Image: (Andrew Lang/TalkNats)
2024 Record: 71-91 (.438 win%, 4th in NL East)
2025 Payroll: $98,596,200 (5th lowest in MLB)
Steamer 2025 Projected Top 10 Hitter WAR:
- SS, CJ Abrams: .256 AVG/.316 OBP/.434 SLG, .324 wOBA, 3.1 fWAR
- 2B, Luis García Jr.: .279 AVG/.321 OBP/.445 SLG, .329 wOBA, 2.6 fWAR
- LF, James Wood: .263 AVG/.349 OBP/.451 SLG, .347 wOBA, 2.5 fWAR
- CF, Jacob Young.: .254 AVG/.314 OBP/.347 SLG, .293 wOBA, 1.8 fWAR
- 1B, Nathaniel Lowe: .260 AVG/.348 OBP/.414 SLG, .334 wOBA, 1.7 fWAR
- C, Keibert Ruiz: .258 AVG/.305 OBP/.416 SLG, .312 wOBA, 1.4 fWAR
- RF, Dylan Crews: .248 AVG/.308 OBP/.406 SLG, .311 wOBA, 1.4 fWAR
- 3B, Paul DeJong: .208 AVG/.267 OBP/.377 SLG, .281 wOBA, 0.7 fWAR
- DH, Josh Bell: .251 AVG/.329 OBP/.421 SLG, .327 wOBA, 0.7 fWAR
- UTL, Amed Rosario: .266 AVG/.303 OBP/.383 SLG, .299 wOBA, 0.7 fWAR
Steamer 2025 Projected Top 5 Starting Pitcher WAR:
- LHP, MacKenzie Gore: 174.1 IP/3.74 ERA/1.24 WHIP, 2.7 fWAR
- RHP, Jake Irvin: 169.0 IP/4.32 ERA/1.32 WHIP, 1.6 fWAR
- LHP, Mitchell Parker: 154.1 IP/4.26 ERA/1.34 WHIP, 1.3 fWAR
- RHP, Michael Soroka: 135.0 IP/4.28 ERA/1.35 WHIP, 1.0 fWAR
- LHP, DJ Herz: 83.2 IP/3.98 ERA/1.33 WHIP, 0.8 fWAR
Steamer 2025 Projected Top 4 Relievers:
- LHP, Jose A. Ferrer: 62.0 IP/3.70 ERA/1.32 WHIP, 0.3 fWAR
- RHP, Kyle Finnegan: 63.0 IP/3.82 ERA/1.29 WHIP, 0.3 fWAR
- RHP, Derek Law: 66.0 IP/3.92 ERA/1.31 WHIP, 0.2 fWAR
- RHP, Brad Lord: 49.1 IP/4.03 ERA/1.31 WHIP, 0.2 fWAR
What Does Baseball Mean to This City?
Upon baseball’s return to D.C. in 2005, the Washington Nationals represented a beacon of hope for the Nation’s Capital. After some tough years to begin its time within Major League Baseball, the team cemented its place within the city and built a loyal following of fans. These fans were rewarded, as the Nationals went on to be an annual contender for nearly a decade starting in 2012, before capping off their competitive window with a World Series Championship in 2019.
Now? The Nationals are a consistent basement dweller of the National League East and have yet to record a winning record for the better part of a decade. Attendance is still strong considering these circumstances, but the Nats are slowly starting to trickle out of the fans’ unconscious mind as they start to lose patience in the current rebuild. They are still searching for an identity as an organization, and they need it quickly.
In Which Direction is This Team Trending?
Since the team cratered in 2022 to the tune of an 107 loss season, the worst in franchise history, the Nationals have slowly improved since then. The 2023 season saw a 16 win improvement, causing many to wonder if the rebuilding phase was passing quicker than expected. These hopes were quickly extinguished when the team finished with an identical record in 2024 following a quiet offseason.
Overall, the outlook on the collection of young talent is on the optimistic side, following the trove of prospects received in the Juan Soto deal starting to materialize along with multiple high draft selections. However, essentially every player remains unproven and with unrealized potential. Following Dylan Crews’ graduation from prospect status, the farm system will be close to barren, but fans have a reason to believe in the young talent on the current big league roster such as outfielders James Wood, Jacob Young, Dylan Crews, and infielders Luis Garcia Jr. and CJ Abrams.
2024-25 Offseason Recap:
If you were hoping for a “splash” signing this offseason, or even a couple contracts north of $50M in value, this unfortunately was not the offseason for you. The headliner in this class for the Nationals was bringing back starting pitcher Trevor Williams on a two-year, $14M contract. I’m a big fan of this move, as Williams was stellar in his relatively short season with the club in 2024. In 66 innings, he posted career highs in ERA (2.03), FIP (2.79), WHIP (1.04), you name it.
This jump in production in his limited time on the mound last season could be largely credited to his time spent at driveline following the 2023 season, an independent company which helps develop baseball athletes further. At Driveline they helped identify his strengths, mainly his elite command, and capitalized on that attribute. Given his great innate ability to command his pitches, Driveline could go out on a limb more so than other athletes with shakier command and push him to develop more extreme movement profiles on his pitches.
The greatest change was on his changeup, which dropped 2.5 inches more than the previous season, allowing him to get more chases on the pitch. He additionally increased his sweeper usage, giving him more avenues on how he could attack hitters. While I don’t believe he will continue this torrid pace throughout 2025, I think he will be a solid rotation option capable of posting 2-3 fWAR.
The other biggest acquisition didn’t come in the form of a free agent deal but a trade, when the Nationals traded RP Robert Garcia for 1B Nathaniel Lowe. While Robert Garcia is a great get for Texas, as he has the potential to pitch in a starting role, acquiring Lowe is a win for the Nats as it fulfills multiple needs.
Lowe improves this team defensively, as well as offensively. While Lowe’s power metrics took a slight step back last year, he was still an above average hitter (121 wRC+) and would have posted the second most fWAR among all hitters on the team last year (2.8). As he enters his age 29 season, he will very likely continue to be a positive contributor in the waning moments of his prime.
Other than a couple small relief pitcher signings, the only other major pitching acquisition is right-hander Mike Soroka. Soroka has had an up and down career, as he started his path in Atlanta where he placed second in Rookie of the Year voting before tearing his achilles twice. This left him rehabbing and out of baseball for three years, before he returned to the Braves in 2023 where he struggled. He was subsequently dealt to the White Sox that offseason where he had varying levels of success.
At first, the White Sox tried him in a starting role. Let’s just say that didn’t go well, as he posted a 6.39 ERA in the role. However, after moving him to the bullpen, his fortunes changed. He was dominant, as his pitch shapes and velocity all ticked up. He struck out a dazzling 39% of hitters in 36 innings, more than triple the amount when he was starting.
The Nationals saw this performance and pounced, signing him to a one year deal worth $9M. While I think the amount of money paid to obtain him was a little excessive, it’s reasonable if the Nationals can have him pitch in a starter’s role remotely as effective as his time in the bullpen last year. At the very worst, he can be a good reliever if the starter experiment fails.
2025 Regular Season Preview:
With the large collection of players under and around 25 years of age, this season represents another developing season for the Washington Nationals. In an extremely competitive division with 3 of the best 5 teams in the National League, their hopes of making the playoffs are minimal, if not nonexistent. When they aren’t playing the Marlins, they will be tested frequently as they go through the gauntlet of 40 games against a healthy Braves team, an improved Mets team, and an always dangerous Phillies squad. This is baseball, so we can expect the Nats to take a fair number of those games, but it likely won’t be pretty.
However, the light is at the end of the tunnel in this current rebuilding stage for the franchise, and with an increased investment in the product on the field from the Lerners, this team may find themselves vying for a playoff spot within the next couple of seasons. Gaining all revenue from T.V. rights for the first time and the selling of naming rights shortly should help the financials on this front.
Player to Watch #1: LF James Wood
If you’re looking for any reason to turn on the T.V. to watch some Nationals baseball this summer, doing it to watch James Wood is as good of a reason as any. After slugging 19 homers in 131 professional games last year, seeing what he can do in his first full MLB season will be a sight to behold. Many people have high expectations for James given his high prospect pedigree, and I wholeheartedly agree with those expectations and believe he will surpass them this season.
In his short stint with the big league club last year, he was elite or close to it in every hitting metric not related to his contact ability. Given his stature at 6’7”, some swing and miss in his game will come with the territory of his skillset, but what makes his upside so high is his elite power potential and feel to hit. Not to mention, he is very patient and walks at a rate among the best in the league. He’s a run machine with the upside to be a top 5 power bat in baseball in his prime. When he hits the free agent market in 2029 he may command a contract north of $500M. Probably more.
Player to Watch #2: CF Dylan Crews
While his short stint with the club to end the 2024 season didn’t go as well as most Nats fans would have hoped for, Dylan Crews is still a big part of this Nationals team now, and in the future. He has a skill set as well-rounded as any prospect, and he offers a high floor as a player with his underrated excellent defense in right field and elite speed (93rd percentile in sprint speed).
While he didn’t hit the ball with authority often, he maintained a professional approach with solid bat to ball skills and infrequent chases on pitches outside of the zone. From my view, it appears to be a matter of him settling into the big league level and getting more used to hitting off of MLB pitching. After all, the gap between MiLB and the Majors has never been bigger than now.
While this development process at the big league level may take 50 to potentially hundreds of games, I have strong reason to believe he will emerge as an above-average, every day outfielder who offers great defense, a strong base running ability, and a professional hitting profile.
Player to Watch #3: SP MacKenzie Gore
Leading the starting staff in 2025 is MacKenzie Gore, who at the age of 26 still has a lot to prove. While it can be easy to see his palpable upside at times, such as when he struck out at least 10 hitters in three separate outings last season, he still struggles with consistency, and salvaging starts.
I can’t tell you how many times last season he started a game off strongly, then allowed a run or two and the wheels fell off from there. It would help if he relied on his fastball less, which was used at an aggressive rate of 56% vs righties and 44% overall, while increasing his slider usage to diversify his way of attacking hitters.
Position Group to Watch: Outfielders
All in all, most of the talent at the Major League level is concentrated beyond the dirt. Although not all three of the Nationals’ outfielders were once blue chip prospects, they offer very high upsides whether it be James Wood’s prodigious power, Jacob Young’s elite defense, or Dylan Crews’ versatile skill set.
All of these players are 25 or younger so it’s reasonable to expect more of them as they mature and play more games, and they certainly will have the opportunity to this season. Amid a tumultuous collection of seasons since their 2019 World Series title, Nats fans haven’t had the luxury of many players being fixtures in the lineup and in the field for long periods of time, but for now, they can at least hang their hat on this outfield core for at least the next few seasons.
2025 Record Prediction: 72-90
At the end of the day, as much as I hate to say it, I doubt this Nationals team has gotten much better since last season. While the lineup has deepened to a small degree with the additions of Nathaniel Lowe and Josh Bell, much of the production needed to improve the 2024 win total this year would need to come from young, unproven players who have futures still up in the air. This leads to a volatile win total, and a team with low floor. Additionally, the bullpen has taken a noticeable step back. With the recent departures of Hunter Harvey, Robert Garcia, and Dylan Floro, I would be hard pressed to find a single reliever in this bullpen who is above average.
Despite Kyle Finnegan posting 38 saves last year, he is below average in getting hitters to chase (31st percentile), getting hitters to whiff on his offerings (29th percentile), limiting walks (35th percentile), and allowing hard contact (2nd percentile). It is no wonder he couldn’t get a contract north of $6M on the free agent market this offseason. The closest reliever to being above average is Jose Ferrer, but he still has yet to record 70 career innings.
Despite this glaring hole in the team, I believe some of these problems created from the lack of a bullpen has been offset marginally with improved team defense. While it already helps to have the best outfield defender in baseball last year in Jacob Young (1st in Outs Above Average), the additions of Nathaniel Lowe (91st in Outs Above Average) and Paul Dejong (84th percentile in Outs Above Average) help anchor an already young infield with experience and good gloves.
This leads me to the evaluation of 72 wins for the Nationals in the 2025 season, a one win improvement from 2024. I believe this team has a ceiling of around 80 wins if the majority of the young talent takes a big step forward and the starting rotation can keep the Nats in most games before the bullpen gets involved, while it also wouldn’t surprise me to see the team tally around 65 wins if the staff deals with more injuries than last years and our young hitters struggle to adjust to big league pitching. At the end of the day, projections can only go so far, so all we can do is sit back and enjoy watching a young team grow with no expectations.
Categories: 2025 Season Preview, Analysis, Articles, Season Analysis
M-SABR 
Thanks Christopher!