The Nationals have admitted defeat on yet another first round draft pick from the 2010’s. While the Nats were having a magical turnaround in the summer of 2019, Mike Rizzo drafted Jackson Rutledge with the 17th overall pick. He did not work out, and the Nats new regime officially admitted that last night when they DFA’d Rutledge.
The Nats needed
to remove someone from the 40-man roster to add new signing Max Kranick, and Rutledge was the guy. Despite Rutledge’s pedigree, the fact he was DFA’d did not come as much of a surprise. He just has not been productive enough to stick around in the big leagues.
Rutledge has appeared in 71 games, with five starts. In his career, Rutledge has an ERA of 6.29. This season he only made one disastrous MLB appearance, where he allowed 7 runs in 1.1 innings. At that point, it really felt like the writing was on the wall for the former first rounder.
In 2025, Rutledge was a full time big leaguer for the first time. He was a mainstay in the Nats bullpen. While he had some moments of success, there was more bad than good. He posted a 5.77 ERA in 63 outings last year. Despite throwing in the mid-90’s, Rutledge’s fastball was extremely hittable.
That has been one of the stories of his career. For a guy who was touted as having elite stuff coming out of the draft, he has always been hittable. Even in Single-A, hitters were not having trouble picking up his stuff. In 2021, he posted an ERA of 7.68 in various levels of A ball and in 2022, he had an ERA of 4.90 for the Fred Nats. For a 6’8 guy with a mid-90’s heater and a wipeout slider, he was always shockingly hittable.
Part of that is due to the fact that he does not take advantage of his big frame. Despite being a massive pitcher, Rutledge has below average extension down the mound. That means he is not a very deceptive guy. His fastball shape is also very ordinary, which was a problem for him. Coming out of junior college, Rutledge could dominate with pure velocity, but he could not do that in pro ball.
Despite the rough start to his pro career, Rutledge did appear to turn a corner in 2023. He posted a 3.71 ERA in 23 starts split between Double-A and Triple-A. That success earned him a big league call up in 2023. However, the success never came in the big leagues.
That 2023 turned out to be an outlier. Rutledge posted an ERA above 6 in AAA the following year. After that, he became a full time reliever. He had some success in that role in the big leagues at the start of the 2025 season. However, as we mentioned, that success did not last.
There is a pretty good chance that Rutledge goes unclaimed and remains in the Nats organization. If that happens, he will be off the 40 man roster, and will officially just be organizational depth, which he pretty much was already.
Mike Rizzo’s drafts from 2012 onwards were rough, but his stretch between 2017-2019 was his worst work. In that three year stretch, the Nats took Seth Romero, Mason Denaburg and Jackson Rutledge in the first round. Those drafts are a big reason why the Nats had to enter a rebuild.
You can talk about ownership’s lack of spending, and that is a real problem. However, all of those draft misses added up for this organization. It is tough to build an entire team through free agency, especially in a medium sized market like DC. You need homegrown talent to be flowing through the system, and the Nats just did not have that.
Hopefully the new regime can change that, and they are already showing signs that they are. The Nats minor league teams are having more success than they have had in many years. Prospects like Eli Willits, Ronny Cruz, Devin Fitz-Gerald and Seaver King are also having monster years.
As we head into the future, I hope the Nats can build a young core of homegrown players and augment them with free agent talent. That is what the Nats did when they were at their best in the 2010’s. They spent money, but there was also a core of young, controllable players. That eventually dried up once all the draft misses caught up to this organization.
With the 20th pick in that same 2019 draft, the Mariners took a different college pitcher in George Kirby. Obviously that one is working out a lot better. The Mariners taking guys like Kirby and the Nats taking guys like Rutledge are a big reason why the two teams are in such different spots. With a new front office that has a rich history scouting the amateur draft, I think the Nats will be on the winning side of these sorts of things before too long.
