The Nationals announced they’ve signed outfielder Stone Garrett to a big league contract. In conjunction with the signing of corner infielder Jeimer Candelario to a one-year deal, Washington’s 40-man roster is now full.
Garrett, who recently turned 27, is a former eighth-round draftee of the Marlins. He played in the Miami farm system for six-plus years but didn’t crack the big league roster. After reaching minor league free agency heading into the 2021 season, Garrett latched on with the D-Backs via minor league contract. He spent most of that season in Double-A, then moved to Triple-A for the bulk of the 2022 campaign.
Over 103 games and 440 plate appearances there, Garrett popped 28 home runs and posted a .275/.332/.568 line. The extreme hitter-friendly nature of the Pacific Coast League (and the D-Backs’ affiliate in Reno, in particular) surely helped, but it was an impressive enough showing to lead the front office to give Garrett a big league look late in the season. They selected his contract in mid-August, and he went on to suit up 27 times at the MLB level.
Garrett carried over some of his power production against big league arms. He connected on four longballs and eight doubles in just 84 trips to the dish. That resulted in an excellent .539 slugging output. However, he also struck out 27 times while drawing just a trio of walks. The righty-hitting Garrett was also leveraged heavily for favorable platoon match-ups, with 51 of his plate appearances coming against left-handed pitching. Arizona clearly wasn’t confident in his ability to sustain above-average offensive production over a larger sample, and they took him off the 40-man roster at the end of the year.
While that strong first month wasn’t enough to earn a longer look in the desert, it apparently caught the attention of the Washington front office. They’ll promise Garrett an immediate 40-man roster spot. If he holds that all winter, he’ll get an opportunity to compete for an MLB job in Spring Training.
While Garrett played some center field early in his career, he’s been limited to the corners or designated hitter for the past few seasons. He’s capable of playing either corner outfield spot and could presumably be an option at first base, but he played exclusively left field in his limited MLB time with Arizona. Lane Thomas looks to have the inside track on one outfield spot in Washington, but he’s a potential center fielder. The rest of Washington’s upper level outfielders — Víctor Robles, Alex Call and Josh Palacios — are unproven and/or better suited for depth roles. That’s also true of Garrett, although he adds a right-handed bat with some power to the mix.
Signing Garrett to a major league contract doesn’t mean the Nationals are obligated to carry him on the MLB roster. He still has a full slate of minor league option years, so the Nats can keep him in Triple-A Rochester for the foreseeable future as upper level depth. Rather, the MLB deal and immediate 40-man spot presumably served to differentiate the Nats from other teams that were willing to offer him a minor league deal with an invitation to big league Spring Training. Garrett is still nowhere near even the one-year service threshold, so he’d be controllable through at least the 2028 season if he establishes a lasting role in D.C.
Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post reported the Nationals and Garrett had agreed to a contract shortly before the team announcement.
He rocks.
Stone Cold!!
He may turn out to be the foundation of their team. Hopefully he’s not just some monolith on defense.
Distant cousin of Gal Bladder
Gentlemen, Wade Garrett
You a$$$hole what am I supposed to do!!?
There’s always barber college..
He’s getting old, but he’s still the best!
What if someone calls my mom a ……?
I don’t know, is she?
I heard you had b@lls big enough to come in a dump truck, but you don’t look like much to me.
Opinions vary.
Now that’s a ball player name if I’ve ever heard one
Always intrigued when guys like this get mlb contracts instead of a minor with an invite. I remember the Angels signing Ryan Lamarre to a mlb contract bef9re spring training, only to never play a game for them
Can’t say I’m surprised he got snagged. He’s tooled up.
He put up huge numbers last year in AAA with a combination of power and speed. 28 HR, 15 SB, and a .900 OPS Also performed well in his late season call up. Was a surprise that Arizona moved on from him at only 26 years old. But they are so deep in OF talent, there was no space for him.
Stone Cold! Stone Cold! Stone Cold! Business is about to pick up!
Stone and Candy in the same day
I loved Rock Candy as a kid.
I loved smoking rock and nose candy before I went to rehab..
I hope Stone does well with the Nats.
With the Dbacks in 2022, he had a great year in AAA, got off to a great start hitting over .400 with the Dbacks, but then cratered in September and became an automatic out. Dbacks desperately need right handed OF bats to compliment their outstanding 4 young left handers, but the fact that they designated Stone in order to protect some minor leaguers from the Rule 5 draft tells you all you need to know about their confidence/lack of confidence in Stone moving forward.
🙁
Ever.
Rock solid dice roll for the rebuilding Nats. All he has done for the last few years is mash, both in the high minors and during his MLB cup of coffee.
The small sample size I saw of this guy was impressive, but I missed the September collapse he had. Didn’t realize he’s 26, so I thought he was still with the Snakes, but given their cluttered outfield, along with the Nats’ desire to find lightning in a bottle, this move makes a lot of sense. Hopefully Stone can channel Joey Meneses.
Is his middle name Coldtin?
The Nsts have outdone themselves today with these signings 🙂
This actually could be a steal for the Nats. Garrett looked pretty good during his brief time in Arizona
Garrett giving big time Joey Meneses vibes…Nats going to be fun next year
Nationals doing some nice tidy business today that isn’t headline grabbing but could lead to some decent assets down the road.
When a team is rebuilding, at first it’s small steps. When they start winning it’s time to start going after mostly middle tier FA. I think the nats are doing this the right way by signing guys like Candelario and Garrett. Just look at where the d’backs are at their stage of rebuilding.
Anyone know what they’re paying him? Not a bad signing if it’s isn’t cray cray money
Has to be at least a couple of million. If not, a lot of teams missed a useful fringe player, though the MLB contract had to be worth some of the money to him.
Probably not more than league minimum.. maybe 1M…
For a player like Garrett that guaranteed money is worth much more than a MILB ST invite
@Wadz In that case it sounds like I’m def higher on his prospects.
As recently as the 2020-21 offseason he was a fairly durable 4 WAR corner guy across the previous two seasons at age 26-27 who led the league in doubles and who wouldn’t be completely overmatched at 3B after getting healthy.
When those guys have a bad year (but still with a positive value) they usually aren’t suddenly begging for a major league invite and a $1m deal, let alone the minimum. They’re looking for as close to a guaranteed time in MLB to re-establish themselves towards looking for 2/$15m to 3/$30m deals before they age out of the game.
Now you’ve got me interested in following this. I thought $2m would be lowballing him.
Ah, never mind—I was writing about Candelario and you’re thinking about Garrett. Cheers,
Considering the lack of experience, probably league minimum.
I’d agree with Jack. 1M seems about right as the tops, considering he’s not even arb eligible yet. I doubt they’d do more than that since if he pans out, they wouldn’t want his arb years to be to high. But I’d expect it was from anywhere between league minimum at 700k to 1M. The biggest appeal to him was likely that it was an MLB deal that put him on the 40 man as opposed to needing to hope to be selected.
This strikes me as possibly optimistic for a deal with MASN. After that matter is settled, Garrett can move to broadcasting. “The NBC Nightly News With Stone Garrett” Tell me you wouldn’t tune in for that level of gravitas.
So when exactly are we stoning Garrett?
Well, DC is a legal state for weed, so we could get stoned with Garrett!
DC is not a state…yet.
Or ever.
Sheesh, who cares? Stop nitpicking, it sucks to read, you know what I meant!
And the stoning then followed by the garroting?
Armaments, a little twisted and sick…but I like that!!
When you pass him the goods Dom!
You will see things like this because if they sign him to a minor league contract it still makes him available for Rule 5 draft this protects him from that .
I love his bat. Above average speed to boot. Arizona is going to regret releasing him and the others will regret not snagging him.
Arizona has like 39 MLB level-outfielders right now, while it stings to lose some who are going to be MLB regulars, there are only 3 places to play. Regret will be mostly from A’s fans like me, who really could have used Garrett in LF or RF next season.
I agree. I know AZ has tons of young toolsy outfielders. I really think this kid has so much upside.
I agree, weirdly enough he almost played all his games against playoff teams too, so he didnt even get to pad his stats vs the bad teams and still had an .848 OPS.
Dang. I am still shocked Arizona had “so much depth” that they needed to let this guy go. I can’t help but feel like that was a bad call on their part. This guy really is pretty awesome.
They could have had him in waivers. Likely somewhere better 700K and 1 million.
Seems to me like they could have at least flipped him for a prospect flier if they knew he was going to be released. Several teams had absolutely abysmal production from their corner OF spots this year and I’m sure there were several teams in on him. Yeah he’s *probably* not an All Star in the making and wasn’t poised to make much more than the league minimum, but I’d rather give a shot to someone that’s mashed for several years (and in their cup of coffee) vs. guys like Josh VanMeter.
He was on my dbacks and never really got a chance. Definitely has potential. He will hit some bombs so be ready
Stone has a lot of swing and miss and a lot of upside. Great signing, smart move.
Another smart move by WSH.
If you take away his last 5 games… he had 10 at bats in those 5 games.
On Sept 25th he had a slash line of .318/ .352/ .612. Those last 5 games he went 0 for 10.
Watch out he’s the next Bonds
Stone is a nice under the radar pickup.
Was easy to figure that he’d get a major league contract with someone
This is the kind of guy that Rizzo used to be more known for picking up, someone I never heard of. Often they have worked out in the past.
Strasberg, who rarely pitches, and Corbin, who stinks lately, are going to be 2/3rd the payroll. Hopefully one or two of their lottery tickets hits the jackpot or this year could make last year look like a pennant winner.
The Nationals are in full reboot mode. Unless Strasburg comes back healthy (long shot at best) and Corbin rediscovers how to pitch (even longer shot), the Nationals will definitely be in the bottom 5 of all MLB teams next year. A reasonable goal for them would be to lose less than 100 games next season.
They are in reboot mode but it seems like they are trying to make it a quick one. Having prime trade chips like Scherzer, Turner and Soto certainly helps but with these signings and the returns from the big trades they’re clearly targeting guys near the big leagues or already there but with years of control left. Once the sale of the franchise happens (who knows when) and the Corbin and Strasburg contracts are off the books (too lazy to look up when) the Nats are gonna be shopping at the top of the free agent market.
Sad, but true. I have rarely seen a team further away from respectability. I say that as a fan of this team.
Garrett was called up on August 17 and hit .410 through September 12, almost a month.
From September 13 through the end of the season, October 5, Stone hit .100 and struck out almost 50% of the time, 17 times.
His batting average went from .410 down to a finishing mark of .276.
So, once the league made adjustments in how they pitched Garrett, he cratered and never made counter adjustments. He was an automatic out.
Good luck making a silk purse out of that.
During that time they played the giants, dodgers, padres, Astros and brewers. So 3 playoff teams and 2 playoff contenders. So while those teams pitched him well, 3 of those teams basically pitched most people well based on their standings/playoff runs.
If it were 5 teams nowhere near contending, like the nationals, pirates, royals, Rockies, marlins or a combination like that, then yeah, it’d be a “good luck with that” kind of deal.
But it’s really a low risk gamble that he’s got something. It’s a 40 man roster spot on a team not expected to contend. Where’s their downside?
Scottaz here you are again being so negative. When you get first call up to MLB and hit 400 ba and have to sit so other OFs can play it’s hard to adjust especially as a DH. Did you ever mention he led AAA in HRs, RBIs, XBHs and slugging when he was called up? Did you check the Dbacks final stats where he was at the top in slugging and OPS, and second in batting average. Did you say in both AAA and MLB he had extra base hits in over 50% of hits? Did you say his average exit velocity and hard hit balls average are in top ten MLB? Those stats came against mostly playoff teams. Of course you didn’t mention the struggles of the other young Dbacks when they batted less than 125 across several games. You personally should be glad Stone is off Dbacks so you can find someone else to be negative about.
Season ended before he could adjust to how he was being pitched. Might be a blessing in disguise since now he has the offseason to watch video and put together a renewed plan at the plate instead of doing it midseason.
brewsing,
Fair enough. The Nats can have him. From the Dback’s perspective, they are trying to compete against those teams, so they don’t want players on their team who are not good enough to be successful against the good teams and good pitchers.
Garrett was part of the right handed hitting unit playing against left handed pitching. That unit totally failed. In that last month of the season, teams threw every left handed starter and reliever on their rosters, at the Dbacks with great success, and the Dbacks floundered down the stretch because of that and because their bullpen also imploded.
The Dbacks are retooling their right handed lineup with players they hope will more successfully compete against left handed pitching, and make them a better team. Stone does not fit into that profile.