Plugging Away at the Watchlist
Just your annual January post to let the SEO bots that the site is still up and running.
As the visual pun suggests, I’ve been filling in the player reports for the 2025 Watchlist while we wait for the calendar to flip back to 1933 next week spring. I’m about halfway through, punting on some that I’d like to get some input from the scouting books before writing.
The Commanders have been giving the Nats some cover for the parade of second-tier and third-tier signings, which, in their defense, are about as good as they can do as a rebuilding team. Unless they decide to overpay [pause for laughter].
Tomorrow is the beginning of the International signing period. According to the Boys in Durham, the Nats are contenders for three of its Top 100, including #16 Brayan Cortesia, a 17-y.o. shortstop out of Venezuela.
So perhaps we’ll have some news as to who the Nats spent big on and the dozen or so they did not on Thursday. Until then, I’ll leave you to your National Hot Pastrami Day festivities.
While it’s great to read that the Nats are still going to try to sign some of the top IFA’s, I find it complete asinine how the choose to utterly ignore talent from the Pacific Rim
I makes no sense, with the payroll space they have and the their need for pitching, how they are not in on Sasaki
And this also goes for all the other high profile postings from previous years that they’ve chosen to completely ignore
I can understand if they’ve made offers and they got turned down, but to not even make an attempt Is downright stupid
But hey throw millions at 16 year olds with zero experience and pedigree, where the chances of actually them making it are less than 5% and no problem!
Agree that the Nats efforts to find players in Asia has been underwhelming, but given the Sasaki’s unique financial circumstances (the amount the MLB team that signs him is limited to $10 million), every MLB team coveted him, and he wasn’t going to pick a team based on how much is offered. Everyone knew that Sasaki was going to come down to the Padres and Dodgers, and it essentially has with Sasaki eliminating all teams except for those two and the Blue Jays. Put another way, Sasaki was NEVER going to sign with the Nats. So, can’t criticize them for missing on him.
That said, I do wish the Nats would expand it’s international footprint as focusing on the DR and Venezuala hasn’t worked out well lately. Need to think outside the box.
Why would the Blue Jays have an edge over the Nats?
You’d have to ask Sasaki and his reps. Why would the Jays have an edge over the Yankees, Mets, Cubs, Giants, Rangers and the rest of MLB?
The bottom line is that Nats (and every other major league team) knew/knows Sasaki is an incredible value because no team can commit more than $10 million for him, and if this was an open market, he is a nine figure player. If you don’t think the cheap Lerners wouldn’t have loved to sign a 23 year-old that is ready to step in as a #1 starter for a $10 million bonus and an MLB minimum salary, I don’t know what to tell you.
Sasaki is a rare player who will use non-monetary reasons to pick his team. I’m sure the presence of other Japanese players on the roster would have helped, which is among the reasons why the Dodgers are the favorite, but really don’t think the Nats aren’t getting Sasaki because of lack of interest.
Pilchard, , while I agree with your comments, you are missing the point, which is that I read someplace that Rizzo flat out said they won’t commit $$$ to scouting and signing Asian league players.
So to not even start to create a pipeline, no matter how small, to this market like the Dodgers and Padres and other orgs. have means you will always be out of the running.
I could understand if all these signings over the years have been busts, but it’s actually been the opposite, so you would actually be getting a return on your investment unlike most IFA’s
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
A reminder that the Nats are one of I think 6 or 7 teams that still only fields one DSL team, meaning in comparison to the vast majority of the league we are committing considerably fewer resources to even our DR/Venezuelan scouting and player development ops.
On a side note, I can’t recall, have the Nationals EVER signed a player out of East Asia (posted or not)?
Excluding Chien-Ming Wang, natch… I cannot recall any IFA not from the Americas.
Wang Chung that to the second notion
Too bad there is not a reliever on the market named Noble so Rizzo can resign Barnes .
The kiddie core will become the bullpen depth pieces .
Meanwhile, since they signed Soto a decade ago, the Nats have basically been flushing money down the Latin drain. Garcia was a lot better in 2024, and Lara finally looked like the prospect he was thought to be, but that’s an extremely small return on all the investment. (And Ferrer might end up being decent in the ‘pen.)
Their return might not have been that great in the times before 2015, but at least they were finding guys who made the majors: Robles, Suero, Rey Lopez, Difo, Severino, Sanchez, Marmalejos, Gutierrez, Leon, Read.
Sadly the domestic prospect pipeline hasn’t been any better in the same period despite drawing from a far bigger/better talent pool.
I’ve been thinking about your comment regarding Made being rushed up the ladder. with 500 PAs in A and 835 in A+ it seems to me that there was not much else to prove.
you can certainly argue that he did not excel in either level and that his future success is questionable. but having watched him a fair amount he has the tools.
If the Lerners are so cheap, why are they willing to continue to flush money down the IFA rabbit hole at all?
Today is international FA signing day. So far, the Nats inked SS Brayan Cortesia from Venezuela ($1.9 million). MLB rates him as the #14 prospect in this international class (Sasaki is #1). As for why the Nats pay any money for IFA, each team has a limited bonus pool to spend, and while there are reasons to not spend it all, among other reasons, it would be a PR nightmare if the Nats just punted on the whole process.
That said, can’t argue with the point that there most recent big IFA signees have been a big waste.
Here is the list of Nats IFA’s who signed today for $300K or more. Yes, like previous years, the Nats appear to have limited their investments to the DR and Venezuela:
Nationals
Daniel Hernandez, C, Venezuela — $1,100,000
Rony Bello, INF, Dominican Republic — $450,000
Esnaider Vargas, INF, Dominican Republic — $400,000
Marconi German, INF, Dominican Republic — $400,000
Jonierbis, Garces, OF, Venezuela — $350,000
Edgardo Figueroa, C, Venezuela — $300,000
There’s a difference between cheap and stupid.
Spending $6m on IFAs per year is not evidence of not being cheap, it is evidence they aren’t completely stupid. With the stricter caps on international spending, there is absurdly good value to be gained from IFAs. There is no market for IFAs, and thus no fair market value, but rather a cap which limits player values to an artificially low number. No team has more than $7.5m to spend and therefore no player can receive more than $7.5m. Whereas before the cap spending was tightened, players were getting contracts orders of magnitude more than that (e.g. Yoan Moncada cost the Red Sox $63m in 2014)
Each one of the players KW listed will have paid for their draft class and more. Juan Soto, for example, will pay for Nats IFA classes for half a century. Take just Luis Garcia as an example. He was worth 3 WAR in 2024. As we’ve seen clearly this offseason, guys who are projected to be worth 3 WAR (Walker, Alonso, Bregman) are demanding $20-30m per year. Garcia has earned less than $6m total in his career to date (from his $1.3m signing bonus up until his arb eligible $1.95m salary in 2024). In 2024 alone, Garcia provided much more than $15m of surplus value, which paid for himself, his whole draft class and more from just one good season. He’ll almost certainly provide additional value in 2025-2027.
That the Nationals have not been able to get value out of the IFA is not evidence that IFA spending is a waste and that spending in this area is lavish or foolish, it is evidence that we’re doing a bad job at investing money is what is otherwise an insanely good investment (as is the case with the MLB draft too).