Nationals Showing Renewed Interest In Jeimer Candelario
The Nationals are among the teams that have shown interest in Jeimer Candelario this offseason, reports Jesse Rogers of ESPN. Rogers also tied the free agent corner infielder to the Blue Jays, while a prior report suggested the Angels, D-Backs and Reds had checked in.
Of those teams, only Washington has employed Candelario before. The rebuilding Nats took a $5MM flier on the switch-hitter last offseason. Candelario had been non-tendered by the Tigers on the heels of a dismal 2022 season. He bounced back in D.C., hitting .258/.342/.481 over 99 games. Washington was able to flip him to the Cubs for prospects DJ Herz and Kevin Made, executing the kind of buy-low/midseason trade sequence that noncompetitive teams attempt each offseason.
Candelario didn’t quite maintain that form in Chicago. He hit .234/.318/.445 in 41 games as a Cub, finishing the season with a .251/.336/.471 batting line in 576 plate appearances. He connected on 22 home runs and 39 doubles with league average strikeout and walk rates. It was Candelario’s third above-average season in four years.
As a result, the 29-year-old (30 next Friday) is in a much better position for this free agent trip. He should secure at least a three-year pact and has a good case for four years. MLBTR predicts he’ll land a $70MM guarantee over four seasons, ranking him as the #5 position player in the free agent class.
Bringing Candelario back would obviously be a much more significant commitment for the Nats than it was 12 months ago. Washington has clear opportunity at third base yet again. After the Candelario deal, they turned to journeyman Ildemaro Vargas and former top prospect Carter Kieboom at the position. Washington third basemen hit .189/.247/.311 in 224 plate appearances from July 31 onward.
That’s an untenable situation even with the team still amidst a rebuild. Some kind of third base acquisition feels inevitable. While they could be another rebound candidate (e.g. Brian Anderson or non-tender possibility Nick Senzel), Candelario would be a clearer upgrade. General manager Mike Rizzo said last week the team was looking to add a middle-of-the-order lineup presence.
It doesn’t appear the Cubs have as strong an interest in a reunion. Rogers reports that Chicago looks unlikely to retain Candelario. They have third base questions of their own, with Nick Madrigal, Patrick Wisdom and Miles Mastrobuoni among the in-house options. None of that group projects as an everyday player for a contender, but the Cubs could look to alternatives in free agency or trade. Matt Chapman is the top free agent at the position; J.D. Davis, Jorge Polanco and Eugenio Suárez are among speculative trade possibilities.
Nationals Avoid Arbitration With Victor Robles, Tanner Rainey
The Nationals have avoided arbitration with outfielder Victor Robles and right-handed reliever Tanner Rainey, the team announced. Robles, 26, was eligible for his final year of arbitration, while Rainey, 30, will be arbitration-eligible one last time next winter.
Rainey will earn $1.5MM in 2024 (per Andrew Golden of The Washington Post), which doesn’t come as any surprise; he made the same salary this past season in a year almost completely lost to injury, and arbitration-eligible players rarely receive raises after lost seasons. No dollar value has been reported for Robles, although he was projected to earn $2.7MM in arbitration. The center fielder made $2.325MM last year, and the Nationals turned down a $3.3MM club option for his services in 2024. His new deal most likely falls somewhere in between those two figures.
Around the end of the regular season, Washington agreed to a contract with veteran utilityman Ildemaro Vargas, who was eligible for his second year of arbitration. The team now has four players who could still go to arbitration this winter: outfielder Lane Thomas, closer Kyle Finnegan, set-up man Hunter Harvey, and former top prospect Luis Garcia. The Nationals have already DFA’d several arb-eligible players ahead of the non-tender deadline on November 17, including first baseman Dominic Smith, right-handed reliever Victor Arano, and utility player Michael Chavis.
Nationals Designate Dominic Smith For Assignment
The Nationals announced Tuesday that they’ve designated first baseman Dominic Smith and right-hander Cory Abbott for assignment. Washington has also granted righty Andres Machado his release so that he can pursue an opportunity in Japan. That slate of moves clears space on the 40-man roster for lefties DJ Herz and Mitchell Parker as well as righties Cole Henry and Zach Brzykcy. That quartet of pitchers is now protected from next month’s Rule 5 Draft.
Smith, 28, was a first-round pick, longtime top prospect and (more briefly) a quality run producer for the division-rival Mets prior to being non-tendered in the 2022-23 offseason. From 2019-20, Smith treated the Mets to a stellar .299/.366/.571 batting line in 396 trips to the plate. He swatted 21 homers and connected on 31 doubles in that time before stumbling to a .643 OPS over his next two seasons and being cut loose. Smith’s lone year in D.C. brought about a rebound to some extent, as he turned in a .254/.326/.366 batting line with a dozen homers, but that wasn’t enough for the Nats to retain him and offer him a raise in arbitration.
Also 28 years old, Abbott has spent the past two seasons with the Nats. The former Cubs farmhand has logged 87 1/3 innings of 5.87 ERA ball in the Majors with Washington, fanning 21.3% of his opponents against an 11% walk rate. Abbott posted strong minor league numbers up through the Double-A level and once ranked as one of the Cubs’ more promising pitching prospects, but he’s now struggled in both Triple-A (5.46 ERA in parts of three seasons) and the big leagues. He’s out of minor league options as well, which could make it tough for another club to claim him.
Both Abbott and Smith will be traded or placed on waivers within the next week. Both can become free agents if they’re unclaimed.
As for Machado, he’ll start the next chapter of his career overseas — likely on a seven-figure guarantee that wouldn’t have been available to him in North American ball. He’s out of minor league options and not yet arbitration-eligible, so he was likely to lose his 40-man roster spot and spend next year trying to work his way back to the big leagues.
From 2021-22, Machado was a quietly solid member of the Washington bullpen, tallying 91 appearances and 95 innings of 3.41 ERA ball. He benefited from a .264 average on balls in play and had success in spite of pedestrian strikeout and walk rates of 18.3% and 9.9%, respectively.
Some degree of regression appeared in store, but perhaps not to the extent he saw in 2023 when he was torched for a 5.22 ERA in 50 innings despite marked improvements in his K-BB profile (20.8% strikeout rate, 6.3% walk rate). While Machado improved in terms of missing bats and limiting free passes (to say nothing of a 1 mph uptick in fastball velocity, to 96.7 mph on average), he also become staggeringly homer-prone; in 50 innings he served up 12 long balls — 2.34 homers per nine frames (and a home run on 24% of the fly-balls he yielded). He’ll take that plus velocity and improved command overseas, though it’s not yet clear precisely which team he’ll join.
All four of the prospects added to the Nationals’ 40-man roster today rank among their top 30 prospects at MLB.com. Herz is 22 years of age, while the others are all 24. Herz was the Cubs’ eighth-round pick in 2019 and came to the Nats by way of this summer’s Jeimer Candelario trade. He punched out nearly a third of his opponents while working as a starter in Double-A but also issued walks at almost a 14% clip. Injuries have plagued the career of Henry, a 2020 second-round pick with a potentially plus slider and plus-plus changeup. He pitched just 33 1/3 innings this past season. Similar to Herz, Parker is a lefty who missed bats in droves in the upper minors but did so with shaky command. Brzykcy is a bullpen prospect with a power fastball who missed the 2023 season due to Tommy John surgery.
Nationals Outright Jeremy De La Rosa, Matt Cronin
The Nationals announced that left-hander Matt Cronin and outfielder Jeremy De La Rosa have each cleared waivers and been assigned outright to Triple-A Rochester. Cronin was designated for assignment earlier this week but De La Rosa wasn’t publicly known to be on waivers. This move drops the 40-man roster count to 39.
De La Rosa, 22 in January, was added to the club’s roster just under a year ago. He got that roster spot after mashing his way through 69 Single-A games in 2022, hitting 10 home runs and producing a batting line of .315/.394/.505 while also stealing 26 bases. A move up to High-A didn’t go so well, but the club nonetheless didn’t want to risk losing him in last year’s Rule 5 draft and put him on the 40-man.
Unfortunately, 2023 didn’t go nearly as well for him. He got into 93 games at High-A but only went deep seven times and struck out at a 33.7% clip, finishing with a line of .240/.324/.361. After those struggles, it seems the Nats bumped him off the roster and none of the other 29 clubs decided to grab him. He’ll stick in the Nationals’ organization but without occupying a spot on the 40-man.
Cronin, 26, got his roster spot at the same time as De La Rosa, protecting him from last year’s Rule 5 draft. He got that spot on the heels of a strong 2022 season, posting a 2.42 earned run average between Double-A and Triple-A. But this year, he made 14 Triple-A appearances with a 5.02 ERA before he underwent surgery for a herniated disc in his back. “For those that don’t know, I had been dealing with pain in my left shoulder/arm for the last 2 years but could never seem to find anything wrong with them,” Cronin said in an Instagram post in August. “That was up until about a month ago when we decided to have my spine checked out and found a large herniated disc at my C5-C6 level.”
Like De La Rosa, Cronin will stay in the organization but without taking up a roster spot. The current status of his back isn’t publicly known but he will presumably be working to return to the roster as soon as he’s able to.
Nationals Add Gerardo Parra, Chris Johnson To Coaching Staff
The Nationals announced their coaching staff for the 2024 season on Friday, confirming their previously reported hiring of bench coach Miguel Cairo and also revealing that former big leaguers Gerardo Parra and Chris Johnson will be on manager Davey Martinez’s staff next year. Parra, who played a key role with the Nationals in their World Series Championship 2019 season, will be the team’s first base coach. Johnson, who spent the 2023 season as an assistant hitting coach with the White Sox, will hold the same role in Washington.
Parra, 36, spent parts of a dozen seasons in the big leagues between the D-backs, Rockies, Nats, Brewers, Giants and Orioles in addition to one season with Japan’s Yomiuri Giants in 2020. He spent half the 2019 season with the Nats but played a significant role in their Cinderella run to a World Series title, operating as a key bench piece for Martinez and endearing himself both to the fanbase and in the clubhouse as a veteran leader. Parra famously co-opted “Baby Shark” as his walkup music and as a celebration/rallying cry for the Nats that year. He returned for a second stint with the Nats in ’21 before calling it quits as a player and joining the team’s front office as a special assistant.
Johnson, 39, retired as a player after the 2019 season. He spent parts of eight years in the Majors between Houston, Atlanta, Arizona, Cleveland and Miami, batting a combined .275/.313/.404 with 63 homers in just shy of 3000 plate appearances. His last contract was a minor league deal with the White Sox, who hired him as their Triple-A hitting coach prior to the 2021 season. He served in that role until joining the big league staff this past season. The Sox opted not to bring Johnson back for the 2024 campaign, with Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times writing at season’s end that the team’s hitters were “torn between multiple hitting voices” on the team’s coaching staff. Presumably, Johnson’s philosophies better align with those of Coles — the veteran hitting coach who’ll be entering his third season with the Nationals.
Returning to the Nats’ staff in 2024 will be hitting coach Darnell Coles, pitching coach Jim Hickey, catching coach Henry Blanco and bullpen coach Ricky Bones. Ricky Gutierrez, who served as the team’s run prevention coordinator in 2023, will be the club’s new third base coach.
Nationals Hope To Add Pitching This Offseason
Nationals president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo spoke this week about the upcoming offseason, with Andrew Golden of The Washington Post relaying some the details. Rizzo stated that the club is looking to bolster both its starting and relief pitching, as well as mentioning a middle-of-the-order bat.
That the club is open to additions all over the roster is hardly surprising since they have been aggressively rebuilding for a while now. The past few years have seen Trea Turner, Max Scherzer, Juan Soto and many others flipped for prospects, leading to the Nats finishing last in the National League East three years running. The 2023 club won 71 games, a jump of 16 from the dismal results of 2022, but there were also some less-encouraging signs. The club had a run differential of -145, second-worst in the National League, ahead of just the Rockies. They outpaced their expected win-loss record of 66-96 thanks to some help from a record of 28-21 in one-run games and a 6-2 mark in extra innings.
On the pitching side, the club had a collective earned run average of 5.02, a mark that topped just the Royals, Athletics and Rockies. The starting staff and the relief corps were equally ineffective, as both groups had matching ERAs at that 5.02 figure.
Stephen Strasburg is still on the roster, although he won’t be a factor going forward. It’s been known for some time that his battle with thoracic outlet syndrome isn’t going to allow him to compete at the major league level anymore. He and the Nats were discussing a retirement deal last year, even though his contract runs through 2026, but the club walked away and he was activated from the IL earlier week. Both Rizzo and Scott Boras, Strasburg’s agent, admit that the righty’s pitching days are done. “Medically, it’s going to be difficult to see him pitching again at the big league level,” Rizzo said, per Golden. “We understand where he’s at physically. We have understood it since last year, so that hasn’t changed.” While coming to some sort of agreement about his retirement would allow the club to free up a roster spot, that doesn’t seem imminent. “The roster spot is important,” Rizzo says. “But there’s certain rules and protocols that have to be met within the CBA to conclude these types of things when [players] are under contract.” He didn’t clarify which parts of the CBA are currently standing in the way of Strasburg’s retirement.
Without Strasburg, the rotation currently consists of Patrick Corbin, Josiah Gray, MacKenzie Gore, Jake Irvin and Trevor Williams. Corbin hasn’t been terribly effective lately, with his strikeout rate having dropped in each of the past four years. But he will likely continue to hold a place based on his contract. He’s set to make $35MM next year, the final year of his deal. Since he’s a fairly reliable innings eater, the Nats will likely give him the ball every fifth day as they manage the workloads of their younger pitchers.
Gray had a 3.91 ERA last year but may have been lucky to do so. His 20.5% strikeout rate, 11.5% walk rate and 37.8% ground ball rate were all worse than league average. An 80.4% strand rate likely helped to keep some runs off the board, which is why he had a 4.93 FIP and 5.08 SIERA. Gore had better peripherals but allowed more home runs, leading to a 4.42 ERA. Both of them are still fairly young, Gray going into his age-26 campaign and Gore his age-25, and neither has reached arbitration yet. They will be in the rotation again next year as the Nats hope they take a step forward in 2024.
Williams signed a two-year deal with the Nats last offseason but the first season of that contract didn’t go especially well as he posted a 5.55 ERA over 30 starts. Similar to Corbin, he could serve an innings-eating role but the club is likely less committed to Williams. He’s only making $7MM in 2024 so his deal would be easier to walk away from. Irvin had a 4.61 ERA in 2023 with fairly uninspiring peripherals.
The Nats also have Joan Adon, Thaddeus Ward, Jackson Rutledge and Roddery Muñoz on the roster, though each of those guys is likely stuck in a depth role until they have better results. Given the current options, it’s fair to see how Rizzo could find room for an external addition or two.
It’s unclear who the Nats would target but they kept things fairly modest last year. Apart from the two-year contract for Williams, they stuck to one-year deals for bounceback candidates like Jeimer Candelario and Dominic Smith. If they set similar targets this winter, they could perhaps look to pitchers like Wade Miley, Martín Pérez, Kyle Gibson, Frankie Montas, Luis Severino and others.
On the bullpen side of things, there are plenty of arms available they could look to add, but it also sounds like subtraction is possible. Rizzo says other clubs have been asking about righties Kyle Finnegan and Hunter Harvey, per Jon Morosi of MLB.com. It’s not a surprise to hear that the two are drawing interest, both because of their strong results and because they also were in trade rumors at the deadline a few months back.
Both players stayed and Finnegan finished the year with a 3.76 ERA, racking up 28 saves in the process. Harvey’s ERA was almost a full run better at 2.82, striking out 28.5% of batters while notching 10 saves and 19 holds. The Nats don’t need to move either, since they are both controllable via arbitration through 2025. However, performance from relievers can be volatile and an injury can happen at any time. The Nats could open their next competitive window in the next two years but there would be some sense to flipping these guys for players that could be more meaningful pieces of that window.
As for the middle-of-the-order bat Rizzo referenced, there are plenty of options available, depending on how aggressive they are willing to be. First baseman Dominic Smith and third baseman Carter Kieboom are both non-tender candidates. If Smith were out of the picture, Joey Meneses could take on some extra first base time, or the club could look outside. In the outfield, Lane Thomas is coming off a solid season but did most of his damage against lefties. Stone Garrett also had a good year but finished it on the injured list due to a fractured leg. Victor Robles is coming off another frustrating season.
If the Nats wanted to make a splash, they could target players like Teoscar Hernández, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. or Rhys Hoskins, but other options include Tommy Pham, Jason Heyward, Adam Duvall and Joc Pederson.
Nationals To Hire Miguel Cairo As Bench Coach
The Nationals are set to hire Miguel Cairo as their new bench coach, as first reported by Mike Mayer of Metsmerized Online. Cairo spent the 2023 season as a minor league infield coordinator in the Mets organization.
A versatile utility man, Cairo played 17 seasons in the major leagues, fielding six different positions for nine different teams. Immediately following his retirement after the 2012 season, Cairo took a job as a special assistant in the Reds’ front office and briefly served as the team’s interim bench coach. He then moved on to the Yankees organization, working in the player development department and as a minor league infield coordinator.
Ahead of the 2021 campaign, Cairo earned his first genuine big league coaching job, joining the White Sox as Tony La Russa’s bench coach. He was promoted to acting manager for the final month of the regular season (Larussa was on medical leave), and although he interviewed for the managerial opening that winter, he was not asked to return to new skipper Pedro Grifol’s staff in 2023. Instead, he took a job as a minor league infield coordinator with the Mets, a role he had previously held during his tenure with the Yankees.
Nationals manager Dave Martinez played alongside Cairo for parts of three seasons with the Devil Rays between 1998 and 2000. According to Mark Zuckerman of MASN Sports, the skipper has “always spoken highly” of his former teammate.
Cairo is the latest addition to Washington’s dugout this offseason. Last week, the team hired Gerardo Parra and Ricky Gutierrez to coach first and third base, respectively. The Nationals had several holes to fill after parting with bench coach Tim Bogar, first base coach Eric Young Jr., third base coach Gary DiSarcina, and assistant hitting coach Pat Roessler at the end of the season.
Nationals Designate Matt Cronin For Assignment
The Nationals announced today that they have activated right-handers Stephen Strasburg and Cade Cavalli, catcher Riley Adams, and outfielders Stone Garrett and Victor Robles from the 60-day injured list. In a corresponding move, left-hander Matt Cronin was designated for assignment. The club’s 40-man roster stands at 40. The IL activations were required by today, as players cannot be on the 60-day IL during the offseason.
Cronin, 26, was the club’s fourth-round selection in the 2019 draft. From 2019-22, the left-hander put up solid numbers while advancing from Single-A all the way to Triple-A, capped off by a strong 2022 season where Cronin posted a 2.42 ERA with a 26.9% strikeout rate in 52 innings of work. That sort of dominance out of the bullpen figured to make Cronin an attractive potential bullpen piece for the rebuilding Nationals headed into 2023, particularly after the Nationals added him to the 40-man roster this past offseason in order to protect him from the Rule 5 draft.
Unfortunately, that’s not how things turned out this year. Cronin dealt with pain in his shoulder throughout the year that limited him to just 14 1/3 innings of work during which he struggled to a 5.02 ERA. Back in August, it was revealed that the issue causing the pain was a herniated disc in his back. Cronin underwent surgery to repair the issue and missed the remainder of the 2023 campaign. It’s not clear when Cronin is expected to be healthy enough to return to the mound at this point. Given Cronin’s youth (he only turned 26 back in September) combined with his previous success and status as one of the Nationals’ top 20 prospects (per Baseball America) entering this year, it would hardly be a surprise if a rival club with space on their 40-man roster decided to claim Cronin in the coming days, particularly if he figures to be able to return to the mound in 2024.
Front Office Notes: Astros, White Sox, Janish, Nationals
The Astros announced a series of internal promotions earlier this week, most notably the promotion of Gavin Dickey to an assistant general manager position. Dickey is a longtime member of the Astros’ staff, working in numerous jobs since his initial hiring as a scout in 2011. Most recently, he worked as a special assistant to GM Dana Brown during the 2023 season. The 40-year-old Dickey moved right into scouting on the heels of his playing career, which consisted of six seasons in independent ball and in the Mariners’ and Braves’ farm systems from 2006-11.
Dickey joins Andrew Ball and Charles Cook as Houston’s assistant GMs, after the team parted ways with former assistant GM Bill Firkus last month. This isn’t to say that Dickey will necessarily be taking Firkus’ exact role, as the specific duties of an assistant GM vary greatly from club to club and executive to executive, usually based on each individual’s areas of expertise.
More on some other front office moves from around baseball….
- The White Sox announced that Paul Janish has been hired as their new director of player development. Janish is a veteran of nine Major League seasons with the Reds, Braves, and Orioles from 2008-17, and since retirement has worked as a coach with Rice University. This will be the first non-playing role in pro ball for the 41-year-old Janish, who will be taking over the position previously held by Chris Getz before Getz was named Chicago’s new general manager in August.
- The Nationals promoted Eddie Longosz to the role of VP/assistant general manager of player development and administration. The Washington Post’s Andrew Golden reported earlier this week that Longosz would be taking over the Nats’ player development department, which is the next step up the ladder for a longtime employee who has been with the Nationals since 2010. As Golden notes, much of the Nationals’ focus over the last couple of months has been a revamp of their front office, with several employees on the way out (like De Jon Watson, Longosz’s predecessor as farm director) and a couple of longer-term staffers like Longosz moving into larger roles.
Nelson Cruz To Retire
Nelson Cruz revealed on the Adam Jones Podcast that he is planning to retire from playing after an upcoming stint in the Dominican Winter League.
Cruz, now 43, was something of a late bloomer but still went on to have an incredibly long and productive career in the big leagues. He didn’t fully establish himself as an everyday big league player until 2009. That was technically his “age-28 season”, but he turned 29 on July 1, just after the standard June 30 cutoff for such distinctions. He had some limited looks in the big leagues with the Brewers and Rangers from 2005 to 2008 but that 2009 season saw him bust out with 33 home runs and 20 stolen bases for Texas.
He would follow that with 22 and 29 home runs in the next two years, helping the Rangers reach the World Series in each campaign, though they ultimate lost on both occasions. He continued serving as a potent slugger for a time but that was put on pause when he was connected to the Biogenesis performance-enhancing drugs scandal, receiving a 50-game suspension in August of 2013.
He reached free agency after that campaign and the Rangers gave him a qualifying offer of over $14MM, which he turned down. The draft pick forfeiture tied to that QO and his PED situation led to him lingering on the open market until late February, eventually signing with the Orioles for one year and $8MM, well below the QO he turned down.
He had a monster year for the O’s in 2014, launching 40 home runs and helping that club reach the American League Championship Series. The O’s then gave him a $15.3MM qualifying offer, as players were still allowed to receive multiple QOs at that time. The limit of one per career did not come into place until the 2017-2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement. Cruz turned the QO down again but fared far better in this trip to free agency, landing a four-year, $57MM deal with the Mariners.
Though he had been an outfielder earlier in his career, he slid more into a full-time designated hitter role over the course of that deal with Seattle. The club likely didn’t mind as he continued mashing, with 163 home runs in that four-year span. He then continued to produce in a similar fashion after joining the Twins, launching 41 more homers in 2019 then 16 in the shortened 2020 season.
He was still crushing baseballs through the first half of 2021, but his production slid after a midseason trade from the Twins to the Rays. He signed one-year deals with the Nationals and Padres for the past two seasons but his offensive production slid to below par. Since he was into his 40s and limited to DH duties only, it became tougher to roster him and the Padres released him in July.
Cruz retires having played in 2,055 regular season games, hitting 464 home runs in that time. His finishes with a batting line of .274/.343/.513, which translates into a wRC+ of 128, indicating he was 28% better than the league average hitter. He made seven All-Star teams, won four Silver Sluggers, a Roberto Clemente Award and various other honors. He represented the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic on four separate occasions, winning the 2013 tournament. His Baseball Reference page indicates he earned over $140MM in his career. We at MLB Trade Rumors salute Cruz for his many accomplishments and wish him the best of luck for whatever awaits him in his post-playing days.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.