The process of trying to assess values of players into the future is far from an exact science. Some do not like the WAR formula; however, it appears to be the best indicator we have for values. When we put numbers to paper, we could not reach the objectives laid out by Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo by spending $40 million.
“We’re always looking for starting pitching and pitching in general.”
— Rizzo said to the media at the GM Meetings last week
“We’re fairly happy with our starting pitching depth. Our pitching people have done a great job developing these guys, caring for them, and bringing them up to the big leagues to perform at the big league level.”
“We would like to attack our offense in the offseason. We’d like to get more offensive efficiency — we [want to] get a little more impactful kind of bats to go to place around our good, young core of position players.”
Of course we are playing armchair GM and making many assumptions using FanGraphs WAR projections for free agents and MLB Trade Rumors projected AAV salaries.
We also added many names to the list as suggested by commentors on the free agent article. That made this fun, and there are certainly 100’s of additional scenarios you could run. Space was limited in my spreadsheet. We started at $40 million and ran it up to $65 million with a 5-man acquisition scenario. In some cases we had to add minimum salary players, and for all intents and purposes that might be keeping Jose Tena and Juan Yepez.
The $40 million scenario did not work for what we were trying to accomplish. At $50+ million, you could get that done.
The top player to add for dollar/WAR was Alex Bregman. He would also add his Gold Glove which is really the problem with the pitcher’s WAR in FanGraphs. They are not giving WAR values at or above the Nats pitchers achieved last year. For instance, for MacKenzie Gore they are giving a 2.7 WAR value for 2025, versus his actual 3.2 for the 2024 season. Gore’s numbers were the most extreme for the pitchers, and they did similar to Jacob Young who made his value on defense, baserunning, and scoring runs. You would think Young would progress with his hitting and come in similar for defense and baserunning to make him more valuable — but FanGraphs took him from 2.6 this year to 1.6 next year with more plate appearances for 2025! Hopefully FanGraphs made some mistakes in logic and will clean it up.
Looking around at other teams, FanGraphs took Michael Harris II and made him one of the most valuable players in baseball. Last year in 110 games, Harris put up a 2.0 WAR. Next year they are projecting a 5.2 in 154 games. While you would expect a healthy Harris to put up better cumulative numbers, they are projecting him for the best hitting slash of his career and that becomes the justification for their numbers. Maybe they will be right, maybe not.
The Nationals won 71-games last year with a flawed roster. They achieved addition by subtraction by bringing up their young top prospects like James Wood and Dylan Crews, and the Nats pitching was much better than expected — even though the defense was bottom-5 in baseball.
You would think the formula to win much more than 71-games would be to improve the defense, add some power in the middle of the lineup, and add some veteran arms for depth. Just adding players is not fully cumulative to the team WAR if they are replacing positive WAR players. Adding 10.0 WAR should take this team well beyond 81-wins if you believe the rest of the roster could win more than 71-games.
