The NationalsProspects.com Top 10 Position Players
I was hoping for more ballots, but the points are made up and rules don’t matter (or something like that)…
OK, I’ll open the kimono…
- Dylan Crews (2)
- Brady House (3)
- Seaver King
- Yohandy Morales (4)
- Daylen Lile (6)
- Robert Hassell (9)
- Cayden Wallace
- Caleb Lomavita
- Luke Dickerson
- Angel Feliz
Others receiving votes: Kevin Bazzell, Dashyll Tejeda, Andrew Pinckney, Drew Millas, Elijah Green
About the half the list are holdovers, three are ’24 Draft Picks, one is a trade pickup, and the last is Angel Feliz, who made most of the at the #10 spot.
As you probably may have already guessed, Crews was named #1 on every ballot, with Brady House the same at #2. Yoyo Morales and Daylen Lile weren’t consesus at their spot, but were named on every ballot. After that, things broke down a little bit, but not too badly: Like a year ago, there were only 14 different names named.
The good news is that three of last year’s list graduated and played a fair amount, even if that’s a function of being a second-division team (an expression that maybe needs to make a comeback, but prolly won’t since MLB doesn’t care that two of the six divisions are perennially weak). If we’re lucky, at least as many will be ineligible one way (made it to The Show) or the other (traded).
Next up: picking the top 10 pitching prospects, of which the Nats only really check two of three categories (young, old, and hurt).
It’s worth noting that Morales, Hassell, and Wallace all had significant injury issues this past season, so we don’t have the complete picture on them. Lile missed an entire season earlier, and House fought through injuries for about a season and a half, so that’s half of this list developmentally behind the curve because of injuries. Let’s hope that 2025 is a year for making up for lost time.
The big positive takeaway: every player listed here has the tools to at least have a chance to be a major-league regular. There have been seasons where that could only be said, with rose-colored glasses, of the top three or four. If you’re looking at this year’s glass as half empty, though, the only sure thing is Crews. (There has been some debate this week on Todd Boss’s site about House’s bust potential.) Really, of course, we’re hoping that Crews and House do turn out to be stars. We’ll have to see about the others.
Well, I don’t think anyone is (to use TB’s phrase) throwing in the towel on House. The folks (including me) accused of that were more expressing doubts that he’s ready to step into the starting 3b role. He’s so young for the AAA level that it would not be surprising for him to need to do the work and be more on a 2026 timeline. We’ve been so spoiled by the Sotos and Harpers of the world that we aren’t very patient.
I didn’t understand last season when they promoted House to AAA when he was hitting only .234 and not taking walks. I’m very much on the “there’s no rush” bandwagon. But there was a good bit of aggressive promotion in 2024 among their more highly rated prospects, including Crews, House, Lile, Hassell, and Pinckney.
As much as I enjoyed Hassell’s AFL renaissance, I’m surprised to see how much lower on him than most others here.
Hassell gained his prospect reputation for his bat. He was repeatedly hyped as having a super polished bat for a HS draft pick, and early on, at least, it showed. But whatever the Padres were feeding him, it immediately stopped upon joining the Nats.
As a Nationals player, in nearly 250 games played, he’s hit a combined .227/.320/.317. That’s awful, especially for a player whose carrying tool was meant to be his hit tool. Even Elijah Green has better numbers over that same period of time (.217/.317/.354), and he’s fallen off the list (and rightfully so).
We were talking extensively here in the comments about how 2024 was supposed to be Hassell’s year, a full year and a half removed from the hamate surgery that we used to write off Hassell’s power struggles in 2023. But… the bat just never returned. In fact, it seemed to get worse with each passing month, accented by a truly putrid end to the season in Rochester with a .345 OPS. His AFL was indeed good, but I’m going to need more than 22 games in an exceptionally hitter-friendly league to change my mind. But if it’s changing other people’s minds, that’s also great, because Hassell and Lile are our most expendable prospects in the system at the moment.