Happy holidays, everyone! It’s been over a month since we’ve seen live baseball, and over two since the Nats have been allowed to muddy our day. With that, we’ve entered the time of year where GMs and amateur couch GMs (such as myself) have to shine.
For this article, I analyzed the previous three free agency cycles from the Nationals and averaged out the money spent in free agency per year over the past three seasons (About $22 million per year). I then took the estimated free agency spending projection from Spotrac that had the Nats spending $41 million this winter, averaged it out with the $22 million, and from that, have allotted myself $31 million to try and patch as many holes in this 2026 Opening Day roster as I could. A combination of 2026 projected WAR figures from Fangraphs, as well as my personal opinions on these players and our roster, was used to put together what will ultimately be my best-case scenario Opening Day 26-man roster at the end of this article.
Let’s start with the rotation. A lot has been swirling around the rumor mills of a potential MacKenzie Gore trade. I personally am in favor of moving him, albeit for the right return of trade capital; however, a potential trade return is a little much to include in this article, so for now, Gore will be included in this Opening Day rotation. From there, I have chosen to give Cade Cavalli and Andrew Alvarez spots, as both performed strongly enough last season to merit at least beginning this upcoming season as starters. That leaves a group consisting of Trevor Williams (injured), Jake Irvin, Josiah Gray (welcome back!), DJ Herz (injured), Mitchell Parker, and any potential free agency acquisitions to battle for the final two spots.
This brings me to our first free agency move. Dustin May made his return to the majors in the 2025 season after missing all of 2024 with injury and saw mixed results. While he did see a career-worst mark in ERA, his 4.96 is not all that concerning when you consider we trotted out Jake Irvin (5.70 ERA) and Mitchell Parker (5.68 ERA) out there every five days last season. May has always had good stuff, with an upper-90s fastball, with a sinker, curveball, slider, and changeup mixed into the arsenal. The intrigue from my perspective is that May is only 28, but has always had excellent movement and velocity numbers, just needs to refine his command to what it once was. My hope is that this new, analytics and development-driven staff can take his above-average stuff and turn him into a solid starter for this needy Nats’ rotation. He also comes at a very favorable price tag, with Spotrac estimating his market value at $3.3 million a year. We will pay that and move forward with $27.7 million remaining.
For the final spot in the rotation, at least to start the year, I am going to give Jake Irvin the nod, strictly out of appreciation for his consistency in taking the ball every five days over the past couple of years, and rarely missing a start. That, combined with the fact that in 2024, we all believed he’d taken a real step, and I want to give him a chance to make last season just a blip on the radar as he moves towards realizing his full potential. That being said, the leash will not be long. Our Opening Day Triple-A rotation will include at some point: DJ Herz, Josiah Gray, and Trevor Williams, so if Irvin appears to still be stuck in the mud, I will not hesitate to bring one of them up to take his place. Side note, ideally, the first of those three to get an opportunity will be Herz, the Nats need some good news on the development front for him, coming off Tommy John surgery last season. His 2024 stint showed real promise for his future. I would love to see him build on that in 2026.
Now let’s move into the bullpen, where we have eight spots to fill. We’ll begin at the closer’s spot, where Jose A. Ferrer will get the opportunity to solidify himself as a solid major league closer, as he did this past September. Other locks are going to be Brad Lord, serving as the main setup man. My decision to move him back here is based on the fact that I think his stuff plays a little better as a reliever. I don’t see him being a guy who can consistently give 5-6 innings across a full season. I also really loved how reliable he was in the bullpen last year. It felt very comfortable when he came into games, and that’s a very rare feeling from a Nationals reliever. Clayton Beeter and Cole Henry will be a part of our relief mix, with Beeter specifically poised to take a big leap this year after becoming a big strikeout guy for the Nats down the stretch. Henry had a heck of a start to the 2025 campaign before going into a little bit of a rut in the second half, but I’m very interested to see what this new staff can do with him in year two. Getting the long-relief nod is going to be Mitchell Parker; he did a nice job in his few relief outings last September, and similar to Irvin, I believe he’s earned the opportunity to try and make something of himself after a disastrous year last year. That leaves us three spots to fill, with PJ Poulin, Konnor Pilkington, Julian Fernandez, Jackson Rutledge, Orlando Ribalta, and Sauryn Lao to fight over them, not to mention any free agents we bring in.
To try and fix what has been an atrocious unit for the Nats in years past, I’m going to spend a little bit of cash in the bullpen to try and give them a chance to bounce back from their league-worst 5.59 ERA in 2025. We are going to spend $3.5 million on a deal for lefty journeyman Steven Matz, a guy who really impressed me out of the Boston bullpen last season. He revived his career in 2025, throwing 77 innings to the tune of a 3.05 ERA, and saw dramatic improvements in strikeout rate, walk rate, and opponents’ batting numbers, and saw his velocity take a nice jump in tandem with his control. New Nats GM Paul Toboni watched Matz’s revival last season firsthand, as Toboni was a member of the Red Sox staff before being hired by the Nats this fall, so familiarity may make Matz a legitimate candidate on Toboni’s radar this winter. The bullpen work doesn’t end there. I am also going to go out and get a right-hander who you guys should be familiar with, Hunter Harvey. Things haven’t quite gone his way in the year and a half since the Nats traded him to Kansas City, as injuries bothered him for the majority of the 2025 season. In between those IL stints, Harvey threw 10.2 innings, not allowing any earned runs over that span, and touting a 28.2% strikeout rate. The $5.2 million we’re going to be spending on him comes with some risk, but he could be a very steadying presence on the back end of this bullpen if healthy.
So in our bullpen right now, we have our closer (Ferrer), a left-handed long man (Parker), and a higher-leverage lefty arm in Matz. Then, from the right side, we have some great setup options in Harvey, Lord, Beeter, and Henry. This leads to one of the toughest decisions that will need to be made: who gets the final bullpen spot? In narrowing down the options, I’ve come to a choice between Poulin, Pilkington, and Rutledge. To me, this is a choice dependent on values; if past performance is the deciding factor, and you’re willing to overlook lack of experience, Poulin is your guy. If experience is your preference, Pilkington is probably the pick. If you’re somebody who likes to look at potential and think, “what could be here?” Rutledge is the pick for the dreamers, and I happen to fall under that category. I recall seeing an article on this site last season talking about Rutledge and how his stuff could very easily make him into a highly effective big leaguer, if he’s coached and developed correctly. I happen to agree with that assessment, and while I know it’s placing a whole lot of trust in this new coaching staff, we really have no choice but to trust and hope that their new analytics-driven approach can work wonders with guys just like Jackson Rutledge, so for that reason, he will get the final spot in my Opening Day bullpen.
For those still following with our hypothetical budget, the $8.7 million spent on bullpen upgrades leaves us with $19 million to be spent on offensive reinforcements.
Let’s start in the most troublesome spot for the Nats’ offense: the catcher position. I have no idea what to expect from Keibert Ruiz in 2026, and frankly, at this point, I’m not willing to stake the success of our catching core on his availability and effectiveness. I also appreciate the heck out of Riley Adams for how hard he’s worked these past few years, but I just can’t start another season with him or Drew Millas on my roster. That being said, solid catching options are scarce this offseason, with only one name out there being a significant boost to our catching tandem. So with that, welcome to D.C., J.T. Realmuto! The veteran catcher would be a fantastic signing for the Nationals, providing great leadership and a mentor for a locker room that desperately needs guys who have played on the biggest stage and know what it takes each day to be a championship-caliber club. He will cost us $13 million, but a catching combo of him and Ruiz gives me more confidence in the catcher’s position than I’ve had in a very long time with this team.
That leaves us with 11 spots remaining on the 26-man roster, and $6 million left to sign any free agents we may wish. I’m going to go ahead and get the outfield out of the way, because I do not plan on bringing in any new faces to this already young and promising group. The core three will be James Wood, Jacob Young, and Dylan Crews. To me, that is the Nats’ best all-around lineup, but we will add Daylen Lile to the roster to be our everyday DH, and Robert Hassell as well, to be our top left-handed pinch hitter. My vision for this outfield would be to rotate guys in and out as much as possible, utilizing the DH spot to our advantage, so that four out of these five can be in the lineup each day. This is honestly the part of our roster I’m most excited about, as all of these guys could very well take leaps in their development under this new staff. Crews and Wood specifically have opportunities to solidify themselves as quality major leaguers in this upcoming season, with Crews needing to take that jump that Wood did in the first half of ’25.
So that leaves us with six spots left on the roster, and just the infield spots left to fill. We’ll start with the automatic bids. CJ Abrams will be my starting shortstop, Luis Garcia Jr. will be back at second, and Brady House will be the Opening Day third baseman, but he specifically will have to prove he deserves it in the early stages of the season. We are going to bring back Jose Tena and Nasim Nunez. I believe Nunez proved throughout the season last year that he’s willing to do anything asked of him and will be a big part of our late-game defensive lineups while we try to close out wins. Tena will be here to give Brady House competition for the third base job and to face righties in matchup situations. That just leaves the first baseman’s job. Andres Chaparro has had a couple of years to earn the job, and as much as he’s raked in Triple-A, it just hasn’t translated enough on the big league stage for me to give him the job. So with our final $6 million, I am going to go sign Miguel Andujar, a guy who had a really strong bounce-back season with the Athletics last season. FanGraphs projects him to finish the 2026 season with a 1.2 WAR and an .845 OPS, which, if true, would be a big upgrade over Chaparro. We will have options if Andujar doesn’t pan out, though, as Chaparro can be brought back up from Rochester to fill the gap in time until YoYo Morales is called up for his big league debut.
That Andujar signing puts us right at our $31 million budget, and completes what I believe could be a very significant roster upgrade, while operating within the recent Lerner Family budget. So let’s lay out our complete 2026 Opening Day roster, and you guys, please let me know your thoughts on this process, these signings, your visions, anything of note in the comments.
2026 Starting Rotation: MacKenzie Gore, Cade Cavalli, Dustin May, Andrew Alvarez, Jake Irvin
2026 Bullpen: Jose A. Ferrer, Steven Matz, Hunter Harvey, Clayton Beeter, Cole Henry, Brad Lord, Mitchell Parker, Jackson Rutledge
2026 Catchers: J.T. Realmuto, Keibert Ruiz
2026 Infield: Miguel Andujar, Luis Garcia Jr., CJ Abrams, Brady House, Nasim Nunez, Jose Tena
2026 Outfield: Dylan Crews, Jacob Young, James Wood, Robert Hassell III, Daylen Lile
