Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Washington Nationals
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This is post number one of 30 in the reviews, previews, and ranks post series! This is my third year doing something like this, and this will be the earliest I’ve ever started and it will certainly be the best, most extensive work I’ve ever done.
By the time we get anywhere near draft season, I’m sure I will have completely forgotten the stuff I wrote here, but if I give myself a ton of time I’ll have the chance to really take my time and get the most out of it.
I’ve decided to go in reverse order of the MLB standings since I wanted to start with teams that did not make the playoffs - and I figure that would make the earlier posts the easiest/least important as they would cover fewer fantasy-relevant players.
Pitchers
This should be an easy one. Even with the entire offseason ahead of us, it seems like the Nationals’ pitching staff will not be one to go to fantasy purposes. Here is the list of starters that made at least 10 starts for them in 2022
Patrick Corbin (31)
Josiah Gray (28)
Erick Fedde (27)
Paolo Espin (19)
Joan Adon (14)
Anibal Sanchez (14)
Their team 5.00 ERA was second-worst in the league behind the Rockies (who else?), and they were one of five teams with a team K% under 20% (Rockies, Royals, Cardinals, Nationals, Athletics).
There is only one pitcher I can imagine drafting next year, and even that will be pretty thin. Let’s get into it!
Pitchers
Josiah Gray
After flashing some upside in 2021 with a 26.9% K% and a SwStr% near 15%, Gray fell flat in 2022. He was about league average with a 23.7% K% and a 12.0% SwStr%. That’s not cutting it for a guy who also had a bad walk rate of 10.2% and gave up a barrel rate rate near 11%.
I thought Gray would be a guy to have some brilliant outings when things were working for him, but he really didn’t have a single “ceiling” game all year:
He is the first pitcher I’m ranking, but I would doubt Gray even makes the top 100. The thing that gives us any semblance of hope is the prospect pedigree and what we saw back in 2021. His breaking pitches were pretty nasty in 2021, but both took a step backward in 2022, here are the SwStr% for those pitches from 2021 → 2022:
Curveball: 21.1% → 12.9%
Slider: 23.9% → 18.9%
His fastball velocity is fine (94.4 mph) but short of great, and the pitch has performed terribly in both seasons in the Majors (7.6% SwStr% and a 17.% Brl% in 2022).
It looks like he messed around with a sinker at the end of the year, which I can’t say was a bad idea given how awful the four-seamer was, so maybe that’s something to watch for in 2023.
Key point is that he needs to improve on absolutely everything to be worthy of fantasy attention in 2023, which makes it really unlikely that you suffer at all from just not drafting him at all.
He is not making my shortlist, but maybe he’s worth a late-round pick in a dynasty league or something.
MacKenzie Gore
I am assuming that Gore makes the rotation next year because what choice do the Nats really have at this point? He was a big part of the Juan Soto deal, and they are in full rebuilding mode so I would guess they want to really see what they have here.
It looked for a minute like Gore was having his breakout season in 2022. On June 4th he had a 1.50 ERA with a 1.06 WHIP in eight starts with the Padres. His K% was at 30% and the BB% sat at 8.9% - pretty darn good numbers.
At that point, things started to really break down. From then on he went for a pathetic 12.6% K% and a 16.8% BB% in five starts, he was then sent out of the rotation via the IL.
He did not appear in the Majors for the Nationals and must have actually been hurt because he didn’t make a single appearance anywhere between July 25th and September 11th. He then made four starts in Rochester, putting up a 5.25 ERA with a 1.67 WHIP, a 16.4% K%, and a 7.3% BB%.
A very strange season. And this was following the 2021 season where he pitched badly in the minors all year.
“Stuff” wise, he does seem to have some breaking pitches that can be worked with.
Those are half-decent marks on the curveball and slider, and the four-seamer wasn’t exactly completely awful. He just got barreled up a ton in the Majors and didn’t seem to have much strike-throwing confidence in any of his pitches.
It will be interesting to see where Gore starts the year in 2023, it’s certainly possible that he goes back to the minors and stays there for a good while if he’s not pitching great. The bottom line, I think, is that this is a guy that we wouldn’t be looking twice at if it weren’t for his former status as a top prospect in the league. So often these top prospect lists are just wrong and we can get trapped into holding out hope for players way too long because they were once regarded as a top prospect.
I don’t think Gore even deserves a ranking, so I have created a separate “unranked/TBD” tab in the sheet. Maybe there will be more to say about Gore in the future, but I don’t think there is more to say this winter.
Cade Cavalli
My weak spot is prospect analysis. I know very little about Cavalli as I type this sentence, but we’ll do some homework here and learn a bit. The MLB & MiLB Pitching Dashboard I have created is just incredible for this kind of stuff, by the way.
Not a bad year in AAA for Cavalli, but short of dominant. I really hate to see any pitching prospect without a good BB% in the minors, and Cavalli certainly didn’t have one there at 9.7%. The strikeout rate is fine but short of fantastic, but the HR/9 being at 0.3 is very good.
We saw a little bit of Cavalli in the Majors, here is the pitch arsenal breakdown from those 99 pitches he threw on August 26th against the Reds:
Good velocity on the four-seamer, and three other pitches mixed in. That’s a positive sign. I’m not going to even mention the resulting numbers given how small of a sample this is, but it is always encouraging to see a young pitcher have a bunch of options to choose from.
He’s currently their #4 overall prospect and their top pitching prospect. I don’t think that start in August started his clock or anything, and the Nationals probably aren’t thinking they’ll compete in 2023 - so I would imagine Cavalli starts in the minors again which would make him completely irrelevant for fantasy purposes at least in 2023 redraft leagues, which is my primary focus. He’s going on the unranked list.
Hitters
Keibert Ruiz
I liked Ruiz coming into 2022 as a guy who could at least give you a good batting average from the catcher position with some upside for power. Neither of those things was realized as Ruiz slashed .251/.312/.360 in his 433 PAs. He did steal six bases, but the counting stats were bad otherwise.
The 85% contact% supports a non-awful batting average. His BABIP was about 20 points below the league average, but the guy isn’t fast (registered a max sprint speed lower than Nelson Cruz) so there’s no reason to believe he won’t be a low BABIP guy. He’s in the Majors for defensive purposes primarily, and 2022 really gave us nothing to be excited about for him as a hitter. He could be a fine second catcher option next year if you’re in one of those dumb leagues, he will at least not bury you in batting average and he’ll probably stay in the middle of the lineup.
Luis Garcia
He was a bit interesting after the call-up. He did this in the minors (all AAA):
205 PA, .308/.366/.519, 8 HR, 3 SB (0 CS), 18% K%
And this in the Majors
377 PA, .275/.295/.408 SLG, 7 HR, 3 SB (4 CS), 22% K%
So everything fell quite a bit after reaching the Majors, not a surprise. The reason to like him is that he’s young (22), did not strike out a ton, and showed the ability to hit the ball pretty hard (113.1 max exit velo). He swings a ton, which keeps the strikeouts down but also keeps the walks down and results in a lot of bad contact (I think these two things are related, as swinging a ton means you’re putting more bad pitches into play, but I could be wrong about that).
You can see he had an 85th percentiel ground-ball rate. That is interesting to me because it is something that can change pretty easily. It’s not uncommon to see a guy, especially a young guy, just completely reverse that year-to-year. If Garcia turns some ground-balls into line drives and fly-balls, he’s going to have some great results with how hard he can hit the ball.
I think Garcia will be basically free in 2023, and I would definitely be interested in him as a late-round middle infielder if I’m searching for upside.
CJ Abrams
I’m really not a prospects guy, especially after they come up to the Majors and suck in their first try. That’s what Abrams did in 2022:
302 PA, .246/.278/.324, 2 HR, 2.1% Brl%, 16.6% K%, 1.7% BB%, .242 xwOBA
Just putrid power numbers. Some can be forgiven as a 22-year-old, plenty of guys take until later than that to develop any power, but it would be hard to imagine you can go from two homers in 302 PAs to anything near significant in one season. He did hit for more power in the minors with 7 dingers in 186 PAs, but still not a ton and Brl% and xwOBA numbers above tell a much clearer story.
You would think he’ll be an everyday player for the Nats next year, but if we’re really not going to be starved for steals next year I don’t see any reason to take a shot on Abrams in the near term.
Luke Voit
Voit was a trendy late-round first base pick in 2022 and did not come through. He did this
.226/.307/.402, 22 HR, 31.6% K%, 9.5% BB%, 62.4% Cont%, 14.7% Brl%
That was the worst contact rate in the league among hitters with 500+ PAs.
Voit will be 32 on Opening Day. There’s a good chance he improves with the strikeouts and the whiffs, because there’s really no other direction to go in. He should be a decent source of homers while he’s playing, especially in Nationals Park which is a pretty friendly park for the long ball, but that’s the extent of what we can good about Voit. The max sprint speed is much below average at 24.7, so he does not seem like a guy that would be a big beneficiary of the new rules. I’ll be out on Voit for sure, but he could fit some of these deep league team builds where you just need homers late cause you don’t have enough.
Joey Meneses
One of the few bright spots for the Nationals in 2022 was Meneses.
Meneses hit .284/.337/.485 with 20 homers in 418 PAs in AAA before getting the call to the Majors. He saw 240 PAs in the Majors and somehow did better, slashing .324/.367/.563 with 13 homers. He had a solid 9.9% Brl% with an above-average 76.7% contact% which kept the strikeout rate low at 21.8%. These are impressive figures for a guy in his first stint in the Majors.
The strange thing about Meneses is that he’s 30 years old. He’s played professional baseball all over the place since 2011. He hit for good power between AA and AAA in 2021, but it wasn’t enough to get him anywhere near a call-up. It required a bad team trading away their two best hitters to finally get Meneses a Major League uniform, but to his credit - he took advantage.
I am not sure where Meneses is going to be drafted in 2023, but I’d imagine it will be too high for my liking. There’s a reason that a guy can play 11 years in the minors without ever getting the call-up. I can’t imagine a world where I don’t draft Meneses and regret it next year.
Lane Thomas
He was forced to be a key player in the Nationals lineup, and as of right now I don’t see why he wouldn't be that again in 2023.
He hit 17 homers with eight steals while slashing .241/.301/.404. He is fast (max sprint speed of 29.4 ft/sec compared to the league average of 27.2), but that didn’t turn into many steals in 2022, and with the changes the league is making in 2023, we just won’t have to go out of our way to get steals, which downgrades Thomas since we can just get steals from guys that can also do other things.
The plus side is that he’s only 27 years old, and he does have some bat speed (112 max velo) to go with that plus sprint speed.`He shows up in the upper-right quadrant of the max velo vs. max sprint speed plot:
So that gives him more upside than people will likely give him credit for.
All of this is less important than his career mediocrity, he has slashed .237/.314/.412 in 896 career PAs between St. Louis and Washington. If he’s the Nats’ lead-off hitter, that makes him relevant for deep leagues - but a lot of things could happen to have that not be the case. I’m going to rank him now but he will be one of these guys that stays near the bottom of the list.
Nelson Cruz
I am seeing that Cruz and the Nats have a “mutual option” for 2023, which to me means he’s not going to be on the team. I don’t know why he would choose to play on that team in 2023 instead of retiring, and even if he really wants to play - the “mutual” part would seem to suggest that Cruz will be allowed to go search for a more interesting team given his seniority.
He had a .235/.310/.339 line in 2022, the worst slugging percentage of his career. His barrel rate was 9.4%, above league average but a far cry from what we’ve been used to. His strikeout rate came up a bit to 24%, and the contact rate fell to 68%.
It would seem that Cruz is washed, and there’s no reason to worry about him for 2023.
I think that’s it! Please comment below or reach out on Twitter if I missed someone who you think might be somewhat fantasy relevant in 2023. Reminder that I’m not covering closer stuff in this, because it’s a waste of time and something that is way better just to do in spring training when rosters are much more clear.