It wasn’t supposed to go like this. When the Nationals looked to jumpstart their rebuild by trading Juan Soto to the Padres at the 2022 Trade Deadline, I imagine they expected to be reaping the competitive rewards by this point. It’s not often that you can acquire four foundational pieces of a future window of contention in one fell swoop — in the Nationals’ case a windfall of James Wood, MacKenzie Gore, CJ Abrams, and Robert Hassell III looked like enough to remake their farm system entirely and form
the core of extended success in the future.
Fast-forward three-and-a-half years and it’s hard to say the Nationals are in a better place competitively than the day after they made that blockbuster. 2025 was supposed to be the first year that it all started coming together, the year that the fruits of that trade would would pay off in the form of on-field performance. Instead, the Nationals endured a train wreck of a season with 96 losses.
They fired 2019 World Series-winning manager Dave Martinez and longtime team president Mike Rizzo in July after a sluggish start, creating massive upheaval just days before the MLB Draft and weeks before the trade deadline. They traded away one of the aforementioned foundational pieces of the Soto trade, sending Gore to the Rangers for a quintet of prospects to seemingly restart a rebuild that was supposed to be complete. By the end of the season, they found themselves dead-last in the NL East with the third-worst record in baseball. They had been leapfrogged by the upstart Marlins, who exited their own rebuild ahead of schedule, and were miles behind the Phillies, Braves, and Mets, whose spending effectively prevents the Nationals from climbing higher than fourth in the division for the foreseeable future.
The sum result of these developments is another dreary outlook for 2026. No matter which way you slice it, pretty much every projection system pegs them as a bottom-three team in MLB. FanGraphs forecasts a 94-loss season, third-worst and ahead of the Rockies and White Sox, with just a 0.7-percent chance to make the playoffs. PECOTA is even more pessimistic, pegging them for 96 losses — again, third-worst behind the Rockies and Cardinals — with a minuscule 0.5-percent playoff odds. Only the Rockies (23.0) are projected for less overall fWAR than the Nationals (25.6), Washington projected as the fourth-worst offense (17.1 batting wins) and the second-worst pitching staff (8.4 pitching wins) in the sport.
There’s not much help coming from outside either, as the Nationals were one of the quietest teams of the winter. Their most notable offseason addition saw them steal promising young catcher Harry Ford from the Mariners for a middle-inning reliever, and while they should be praised for that piece of business (since even a quality bullpen arm only matters so much for a rebuilding club), it’s still pretty disappointing for their biggest splash to be a relatively unproven, recently graduated prospect. They inked a pair of fifth starters to one-year deals in Miles Mikolas and Foster Griffin, so at least they’ll have a warm body at all five spots in the rotation.
Turning attention to the composition of the roster, there are a few bright spots in an otherwise bleak landscape. Wood had something of a breakout in 2025 and is expected to lead the line with a 128 wRC+ and 3.1 fWAR. He nearly set the single-season strikeout record with 221 (two shy of 2009 Mark Reynolds, pre-iconic Yankees tenure), but he can absolutely destroy a baseball, socking 31 homers at age-22. However, Wood is the only hitter on the roster with a projected wRC+ above 106 and the only player on the roster pegged for more than three wins.
Abrams turned in a decent three-win campaign last season in wake of a publicly embarrassing end to 2024 and is expected to just about replicate that production. A lot of the sheen has come off the second banana to LSU teammate Paul Skenes in the 2023 Draft, Golden Spikes Award winner Dylan Crews, but the 24-year-old should get a decent runout in 2026. Zooming out, however, it’s not a pretty picture — there’s not a single hitter projected to slug at least 30 home runs nor drive in at least 100 runs.
It’s even more depressing on the pitching side of the ball. They don’t have a single arm projected to reach two fWAR, and none of their starters are expected to log an ERA below 4.00 nor post a strikeout rate above 21.2-percent. Their rotation looks to be a cobbled-together mess, none of their starters projected to reach the 30 start threshold, though seven players are projected to make at least 13 starts. The bullpen is even worse — FanGraphs’ prediction for their best reliever: Yankees castoff Clayton Beeter (who admittedly pitched very well after arriving at the deadline for Amed Rosario).
Suffice to say there is not much to look forward to for baseball fans in the nation’s capital. The Nationals are more likely to deal away the remaining two blue chips of that Soto trade — Wood and Abrams — at the deadline than they are to contend for the playoffs. Washington was supposed to be competitive in 2026, but with erstwhile Red Sox executive Paul Toboni now steering the ship as the new president of baseball operations for a young front office, all signs point to them being back to square one.
More Pinstripe Alley MLB team season previews will be available here.
