Paul Toboni made a bunch of moves to the 40-man roster this afternoon. None of them were huge moves individually, but together the moves created a lot of space on the 40-man roster. With the offseason here, Paul Toboni will look to optimize that 40-man roster as much as possible.
Earlier this afternoon, it was announced that two players were DFA’d from the 40-man. Those guys were Ryan Loutos and Trey Lipscomb. Loutos actually got claimed by the Mariners, while Lipscomb was unclaimed and sent to Triple-A.
While Loutos was ineffective with the Nats, he has a deep pitch mix and throws pretty hard.
Lipscomb was a former third round pick, who showed promise in the Minors in 2023. He was the talk of Spring Training in 2024 and was competing for Luis Garcia Jr’s starting second base job. However, he has not shown much life with the bat in the big leagues.
There were also procedural moves to activate a few players from the 60-day IL. If Trevor Williams or DJ Herz still are not close to recovery from their surgeries, they can always go back on the 60-day IL.
Then a bit later, it was announced that reliever Zach Brzykcy was DFA’d and claimed by the Marlins. Even though he got lit up in the MLB, this one stung a little bit. He showed so much promise as a prospect before undergoing Tommy John Surgery. Brzykcy has not been quite the same since coming back. He still has some good stuff that the Marlins seem to like.
As teams enter the offseason, they often churn through a lot of guys on the back end of their 40-man roster. Teams need space to add new free agents or prospects they want to protect from the Rule 5 draft. The Nats will likely add Jake Bennett to their 40-man roster at some point to protect him from the Rule 5 draft.
Right now, the Nationals 40-man is at just 34 players. This allows Paul Toboni to be very flexible. He can add some guys on waivers he likes, or keep the spots open for more flexibility heading into free agency. Looking at the 40-man, there is still some fat to trim if Toboni wanted more space.
Paul Toboni will have a good chance to remake this roster in his image from top to bottom, and do that quickly. Whether that is small moves like waiver claims, or a big move like a MacKenzie Gore trade, Toboni has a chance to bring in his own guys.
Of course, executives need to be humble enough to know that some of the old regime’s guys are worth keeping around, but Toboni should want to build this thing in his image. Right now he is doing that with the back end of this roster. A few days ago he DFA’d Mason Thompson, Shinnosuke Ogasawara and Eduardo Salazar. Now he has made these moves. We should see a lot of fresh faces in DC as we head into 2026.
