The Nats aren't internationally known

We often use the term "lottery ticket" to refer to different things - later round draft picks, trade pieces that are low minor guys with lots of talents and lots of problems - but really international signings are the true baseball lottery tickets. If you look over the years of signings maybe one of the top two guys becomes a star and after that... hoo boy it's a mess. You pay a lot - as much as some first round draft picks* - but because you are looking at much younger players the variability of what you get is all over the place. 

Take 2015.  People loved Vladdy Jr. He ended up getting the 4th most money.  The guys who got more money Yadier Alvarez, Lucious Fox, and Jhailyn Ortiz.  Names sound familiar? They shouldn't. They aren't big time prospects anymore. Hell, Alvarez is out of baseball entirely. You know who signed that year as well? Juan Soto.  He was a highly touted prospect but I can name a handful that signed for more and went nowhere. Anyway the point is - these are true lottery tickets. You put in a lot of money and the likelihood is you will get nothing but you gotta go in because when you do hit... well Vlad Jr and Juan Soto!

Early on the Nats were hesitant to sign internationally, with good reason though. Their first major signing you might remember was Smiley Gonzalez, the super young hot prospect SS, who was actually a guy years older named Carlos Lugo. Around the same time Bowden, and especially Jose Rijo got caught doing some shady stuff in the Dominican Republic. The minor league system had to be completely remade and it's hard to spend money when you can't trust what's in place yet.

For a few years the organization did little then it started to follow an interesting pattern. It would spend some money going after a going they really liked, then back off for a few years. This had some to do with the way MLB balanced signings - you got less $ if you did well, if you signed a lot of guys you had some tax and big signing restrictions penalties - but it was also the sign of a hesitant team wading back into international waters so to speak. Also, it kind of makes sense, in my opinion. The guys that hit are usually the best prospects so you gotta get one of them but you can't get them every year. Baseball makes sure of it.

In 2010 they team tried to go all in on Yuneksy Maya (major league deal 4yrs/6mill) and threw tiny money at a ton of players. In 2013 they went after and got Robles and Anderson Franco, though neither cost that much. In 2015 they went and got Juan Soto, who was a well regarded prospect, and in 2016 they spend a ton to get Yasel Antuna, Luis Garcia and Yadiel Hernandez. These were not the dollars that other teams spent on the top prospects - which got fairly ridiculous and basically the teams forced baseball to stop themselves with a new hard cap rule - but it was significant especially considering how tiny the spending was in previous years.

In 2010 the quantity approach got them Difo and Rafeal Martin. 2011 got then Pedro Severino, Rafeal Bautista and Raudy Read and in 2012 they found Reynaldo Lopez. 

All in all the early years 2010-2012 didn't quite work out, but they did manage to get some organizational depths and some fringy prospects to deal and provide minimal production down the road. 2013 and 2015 were obviously better years, they nearly hit a jackpot in Robles and did with Soto. These guys are all the pieces that helped make the Nats what they were. As for who they are now, well guys signed in 2014-2016 should be coming up and helping now and guys signed in 2017 and 2018 should be some of the Nats big time prospects. But we don't have that.

It started in 2014. That year was a complete wash and while they got Soto the next year and you don't turn that down, they got nothing else. To counter this drop going in on 2016 wasn't a bad idea, especially if you consider how the draft hadn't been very kind to them recently and with good records expected at least for a few more years they weren't likely to have any obvious great players fall into their laps.  Plus they could see spending changes on the horizon. It's hard to go all-in with a cap. So this idea was good but the execution failed. They didn't produce any guys who could help the team quick enough to halt the slide, nor any slow building big time prospects.  Luis Garcia is probably the best one and might end up being pretty good but he's a fringy Top 100 type. Worse by going all in on 2016 they kept themselves out of 2017 and 2018 best targets due to the singing rules.

I have the hardest time seeing anything wrong though with what they've done here. This was more bad timing than anything. Like I said, these are lottery tickets, the Nats hit a string of bad luck getting depth then went all in at their last opportunity, knowing they needed to to help fix a problem, and crapped out. Sure scouting matters and they could have done better, but any look at the international signees in any year makes it clear that this outcome is easily possible. 2016 itself seemed to be a little off year in terms of talent making it even harder. 

It was the final pieces of the puzzle though. The draft misses and the trades out emptied the Nats out. The international draft couldn't fix that. They'd have to sign FAs and they finally missed on some. The outcome of all that is going from a consistent division winner to an under .500 team. If they had held on any a fire sale might not have happened, but it didn't happen. So here we are. New team, young players, and a future that is at least a year away.

*more for a few years but the people in charge "fixed" that