The Preliminary 2021 Watchlist

As mentioned in my penultimate post, now that the Rule 5 Draft Deadline has come and gone we can go another lap in the 2019-?? offseason with the discussion of the next iteration of the Watchlist.

But just like everything else the past 8½ months, it’s an outlier of an exception of a caveat. There was no 2020 season on which to base any decisions. There were only:

• Graduations – Carter Kieboom, Luis Garcia
• Releases – Nick Raquet, Eric Senior
• Surgeries (that we know of) – Jake Irvin
• The abbreviated 2021 Draft

Yes, I am aware there were a few sons and nephews of Nationals employees NDFAs and a couple of IFAs, but I think we can safely skip over them. Sorry, if that sounds harsh, but we probably wouldn’t be discussing (or considering) them in a so-called normal offseason.

So what does that leave us? Unfortunately, as you might’ve already guessed, I don’t have much choice but to punt.

Now some of the caveats remain the same, though there are some new qualifiers. For example, It’s not a depth chart, it’s ordered top-to-bottom by the highest level played in regular-season games. With no 2020 data and no independent assessments, we’re stuck with 2019 presumptions regarding usage, etc.

Finally, in creating three of the four this-year-only-we-hope categories (’19 DSL Guys, ’19 IFAs, and Aged Out?) I alphabetized them since they either haven’t played yet or they’ve all played at so close of a level that it would almost look like this anyway.

Without further ado, here’s my first (you’re on) crack at the 11th NationalsProspects.com Watchlist: