Part III: What moves would you make going forward for the #Nats?

On Thursday, we did our version first of “virtual armchair G.M.” leading up to the tease if it was possible for the Nationals to re-sign Bryce Harper while improving the starting rotation, catcher, and we followed that up with Part II of “armchair G.M.” and the numbers worked. The numbers are all backed up by free agent salary estimates from MLBTR and Jon Heyman. 

Here is where we were in Part II:

Today, we now attempt to see if it is possible to sign one of the two best pitchers in Free Agency which would be a pick ’em of lefties Patrick Corbin and Dallas Keuchel.

1. Don’t sign Nathan Eovaldi and Jeremy Hellickson and that saves you $21 million. That should be enough to get Dallas Keuchel using Jon Heyman’s numbers or his expert’s  projection of 5 years, $21M per, $105M or Heyman’s 5 years, $19M, $95M.  Put Fedde and Jefry Rodriguez back in the rotation with Joe Ross as future depth. Rotation is Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Dallas Keuchel, Fedde, and Rodriguez.

If you don’t like that rotation, you are not alone. You take away a lot of the depth. The good news is you can probably add Hellickson back in by cutting into the buffer.

2. Add back Hellickson at $5 million with Keuchel at an AAV of $19 million while removing $16 million for Eovaldi puts the payroll at $195.4 million.

The Heyman estimate on adding Corbin seems doable if you believe his numbers are close which we do not. We believe Corbin will end up near Strasburg’s AAV which would cut deep into the buffer if you pay Corbin near $25 million a year.

“From Heyman: Patrick Corbin, SP: Corbin put together a pretty spectacular walk year. It’ll be interesting between Keuchel and Corbin. While the expert slightly favored Keuchel, I’ll take the recency factor. The Yankees should be a player. Expert: 5 years, $17M per, $85M. Me: 5 years, $20M per, $100M.”

The fine people at MLBTR are only slightly higher on their estimate for Corbin at 6 years for $129 million which translates to $21.5 million a year. All of this could be doable if you believe the market will soften.