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The season is over, and the report card is due for the players who appeared in 2023 for the Washington Nationals.

Grades here are presented relative to what I’ll call “reasonable expectations”. For instance, no one expected Amos Willingham to become the Nats’ ninth-inning guy when he was called up; but did he do reasonably well for himself, relative to what the Nats brought him up to do? What about Robert Garcia, who was claimed off waivers? Jackson Rutledge, who was called up to plug a rotation hole late in the season?

While these grades are conducted on a curve, all assume the baseline expectation for a player was that they succeed in the role to which they were assigned — whether that of an ace, a back-end starter, a long man, a late-inning reliever, or anything in between. A passing grade (C range or higher) means someone at least did enough to justify keeping him around, although a C might not augur well for a player in 2024 or beyond. Grades in the A range are assigned sparingly, showing where a player exceeded reasonable expectations and contributed in a strongly positive way. B’s, as you would thus expect, fall somewhere in the middle. And failing grades (D’s and F’s) pretty well speak for themselves.

The Washington Nationals finished 71-91 in the 2023 season. That’s still a fifth-place finish in the National League East, but it’s a big improvement from 2022.

Who to credit for the improvement? Many observers thought the Nats would fall well short of 70 wins this year, a mark they ultimately surpassed.

The purpose of this report card is to take a look at each position player on the roster and grade how they performed relative to reasonable expectations. Players like CJ Abrams and Keibert Ruiz are considered franchise cornerstones; did they live up to the hype? Players like Jacob Young and Blake Rutherford knocked down the door after strong minor league seasons; how did they acquit themselves in their major league debuts?

The standing assumption here is that if a player was called up to the major leagues, he was called up because the Nats believed he had a chance to succeed in his assigned role. Put another way: Anyone on this list could have earned any grade. A player with a limited ceiling isn’t limited to a low grade because he’s never going to be a Bryce Harper or a Juan Soto. Failing grades are reserved for players who got a chance and did not thrive.