To the Rangers for 5 prospects.
I'll delve into it more when we have the names but the Rangers system is weaker but in part due to injury and bad 2025s - which yes, I know but these guys can turn around pretty quickly.
The name that is in there Gavin Fien, a guy that's arguably Top 2-4 in the Rangers system but also arguably outside the Top 100 overall. He is supposed to hit well and profiles to be a decent fielding 3B or a 1B/RF type (good enough glove to play SS in HS, not slow but probably not quick enough to be a major league SS). But he's 18 and with 10 A-ball games under his belt a long way off.
Prepare to stink!
https://www.mlb.com/news/mackenzie-gore-trade-to-rangers-from-nationals
UPDATE :
Names already in. We were never going to see Sebastian Walcott (their best prospect and a legit top one in baseball) but I was hoping to see some of the arms that looked good but had off years for reasons.
Alejandro Rosario was one of them. A real good arm but out until 2027. Which is worse when he already missed all of 2025. (He tried to wait out needed TJ surgery but it didn't work and he got it recently) That means he'll be throwing again after a full two years off and at age 25 not throwing in AA yet. But still one of the names I hoped to see.
Devin Fitz-Gerald is a nothing IF. A kid but one that projects to have no pop and no one is raving about any of his other skills. Will have to surprise.
Yeremy Cabrera is another kid (under 20 last year) this one being all skills and hoping to see it translate into... something. The speed does work on the basepaths and he has a good eye but that's about it right now. That's not nothing but those are your complimentary skills.
Abimelec Ortiz is a non-athletic (for baseball players - more athletic than us probably) 24 yo with pop but swings and misses a bit much and gets eaten alive by lefties. Maybe there's a platoon bat here, but probably not.
As a Nats fan, this is not a good sign for the future on multiple different levels. Not nearly a good enough return, and the top two pieces are YEARS away. Things are going to get really bleak. Not giving much confidence in Taboni at all.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't bother me that the top two pieces are young. They can always be traded for any value they may have in a year or two, or whenever the Nats stop stinking. But I agree with anon 1:19--meh return.
DeleteWelp, see ya later Mack. I’m okay with him being gone, but the reason why is what is depressing. Looks like a lengthy re-rebuild ahead. And with the return Toboni brought back (nothing in the top 100) it seems like they went quantity over quality. Which is fine if he’s just trying to plunge out all the Rizzo crap from this toilet of an organization.
ReplyDeleteI think Wood will be gone if and when this team makes a “run” at the post season in 2029-2030. It doesn’t matter. I guess the action in Fredericksburg is more compelling (and cheaper) than the AAAA team in DC.
And with the inevitable lockout (doom!) then all of this hope for the future gets really tough to digest. You’re a good man for following this team Harper. Thank you.
I can accept this team won’t be competitive in 2026 and thus trading Gore is the smart move. What I can’t stomach is not having a competitive team around Wood for his prime years, and it feels like the prospect timeline is not gonna line up
ReplyDeleteSo trade Wood (and Abrams too)
ReplyDeleteWho lost this trade. The Nats, of course. Does this actually surprise any one? The problem starts at the top and won't be solved until the top is removed.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is the nats will likely never get future value out of the players acquired im this trade (in WAR) that approaches the value the nats would have gotten from Gore this year and next. They also seem to have sold at one of the worst times of the year.
ReplyDeleteToboni was left with a mediocre farm system and a bad big league club. This trade had to be done. Abrams and Young sound like they'll be moved too.
ReplyDeleteThere are differing opinions on these guys, but I haven't seen anyone talk about Fitz-Gerald the way you did. Not sure where that's coming from.
Eric Longenhagen posted an analysis of the prospects involved in the trade over on Fangraphs: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cherry-blossom-seeds-washington-eyes-rebirth-with-five-prospect-haul-in-gore-trade/ Interesting points from the article are that he's lower on Fien than most other prospect rankers (as he notes himself), but speaks much more positively on Fitz-Gerald than Harper does (like Ryan, above, I don't know where this down position is coming from). Ortiz he sees as having the potential to play at 1B for the Nats this year..
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting part in the article is that Rosario's delayed TJ was apparently caused by a different medical issue that had to be taken care of before he could get Tommy John. This is both comforting (in that the Rangers weren't just half-assing things or Rosario himself refusing necessary treatment in favor of blind hope) and worrisome (because now there's another, unknown problem floating around that may or may not impact the future).
Overall, Longenhagen is pretty positive about the return, which is a nice change. Most of the fanbase seems pretty doomerist about it, though I think that may have to do with the fact that the prospects brought back won't be hitting MLB for another 3+ years rather than the prospects themselves, and what that says about the FO's expectations. Given that Toboni's #1 priority seems to be to build out the farm system, I feel like the new FO looked at what we had in the system and our player development pipeline and reached immediately for the airsick bags.
Unfortunately, it's hard to argue with that assessment. To have any reasonable chance of competing soon ('27-'28), the Nationals would have to turn most or all of Lile, Crews, House, Ford, Ortiz, Cavalli, Alvarez, and Herz into above-average major-league starters. That would create a core around Wood that could be then finished off with free agents. If most of those miss, then there is no team until the Sykora, Susana, Willits, etc. types start reaching the bigs, and a miserable epitaph to the post-WS Rizzo era.
With that in mind, I'm hoping that Abrams is kept around until the deadline, both because it means that the FO is giving the young MLB players a chance to show what they can do under Butera & Co.'s tutelage and because a strong first half could get some of the bad taste of last year's finish out of potential buyer's mouths.
From what I've seen Longenhagen is as high on Fitz-Gerald as anyone. "Nothing" was too strong. I shouldn't dismiss a early draft round 19 yo after 10 games like that. And he does have a clear skill in identifying the strike zone and making contact.
ReplyDeleteLook - any guy that is going to be mostly scouting report like F-G is, with limited very poor stats outside of rookie ball is going to have the widest difference between what I think (I heavily value A-ball up stats and downplay scouting) and what they say (scouting is naturally a "what they can be" situation that tends to upplay the potential).
Baseball competition is CRUSHING. Nearly every hitter on the Nats last year, good or bad, was doing something impressive at 19/20/21. Even the other guys brought in - Ortiz showed PRODIGIOUS power in the complex league. Cabrera did better (albeit with more time) in the complex league at the same age. If I'm more positive about F-G what does it say about these guys?
I could have been safer and said "scouted well, hasn't performed and got hurt but has the next couple years to show us what he can do" but sometimes I just gut it. Prove me wrong, Fitzy. Prove me wrong.
Also while I say what I say I'm rooting for everyone. I hope he's great!
ReplyDeleteThis is not unlike where we were last year: waiting for a bunch of kids with potential to emerge as big leaguers. You can bet against this risk in two ways: bring in vets who aren't the future but cut into the kids' playing time, or hope for the best and get the second wave ready. It looks like we're getting the second wave. That said, much of the 2027 season could be lost to contract negotiations, which has to weigh against the mature veteran option.
ReplyDeletestill no excuse for not spending any money. SerAnthony just went 2 years/20mm; we sure could have used him.
ReplyDeleteI, too, am excited about the Nats' seventh straight season of not being competitive.
ReplyDeleteIf you are excited now, just wait until the ninth season!
DeleteThe Nats could use all the money they saved being cheap over the last 5 years to field a team likely to get to 63 wins. You might make your franchise more valuable by not being a laughingstock of the league. It’s amazing how many internet commenters totally blame Rizzo for the Nats and have total faith that the Lerners will spend again. Luckily, this commentariat is much better than average.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we blame the Lerners for the team not spending like the Red Sox or Phillies or even the Mariners. We blame Rizzo for the team being cheap and bad instead of being cheap and competitive. The hope for the new FO is that they can help the Nats at least be the Brewers, Rays, or Guardians, while simultaneously praying that something changes with ownership (team sale, 2027 CBA instituting a floor, whatever) to actually increase the budget.
DeleteI think that's correct - we'd all prefer the team to be both well run and well funded, but if I had to pick a path to 85-win median projections in perpetuity, I'd rather the team be well funded than well run.
DeleteI just don't care about efficiency in this context, and I don't want my fandom complicated by having to root for one of the most aggressive anti-labor ownership and management groups.
I think this was a pretty terrible trade, even though I'm more forgiving than most fans about the expected timeline for these guys. I'd prefer they get the best package possible and then worry about the making the pieces fit. You'll need good players in 5 years too.
ReplyDeleteMy problem with the trade is that it's a bulk deal without much star potential. Rosario may be the exception there, and if he hadn't had his injury issues, the trade would feel close to fair, but missing two seasons is no joke and there's a reason that no one still has him in their top 100.
Like Harper often point out, there are dozens of young guys with interesting tools who fail for every one that becomes even a 2 WAR/yr player over a 3+ year prime window. Trading Gore and not even getting a single FV50 is bonkers. I'd have been pushing to get an FV60 as the main return, and failing that held the line at 2 FV50s. Packages like this one become absolutely nothing a huge chunk of the time. And that's fine when you're trading a rental, or someone whose surplus value is dinged by a near market salary, or when the player isn't that exciting, but when it's 2 years of a cheap SP3 with ace upside, wow, that is not what I was hoping we'd get and if I'm Toboni and this is the best offer, I pass and enjoy watching Gore pitch.
That all said, I have been slightly mollified by the pundits, who seem to score it as less of a bloodbath than I had it. Maybe I (and many of us and Baseball Trade Values etc) have been drastically overvaluing Gore. But Gore is also the exact type of player where my enjoyment outstrips his objective value, and that makes his departure for a middling return hard to stomach even if it's just a bad trade and not a disaster.
To your point, there are only so many good major league players and trading a proven one should require a lot of value. For instance, I looked at the splits and I think the Nats traded 12 WAR of Max and Trea for what had amounted to 1.2 major league WAR of the 4 dudes they got back. Obviously that trade broke badly, but the concept remains.
ReplyDeleteI agree with SMS. This trade looks awful to me. It seems like the Nats were bluffing about letting Gore pitch and trading him a month or two into the year after he pitches like he did at the beginning of last year. Also, I don't see all the hate for Rizzo and praise for Toboni. So far they are doing the same things - trading for pitching prospects that need TJ surgery and banking on them being awesome afterward. Not getting at least 1 top 100 player for Gore is just laughably bad in my opinion.
ReplyDelete