AFL/Offseason Update: Nov. 3, 2025
Scottsdale got one in the 1st and three in the 2nd as they cruised to a 4-1 victory on Sunday night.
Two Nationals appeared in the game:
● Seaver King started at short and went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. He had two putouts and two assists on defense.
● Sam Petersen was in right field and was 0-for-2 with a hit-by-pitch and a run scored. He fielded five hits and had one putout.
With the win, the Scorpions improve to 16-6 lead the league by two games. They return to action on Tuesday with a visit to Mesa to play the Solar Sox.
And now for the Cousin Oliver of the Nats minors.
Ok, maybe that’s not fair. But either way, Wilmington’s run of ineptitude was extended to three seasons (for the players, five for the front office, natch) in 2025.
It’s a familiar story. The Blue Rocks had the oldest set of batters in the South Atlantic League by more than a full year (23.1 vs. 22.0) but were dead last in:
- Runs – 3.28/G (4.3)
- RBI
- Walks
- BA .212 (.225)
- OBP .293 (.320)
- OPS .599 (.663)
Unlike the previous two levels, the pitching was only marginally better, allowing 4.7 R/G (4.3) and in the the bottom third of the league in nearly every category, despite playing half of its game in a pitcher-friendly park. The defense was a tick below league average as well.
If there is anything close to a silver lining, it’s that the three of the statistical best bats were at the league average age and three of the five pitchers were below the 3.2 FIP that’s considered the mean for most leagues. Unfortunately the #1 pitcher will most likely not be seen north of Florida until 2027.
Without further ado, here are the obligatory Top 5’s…
| TOP 5 BATS | TOP 5 ARMS |
| 1. Sam Petersen, OF .302 GPA, 20BB, 18SB in 44G |
1. Travis Sykora, RHSP 1.21/1.13/0.67, 14.26 K/9IP in 29⅔ IP (6GS) |
| 2. Elijah Nunez, OF .285 GPA, .415 OBP, 14SB in 36G |
2. Alex Clemmey, LHSP 2.47/3.67/1.33, 11.65 K/9IP in 87⅓ IP (19GS) |
| 3. Branden Boissiere, 1B .246 GPA, 16 2B, 23SB in 74G |
3. Austin Amaral, RHRP 2.05/1.80/0.73, 0HR in 41⅓ IP (23G, 12GF, 8SV) |
| 4. Caleb Lomavita, C/DH .244 GPA, 21E, 7PB in 73G |
4. Josh Randall, RHSP 6.44/3.12/1.43, 1.53 BB/9IP in 29⅓ IP (6GS) |
| 5. Seaver King, SS .233 GPA, .953 FPct. |
5. Anthony Arguelles, RHRP 3.34/3.57/1.24, 9.37 K/9IP, 5.08 BB/9IP in 56⅔ IP (38G, 19GF, 2SV) |
A reminder that, unlike the boys in Durham, we try to avoid double-dipping. So if you’re thinking “what about__________?” odds are it’s because he pitched elsewhere for more innings. For any lurking MASN Commenters, that’s what’s known as a clue.
The exception here is Seaver King who played more in Harrisburg but was better in the tax shelt…er, Delaware. But with the current performance in the AFL—even against subpar pitching—it’s clear he should be ranked somewhere, so why not the fifth-best bat in a group that had trouble hitting water after falling off a pier?
Folks interested in seeing the full team stats can find them here. The pitching data can be viewed here.
no surprise that hitting coaches from A- and A+ were let go.
a lot of recent discussion regarding Law’s reporting on the attempt to get King to hit the ball in the air more. turns out he floated the same idea on Willits and attributed this to his fall off after a hot start.
2026 will be very interesting and as it pertains to the Sally league, having games in Frederick will make me very happy.
Interesting regarding Willits, and it’s especially weird if it was the same person who coached both of these guys on that, since Willits and King didn’t overlap at any level this year. It must then be a roving hitting instructor, rather than, say, Wilmington’s hitting coach.
It’s an interesting contrast with Toboni and the Red Sox. They did the exact same thing with Kristian Campbell. He was a relatively unheralded 4th round college bat, but the Sox saw something in Campbell and developed a plan to turn him from a light-hitting contact guy at Georgia Tech (maxing out at 4 HR in his JR year), into the top 10 prospect he became while hittign 20 HR the following season from A+-AAA by hitting with more loft and power.
While both orgs were coaching the same objective, why did the Sox basically instantly re-invent Campbell, and why did the Nationals break King? This is ultimately the key difference between good and bad coaches, especially when you hear King talk about how so much of his problems were mental, and, at least according to him, fixed with some really obvious advice. How is it that Nats coaches couldn’t get through but McGonigle could? There seems to be a disconnect between both the techniques/mechanics side AND the human side of things.
if you accept that King ditched this approach and look at his A+ stats for May then he was far from broken. he also credited Livesy for his help in the same regard. maybe he was just playing nice but hopefully his struggles in AA will right themselves in the spring. he’s surely going to start there.
I will once again note that, despite the preferred narrative, King’s resurgence started in September before he met McGonicle. I’m not saying that he didn’t appreciate the conversation that he mentioned, I’m just cautioning against the knee/jerk assumption that it sparked his hot streak.
To follow up on my previous comment, I will note that, in the same article in which Keith Law cites a “specific Nationals coach” for derailing King’s season with the “pull and lift” philosophy – a comment that has generated a TON of vitriol for the Nats’ coaching folks – he also mentions that in his conversation with King where King mentioned his conversation with McGonicle that King had gotten prior feedback from his Harrisburg hitting coach:
“I spoke to King after one game, and he mentioned that his Double-A Harrisburg hitting coach, Jeff Livesey, who is in the AFL on Scottsdale’s coaching staff, and his AFL teammate Kevin McGonigle, helped get him to stop worrying about the shape of his swing and instead focus on getting into good counts where he can swing hard.”
That could explain why King’s resurgence started in September. Oddly, the fact that King first got the key feedback from a Nats coach has been widely overlooked.
I know that if you’re winning at the major-league level, the minor-league records don’t matter. But it sure seems to me that the best teams have not just productive farm systems, but winning farm systems.
Is there a limit to how many coaches or other staff a team can have in their various minor-league teams?
I don’t think so… and FWIW, it’s a lot more than it used to be.
Breaking this into two posts so the spam filter doesn’t block it.
Here’s the Nats affiliates coaching staffs from last season: https://nationalsprospects.com/2024/12/nationals-name-2025-farm-managers-coaches/
And here is the Dodgers’: https://www.mlb.com/press-release/press-release-dodgers-announce-2025-minor-league-coaching-staffs
You might notice their list is quite a bit longer… pay special attention to the short season complex league staffs: the Dodgers have 19(!) staff, the Nats had 7.
As far as I know, there is no limit. Especially, when it would be easy to circumvent this with “roving” coaches.
Well, it sure seems like that would be a great place to pour money. I bet all the 12 coaches that the Dodgers have over the Nats cost less than Josh Bell, and a better farm system could probably have produced an OK first baseman for the league minimum, let alone a couple starters, relievers, and more AAA depth.