hiring of Butera was initially announced a few weeks ago, and earlier this week, the Nationals poached yet another rising name on the coaching side. Perhaps what makes it even sweeter is the fact that this time it came from a National League East rival.

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.

The Washington Nationals are at an interesting point in the franchise's timeline. Six years removed from a World Series victory, the Nats find themselves in the basement of the Major Leagues. From 2012-2019, Washington competed for an NL East title each season. Nowadays, the Nationals are consistently battling for last place in the division. The 2025 season was a letdown due to unrealistic expectations set by former President of Baseball Operations Mike Rizzo,

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