2025 Team Previews - Washington Nationals
As part of my 2025 team previews series, I go through all fantasy-relevant players on the Washington Nationals ahead of the 2025 season.
Check out the intro and team links page here.
Intro
It’s December now, so it’s totally fantasy baseball season, right? I mean I’ll give you November. It’s a little extreme to be drafting and writing up fantasy baseball stuff in November. But if you’re not firing stuff up by Christmas time, you’re way behind.
So, today, we hit the 2025 Washington Nationals team preview. Things are still pretty gloomy for the organization. Once you give a ton of money to Stephen Strasburg, Patrick Corbin, and Max Scherzer, there’s going to be a little bit of a hangover from all of that once they’re gone. They also got trucked on the return for Scherzer and Trea Turner, with Josiah Gray and Keibert Ruiz both not turning into the players people initially thought they could. It’s been a series of negative developments since their 2019 World Series.
That does raise the question - how much is a World Series worth? If I told you that your favorite team could win the 2025 World Series, but the punishment would be that they don’t have another winning season until at least 2030 - would you take that deal? Personally, I wouldn’t. In my case, I think the Pirates making the World Series would be 90% as good as them winning the World Series. I’ve always felt like this. When I was a teenager really into those Super Bowl Steelers teams, I was much more invested in the team winning the AFC Championship game than the Super Bowl. No matter what happened in the Super Bowl, the season was over. My entertainment was done. When you’re playing in the AFC Championship game, from my perspective, the prize of winning the game was another couple of weeks of entertainment for me.
I would honestly rather have the Pirates make the playoffs five years in a row and not win the World Series than have them have one good year where they do win the thing. It’s about the volume for me. Give me five full seasons of entertainment rather than just one that goes really, really well.
Some fans act like they get a ring if their team wins the World Series. I’m sure you feel good for a couple of days after it, and maybe you even buy yourself a T-shirt to remember that good feeling, but after the season is over, you’re done gaining anything from the team. It’s funny we even use the term “we” when talking about our teams. But yeah, I think I’ve made my point.
Not many other people think in the same way as me. I’d be interested to hear from a Nationals fan about what that 2019 World Series means to them now. Would they give it back for a division crown in 2025? I imagine you would!
Let’s get into it.
The Roster
Things are looking better than last year; I can say that much. James Wood and Dylan Crews have arrived, and they saw a few mini-breakouts in the rotation last year that give them a bit more solidity on that front.
Can they compete with the Phillies, Braves, and Mets in 2025? I have my doubts, but I can’t say it’s completely impossible.
There are very few studs on the page, but there are also not many places to point at and call a serious weakness. And this assumes they don’t improve this offseason. We haven’t heard the Nats mentioned with any of the big names, and that’s probably a testament to them still trying to crawl out of those big contracts I mentioned, but they are a team that has previously spent a large amount of money on free agents - so they’ll be back in the pool sooner or later.
But our focus is on fantasy baseball, so let’s go player by player through the Nationals and keep on building out these 2025 ranks.
Hitters
James Wood
Age: 22
Pos: OF
Wood will be the Elly De La Cruz of this year’s draft. He has a clear first-round upside with the tools he has, but he also has a significant downside with some of the growing pains he showed us in his first go-around. Let’s check it out:
336 PA, .264/.354/.427, .781 OPS, 29% K%, 11.6% BB%, 9 HR, 14 SB
He struck out a lot and also hit a ton of balls on the ground (55% GB%), and that kept his home run rate down to 37 PA/HR.
It’s always interesting to see how these young guys trend in their first season, so let’s take a look at that:
He was markedly better in August and September as compared to July, and it’s extremely positive to see the K% at 27% rather than the 33% we saw out of the gate.
The exit velocity was great:
There is no question that he can hit the ball hard enough to be an elite Major League bat. The question is two-fold with him:
Can he make enough contact?
Can he elevate the ball?
As I’ve already said, these are the two things that led to some struggles in 2024. His contact rate was just 70%, but it did move up to 72.5% in that August-September sample. His GB% also dropped to 51% in that second sample.
If Wood is truly the guy we saw in his final ~225 PAs, then he’s pretty clearly a very good fantasy bat. He hit seven homers and stole 12 bags in those 225 PAs. That would translate to a 20-homer, 33-steal full season (using a 625 PA sample).
Wood was also a bit of a spray hitter last season. He only pulled two of his homers:
His pull rate was five points below league average, and that kept his Brl/HR rate down at 43%. This leads to fewer homers, but it can also lead to a higher batting average since you’re showing the ability to hit different pitch locations with authority.
The tools aren’t in question here. He has high bat speed, an elite exit velocity profile, and he’s a very quick runner. There’s a 30-30-.270 upside here, and I think his draft price will reflect that. But you won’t find any complaints from me.
Rank
We have a new #1!
Projection
640 PA, 88 R, 23 HR, 76 RBI, 22 SB, .274/.361/.462, $12.30 roto value
CJ Abrams
Age: 24
Pos: SS
The 2024 season felt like a step backward for Abrams, but when we look at the end-year numbers in comparison with his recent career, we don’t really see that.
602 PA, .246/.314/.433, 20 HR, 31 SB, 21% K%, 6.6% BB%
His K% did tick up a couple of points, but a 21% rate isn’t prohibitive, and he was able to get a few more balls into the air, so his Brl% maintained at a non-awful 7%.
The reason to draft Abrams is a cheaper 20-30 guy at the shortstop position after all of those stud options are gone. We have yet to see him post a useful batting average, and the expected batting averages aren’t encouraging, either.
The bat speed and exit velocity marks are unremarkable, so I don’t think we can say Abrams has a 30-homer upside, but I also think he’s got a floor of 15 homers and should steal 30 bags with ease.
I think Abrams is underrated. He is a solid mid-round steals option that doesn’t come with a ton of downside in any of the five roto categories. He won’t be a priority pick for me, but he is a nice consolation prize if you miss the first couple of shortstop tiers.
Rank
He compares pretty closely with Neto and Tovar. The projections as I write this have him as the #7 SS in the league, so I will lean on those and rank him as my top shortstop so far.
Projection
655 PA, 95 R, 22 HR, 68 RBI, 36 SB, .259/.328/.438, $12.24 roto value
Luis Garcia
Age: 24
Pos: 2B
Garcia was a sneaky 2024 breakout hitter. He had the best season of his career by a good margin.
2022: .275/.295/.408, 7 HR, 3 SB
2023: .266/.304/.385, 9 HR, 9 SB
2024: .282/.318/.444, 18 HR, 22 SB
Woah baby! A near 20-20 season with a .282 batting average. So, how did he do it? Here are some notable changes:
Stat: 2022 → 2023 → 2024
GB%: 53% → 53% → 48%
Brl%: 7.5% → 5.8% → 8.0%
LA: 5.5° → 4.6° → 8.2°
EV: 87.3 → 88.3 → 89.1
xwOBA: .305 → .308 → .333
He has never had much of an issue with the strikeout, but that’s not to say he’s been consistent on that front:
2022: 22.3%
2023: 12.4%
2024: 16.3%
A 16% K% is still elite, and this time, it came with a pretty nice batted ball profile.
The one downside with Garcia is that he’s a pretty wild swinger. He swung 51.7% of the time last year, which led to a high 36% Chase% and a low 4.8% BB%. He’s a much worse target in OBP leagues.
But if you’re in a standard roto league, he’s a pretty solid option, provided he keeps the gains he made in 2024. He wasn’t much of a homer or steals guy prior, but both of those things got a decent level last year - and the stolen base attempt rate came way up from 11% to 22%.
I can buy him as a solid batting average and steals source, who should hit at least a dozen homers. Given the age and the improvements we’ve already seen him capable of, I could see a 25-homer ceiling from him, and he’s still going to be pretty cheap in drafts, methinks.
Rank
Projection
574 PA, 73 R, 19 HR, 78 RBI, 16 SB, .279/.323/.452, $10.61 roto value
And now we hit the paywall. Paid subscribers get access to everything I do, from articles to dashboards to projections - there are no tiered subscriptions here. Join us today using the link below.