Nationals Rumors

In January, the Nationals began processes to sell the naming rights to their stadium and find a sponsor for jersey patches, reports Brett Night of Forbes. Chief revenue officer Mike Carney told Night that the team is hopeful to announce those partnerships midseason.

Chelsea Janes of The Washington Post wrote last August about the Nats’ desire to reach those agreements. She noted at the time that the Nationals were the only team that had neither a stadium rights deal nor jersey sponsorships.

The change is only really relevant to fans in the sense that it could impact the team’s spending habits. Forbes estimates that the deals — which will be negotiated separately, likely with different sponsors — could come with upwards of $20MM in additional revenues annually. Carney loosely alluded to that possibly having an effect on payroll. “We want to be that brand that is a consistent winner year in and year out, and this is going to help to do that,” he told Night.

The Nats have never had a ballpark naming rights agreement. The venue has been known as Nationals Park since its opening in 2008. The Nationals are one of eight teams that doesn’t have a corporate sponsor for its stadium. The Dodgers, Angels, Red Sox, Cubs, Yankees, Orioles and Royals are the others. That doesn’t include the A’s (Sutter Health Park) and Rays (George M. Steinbrenner Field), who are in temporary homes for at least the upcoming season.

While the process has been ongoing since January, the Forbes report comes the same day as the Nationals finally settled their longstanding battle with the Orioles over the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. The Washington organization can pursue its own in-market broadcasting opportunities after the 2025 season. That should position them to lock in a more reliable television revenue stream for ’26 and beyond.

The Nationals pushed their competitive balance tax payrolls into the $200MM range each season between 2017-19, according to the Cot’s Baseball Contracts estimates. They’ve dramatically cut spending since winning the World Series six years ago. That coincided with an unsuccessful attempt by the Lerner family to sell the franchise in 2022-23. It has overlapped with a five-year rebuild that saw the team trade Juan Soto, Trea Turner and Max Scherzer in blockbusters to restock the farm system. Between the returns in those trades and the selection of Dylan Crews with the second overall pick in 2023, the Nats have built an encouraging core.

It doesn’t seem they feel that relatively young group is quite ready to take the next step. They shied away from anything more than affordable two-year commitments this offseason. Their estimated $137MM luxury tax payroll (via RosterResource) isn’t meaningfully different from last year’s $140.6MM year-end mark. Owner Mark Lerner justified the relatively quiet winter by opining that the team was probably still a season away from being a true contender.

“When (GM Mike Rizzo) calls me in and says, ‘We really need to think about it,’ for next winter, we’ll talk about it,” Lerner said last month. “Right now, he doesn’t think — and I agree with him: There’s no point in getting a superstar and paying him hundreds of millions of dollars to win two or three more games. You’ve got to wait until — like Jayson [Werth]. Jayson was right on the cusp of [the team] being really good, and it took us to the next level. That’s the ideal situation.“

Coming into this offseason, some observers expected the Nationals to be a dark horse for the top free agents. That didn’t come to pass, which was addressed this week by owner Mark Lerner, who said that he and president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo agreed the timing wasn’t right.

“When Mike calls me in and says, ‘We really need to think about it,’ for next winter, we’ll talk about it,” Lerner said, per Barry Svrluga of The Washington Post. “Right now, he doesn’t think — and I agree with him: There’s no point in getting a superstar and paying him hundreds of millions of dollars to win two or three more games. You’ve got to wait until — like Jayson [Werth]. Jayson was right on the cusp of [the team] being really good, and it took us to the next level. That’s the ideal situation. It’s always on our mind.”

The Nationals have been firmly in rebuild mode for a while now. At the 2021 deadline, with their competitive window closing, they traded Max Scherzer, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber and others. The following summer, Juan Soto and Josh Bell were out the door. Though they won the World Series in 2019, they have finished well below .500 in the five seasons since then.

There have been some positive developments in that rebuild process lately. Young players like Dylan Crews, James Wood, CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, Jake Irvin and others have had some big league success, to varying degrees, and are affordable as well as controllable for multiple years.

In addition to that emerging core, the club’s payroll situation looked to be in decent shape going into this winter. The six-year Patrick Corbin deal helped the Nats win a title in 2019 but his performance fell off for the final five years. That deal was backloaded, with a $12.5MM salary in the first year but a $35MM salary in the sixth. It was therefore taking up a big chunk of the payroll for a rebuilding club but finally came off the books a few months ago.

That left the Nats with few commitments going into the offseason. Catcher Keibert Ruiz is signed through 2030 but with his salary not reaching eight-figure territory unless the club picks up a 2031 option. Stephen Strasburg’s deal is still technically on the books through 2026 at $35MM annually, though there were deferrals in there and he also agreed to some unspecified deferral package as part of a retirement settlement.

With the fairly light slate of investments and the talent percolating up from the minors, there was an argument for a big splash to signal the end of the rebuild, like the Werth deal that Lerner referenced. Going into 2011, the Nats signed Werth to a seven-year, $126MM pact after five straight losing seasons. The Nats hovered around .500 in the first season of that deal but made the postseason in 2012, the first of five they would make in that decade, culminating with their aforementioned World Series win in 2019.

That’s not how the club played it this winter, however. They did sign some veterans, inking Trevor Williams, Shinnosuke Ogasawara, Michael Soroka, Bell, Amed Rosario, Jorge López, and Paul DeJong, but most of those guys got one-year deals. Williams and Ogasawara were the only guys to get two years and no one got to three. Williams got the largest guarantee at $14MM. The club’s most significant trade pickup was Nathaniel Lowe, who is going to make $10.3MM this year. He’s controllable for 2026 and will be due another arbitration raise, but the Nats will have the ability to trade him or non-tender him, depending on how things go this year.

In short, they didn’t make the big move to signal the end of the rebuild. As Lerner alluded to, the club’s odds are long this year. The division has three stronger teams in Atlanta, the Mets and Phillies. The FanGraphs Projected Standings have the Nats coming in at 73 wins, 14 games out of third place. The PECOTA Standings at Baseball Prospectus are even less optimistic, projecting the Nats for just under 68 wins, 18 games back of third.

Those are just estimates and aren’t gospel, but it’s probable that the Nats had an internal view of their club that was somewhat similar to those numbers. While signing someone like Pete Alonso may have been exciting, he couldn’t have single-handedly made up that gap of 14-18 wins. It’s also debatable whether he’s even an upgrade over Lowe in a vacuum.

Based on Lerner’s comments, however, it does seem like such a move will come at some point. For now, they will continue to focus on developing their internal players. That should include more reps for the aforementioned youngplayers on the roster, as well as pushing prospects like Brady House, Jarlin Susana, Travis Sykora and others into the mix. They can also add to their stock of future talent in a few months, as they won the top pick in the 2025 draft lottery.