Despite limited appearances with the Atlanta Braves during the 2026 season, 1B/DH Rowdy Tellez made a kinda-sorta memorable impression.

How Acquired

Atlanta signed Tellez as a minor league free agent at the end of Spring Training. After playing in the World Baseball Classic with Mexico, Tellez inked a deal with the Braves on March 23, 2026.

What were the expectations?

With Matt Olson in the midst of his consecutive games streak keeping first base on lock, and fellow lefty-swinging first base/designated hitter Dominic Smith finding success early in the regular season, Tellez was an emergency option for the team at Triple-A.

As the organization has done in the past — and again in 2026 — the Braves wanted a proven big league regular at Triple-A should Atlanta need to fill a first base gap during the regular season.

Performance-wise, Tellez came into 2026 the veteran of eight major league seasons with five major league teams, but had little to show for it: 0.1 fWAR in over 2,600 career PAs. While his bat had a fair bit of pop (.203 ISO), he generally underperformed his inputs (.314 wOBA, .330 xwOBA) due to a tendency to hit fly balls to center. Combine that with poor play at first base and no speed, and you get a replacement level guy.

Up until 2023, Tellez was actually hitting at an above-average clip. Since then, his career had kind of collapsed, as he was sub-replacement with the Brewers in ‘23, the Pirates in ‘24, and the Mariners in ‘25, before doing just enough to avoid finishing below replacement for a third straight year in a tail-end stint with the Rangers. As such, Tellez’ forecast via projections was yet another “replacement level at best” affair.

2026 results

Tellez played in only seven regular season games for Atlanta but made the most of his opportunities, ish. In 11 PAs he got two hits, including a pinch-hit homer against his former club, the Brewers, and walked once. In his sole start of the year, two days after hitting the pinch-hit homer, he got his only start, which drove in two.

Despite only being around for about three weeks, and taking a ride on the DFA/minor league deal carousel after the Braves removed him from the roster, the Braves nonetheless opted to carry Tellez on the Wild Card Series roster, and then actually kept him over Dominic Smith for the NLDS. He appeared in three NLDS games, garnering four PAs that included two walks, a strikeout, and a field out.

Tellez didn’t actually exceed replacement level, but it was all of 11 PAs. His previous low in an MLB season was 73 PAs in his debut year.

What went right?

Had Tellez joined the Braves at the beginning rather than the end of Spring Training, could he have earned the left-handed designated hitter role that Smith held for much of the year. As it it worked out, when the season concluded, it was Tellez on Atlanta’s active playoff roster and Smith on the outside looking in.

Though it was a tiny sample, Tellez actually had an incredible 11 PAs. He had three strikeouts and two easy flyouts, but did pretty well in his other six PAs:

• Robbed of a bloop hit
• Liner hit right to an infielder
• The 106 mph two-run single
• A walk
• A warning track out that might be a homer if not for the fact that it was in San Diego
• His pinch-hit homer

Put those together and you get a .506 xwOBA… with only a .331 wOBA and 108 wRC+ to show for it.

This then continued in the postseason in even more abbreviated fashion, because his one field out to go with two walks and a strikeout was a 108 mph screamer hit (off old-new Brave Evan Phillips) right at the right field: an aggregate .349 wOBA and .560 xwOBA.

As it shook out, Tellez’ biggest contribution game in NLDS Game Three, where he pinch-hit for Ha-Seong Kim against Yoshinobu Yamamoto as the tying run, with the Braves down 3-0 in the fifth. He drew a walk (and was replaced by Brewer Hicklen), possibly setting up a key rally for the Braves… but they managed just two groundouts and came away with loading the bases with just a single run. (The game also ended in that 3-1 score.)

What went wrong?

Tellez didn’t secure an MLB-affiliated opportunity until after the conclusion of the World Baseball Classic. His time on the big league roster was limited to seven games, the fewest since he debuted in 2018. Other than the shortened 2020 season, he’s appeared in more than 100 games every season going back to 2019.

He hit okay at Gwinnett (.364 wOBA and 116 wRC+,.355 xwOBA), but that’s probably somewhat disappointing for a longtime MLB veteran whose only contribution tends to be his bat. Still, probably the biggest disappointment is that he executed well in the limited opportunities he got, but hit the ball right at guys in a few key spots.

And, there was him getting carved up by Mason Miller in his only start, with a runner on third and one out in extra innings. It happens to pretty much everyone, but that one PA tipped his season WPA tally into well into the negative.

2027 outlook

Tellez will play next season at 32. He’s a poor defender limited to 1B/DH, and isn’t an asset at first base. He’s a walk-and-power guy, through and through, but both of those have been more sporadic since his career year in 2023.

His days a regular at the big league level may be over — but he’s probably still an okay bench bat who can provide quality PAs against right-handed pitchers. That bodes will for him to find a job as a big league reserve or Triple-A stash. A return to Atlanta on a minor league deal could be plausible, but with the labor situation, Tellez will likely have to wait until Spring Training — whenever that is — to find an opportunity.

He still projects as replacement level at best going forward.

On March 23, 2009, Joe Girardi made what seemed at the time to be a fateful decision. The Yankees skipper called Nick Swisher into his office to let him know he’d lost out on the starting right field job. Despite turning some heads in camp, Swisher was still on the heels of a disastrous season in Chicago and battling a well-regarded incumbent for the job. The normally ebullient Swisher was crestfallen, retreating to a half-hearted platitude. “I guess we’re just going to see how it plays out,” he said to the press after that day’s game.

Things played out pretty well for Swisher that year. A little over seven months later, he stood in right field as Robinson Canó handled a routine groundball for the final out of the Yankees’ 27th title. The forgotten man who’d beat him out in March was forced to watch from the sidelines.

Xavier Clifford Nady
Born: November 14, 1978 (Carmel, CA)
Yankees Tenure: 2008-09

Xavier Nady was born in 1978 as the sixth generation of Xavier Nadys, a tradition dating back to 16th century France. He grew up in Monterey County, taking home Northern California High School Player of the Year honors at Salinas High before being drafted in the fourth round by the Cardinals. Nady passed up pro ball for the college ranks, heading to UC Berkeley. He left in 1997 as the school’s all-time leader in home runs in RBIs, riding his success to a second-round draft selection by the Padres.

The 21-year-old had the uncommon distinction of jumping straight from college ball to the major leagues. Even more uncommon, he received a single at-bat in a September 2000 game, recording a base hit, before spending the next two years honing his skills in the minors. Nady’s hit tool played immediately, as he became a top-40 prospect per Baseball America. When he got the call to the Show once again in ‘03, the Padres had every reason to believe this promotion would be for good.

As with so many top prospects, though, Nady struggled to fulfill expectations. In his next three seasons in San Diego, while splitting time between the outfield and first base, he hit below league average, slashing an underwhelming .262/.319/.413. A surprising 82-80 division champion (MLB’s all-time worst for a full season until the .500 Astros of 2026), the Padres gave him just five trips to the plate during the Division Series sweep at the hands of the Cardinals.

Following the 2005 campaign, San Diego cut bait, flipping Nady to the Mets for Mike Cameron. Thus began an odyssey that would lead Nady to play for eight teams over his next eight seasons. He hit a little better over the next two years with New York and Pittsburgh, performing well enough to maintain a starting job but, with a limited defensive profile, struggling to provide much value. Entering the ‘08 season, at the age of 29, it seemed Nady’s die was cast.

That’s what made his performance that year so shocking. Through July 25th, he was hitting .330 with 13 homers and 57 RBIs, joining Nate McLouth and Jason Bay to form one of the best outfields in baseball.

Unfortunately for Pittsburgh, their franchise had little else going for it in an eventual 95-loss campaign (their 16th of a staggering 20 consecutive losing seasons), making Nady expendable. The Yankees, struggling to keep pace in a strong AL East with the defending champion Red Sox and the upstart newly-christened Rays, acquired him in advance of the Trade Deadline alongside lefty reliever Dámaso Marte in exchange for a package of prospects led by outfielder José Tábata.

Nady provided an immediate jolt, winning AL Player of the Week honors in his first full week in pinstripes as he went 10-for-19 with three homers and 10 RBI. While he failed to hit for average like he had in Pittsburgh, he ended up with 12 long balls in 59 games, helping to fortify an aging lineup dealing with injuries to Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui.

It wouldn’t be enough to keep the Yankees from missing the playoffs for the first time since 1993, though, leading to an offseason full of upheaval. Alongside more prominent moves to acquire CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, and Mark Teixeira via free agency, that included a trade for Swisher from the White Sox.

After nabbing the starting right field job in the spring, Nady entered the ‘09 season with enthusiasm and focus, resolved to improve his plate discipline, the one knock against what was an exceptional season at the plate the year prior. Alas, it was not to be. Just a week into the season, he suffered a UCL injury. Nady put up a good fight, attempting a minor-league rehab stint in July, but ultimately required Tommy John surgery, ending his season and, with it, his tenure in the Bronx. It would be Marte, the far less heralded piece of the Pirates swap the year prior, who became an unlikely October hero, making seven scoreless appearances between the ALCS and World Series as a critical lefty specialist in the Yankees’ title run.

The itinerant Nady signed with the Cubs the next year but couldn’t recreate the magic of 2008. As he continued to battle injuries, he bounced to Arizona, then Washington, and then San Francisco, never again finding sustained success as he continued to struggle with debilitating injuries. In 2014, at the age of 35, he returned to the Padres for a brief swansong before hanging up his cleats for good.

Nady retired to San Diego, where he spent some time as a minor-league hitting coach in the Padres organization. As of 2020, he was working as a scout and recruiter for Boras Corp. While Nady’s career never reached the heights for which he may have hoped, he battled through adversity to play big-league ball for parts of 12 seasons. “I always wondered what could have been without the injuries, but I guess that comes with the nature of the game,” he said in 2020. “I felt honored to put on a big league uniform for all or parts of 12 seasons. There were ups and downs, injuries I couldn’t control that challenged me mentally and physically, but they gave me a deeper understanding of how good things can be and was I thankful for that.”

See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.

There are multiple reasons why the Phillies have not advanced at all in the playoffs since their run to the World Series in 2022. The most cited culprit is the offense, the group of players that goes dormant almost every October once the bright lights come on and the pitching gets tougher. But there is a good argument to be made that the bullpens that were built each year to help supplement a terrific starting rotation have been equally as responsible for the earlier and earlier and earlier exits the Phillies have suffered.

This offseason, the task at hand is once again to create a bullpen that has enough firepower to last an entire season and still have some effective arms once the postseason begins should the Phillies find themselves playing once again. At the end of 2026, there seemed to be only two reliable arms that Don Mattingly would call upon when the games got close. Dave Dombrowski bears some responsibility for this, but he at least had tried at the beginning of last year to build a group that would be resiliant.

What lies ahead for the Phillies this offseason? Can they muster up enough players that would choose to come here to build something close to a reliable bullpen?

How to improve the Phillies: catcher
How to improve the Phillies: infield
How to improve the Phillies: outfield
How to improve the Phillies: starting rotation

Who they have

The hierarchy right now for the major league bullpen probably sits somewhere like this:

Jhoan Duran
Jonathan Bowlan
Alex McFarlane
Tim Mayza
Caleb Kilian

These are the five that I feel most comfortable saying will begin 2027 in the bullpen with a pretty iron grip on a job. There are others here that are available as options:

Then you’ve got the minor leaguers that are currently Rule 5 draft eligible, but do possess some skills that are of interest:

Notice what you don’t see a lot of?

Left handed relief pitching is going to be a priority for the team this offseason. I’d assume that that will be a target they spend a lot of time on as they poke around the markets. Hopefully, they find some that have minor league options as well.

Free agent market

My goodness, where does one begin?

The free agent market for relief pitching is rife with options. Many of those options are not going to be ones the Phillies are interested in for a myriad of reasons. Instead, let’s focus on things the Phillies could be interested in. We have seen a trend when they have traded for relievers at the deadline where they are looking for velocity. They have traded for pitchers like Jhoan Duran, Carlos Estevez and Gregory Soto since 2022, three arms that have the ability to throw a baseball at high speeds. They have signed Brad Keller and David Robertson, guys with (at the time) strikeout stuff. They definitely have a type. So if we’re to scour the free agent market in search of who would be the options they would want to bring in, we can start there.

John Stolnis did a great job at looking at left handed options the team could be looking at this offseason, so there’s no reason to rehash that topic. We’ll zero in on the right handed options that might make some sense.

Bryan Abreu – The assumption here is that the team isn’t really looking for closer types. They already have one in Duran that is arguably one of the five best relievers in the sport right now. Signing someone like Abreu would give them a pitcher from the right side that has shown quality strikeout stuff in the past, but maybe had a bit of a blip in 2026. Abreu’s rates all went in the wrong direction – walk rate up, strikeout rate down – which is a bit concerning, but not truly fatal. He was still getting chase on the mound thanks slider/four-seam combination that has the quality to induce it. Last year’s struggles may even have cost him some money and/or years on the free agent market, making him more of a target for a front office that isn’t really keen on giving on long deals.

Pete Fairbanks – Speaking of rough seasons. Brought in as a possible “one year, let’s trade him at the deadline” candidate for Miami, Fairbanks proceeded to have one of the worst seasons of his career from a baseball card perspective. From the point of view of looking at peripherals, Fairbanks feels like the perfect candidate for the “Dombrowski Special” where he signs a veteran reliever for one year and $10 million. He had some issues (too many walks, too much hard contact) that would maybe have teams look at him a different way, but has the potential to rebound with maybe some better healthy and/or a few tweaks to his arsenal.

Jason Adam – Having two different injuries at the end of two different seasons makes the prospect of signing Adam a bit hazy. He ruptured his quadriceps tendon at the end of 2025, then had a right shoulder strain in the middle of 2026. Those are some serious injuries, but Adam did come back healthy from both issues. When he was healthy, he had good looking numbers on the scoreboard, but under the hood, things are iffy. He struck out almost half the number of batters he did the year before while also seeing his home run rate jump. Could it be the tic he lost in velocity? Maybe, but there would probably be enough success in his past that the team could take a stab at him.

Jonathan Loaisiga – This might be one of the better under the radar buys for a team looking into a reliever. Loaisiga will not have the same whiff or strikeout rates as others, but take a look at that Savant page. That’s a lot of red from a guy that entered 2026 on a minor league deal. Whatever tweaks the Diamondbacks made to Loaisiga’s game worked wonders as he amassed a pretty impressive 2.42/2.88 ERA/FIP season. Consider also that the pitching coach for Arizona (prior to getting let go) was Brian Kaplan, a former assistant to Caleb Cotham. There may be some shared ideas that Loaisiga could carry over were he to choose Philadelphia as his destination. This feels like a good buy at a not exorbitant price.

Blake Treinen – If the Braves can have a free agent piece from the Dodgers, maybe the Phillies can get their own. Of course, they’d be getting the inferior option were they to get Treinen, but again, maybe that would also drive price down. Treinen vacillated between good and bad in his last two years with the Dodgers, walking too many and giving up too many home runs. He’d be coming here as a solid middle inning pitcher as opposed to the late game monster Evan Phillips might be with the Braves, but considering the needs the Phillies have in the bullpen, solid might be good enough.

Trade market

Now, here is where things can get interesting. Usually, teams don’t really want to make big trades for relievers until they see whether what they have built in the offseason is working or not. That way, at the trade deadline, they can adjust on the fly and make a move then. This, though, is a more unusual offseason thanks to the impending threat of a lockout. Teams have indicated that they might be more inclined to trade veterans in an effort to protect younger players that could end up being more valuable if a salary cap is instituted. So, there might be an unusual amount of veteran relievers on the trade block than usual.

That doesn’t mean we will see a blockbuster involving someone like, say, Mason Miller getting moved. Usually, when you see someone of Miller’s talent moved, it is for younger, more cost controlled players that were just mentioned as being possibly even more valuable post-CBA finalization.

Predicted outcome

There will be relievers.

Oh yes, part of this offseason’s moves, whenever they might happen, will be relievers entering the Phillies fray. One would have to assume that based on their comments, they are looking to get a few different relievers to add to the mix while also maintaining a spot or two to have the ability to cycle back and forth between Lehigh Valley if needed. That would indicate to me that signing one veteran to a major league deal is almost guaranteed, but having multiple options on minor league deals is an avenue that is being heavily explored. If any of these relievers that they are talking to have minor league options, that would probably vault them to the very front of the line in negotiations.

Me personally, I’d like to see them roll the dice and sign Jonathan Loaisiga and Steven Okert, then flood their roster with minor league deals of higher upside plays, looking specifically at guys that are maybe coming off injury. Names like Hunter Harvey, Robert Stephenson, players of this ilk that might be fine with playing in Lehigh Valley with some kind of out clause to try and rebuild value that the Phillies can either use or discard if necessary.

When speaking to the media earlier this week, David Stearns identified first base as an area the Mets would look to upgrade, either with a full-time player or a platoon partner for Jared Young. Since then, two names have popped up as potential fits for that role: Alec Bohm and Ty France. 

France is coming off the best offensive year of his career after some time spent in the wilderness. After a strong start to his career, including an All-Star appearance in 2022, France hit the skids with authority. After signing with the Mariners for a $6.68 million deal ahead of the 2024 season, he was placed on outright waivers in July, putting up -0.2 bWAR. He continued to struggle with the Reds, with whom he signed for the remainder of that season. After a slightly better season in 2025 split between the Twins and Blue Jays, France returned to the club he broke in with, the Padres, on a minor league deal and put up one of the best years of his career. 

In 2026, France batted .295/.363/.502 with 21 home runs and 24 doubles. France is entering his age 32 season, and will likely be riding that to the biggest payday of his career. 

Bohm is in a very different situation, having lost most of the luster on what was once a solid, if unspectacular, big league career with the Phillies. Bohm’s 2026 line of .249/.315/.383 with 15 home runs looks miraculous when compared to his early season struggles, where he carried a .433 OPS through the first six weeks of the season. 

Bohm is also not a natural first baseman, though calling him natural at any position is somewhat misleading. However, compared to his butchery at third base, first base for Bohm makes a lot of sense. Bohm logged 424.2 innings at first base in 2026, committing six errors and putting up one Defensive Runs Saved Above Average. 

Either of these players would be competing with the aforementioned Jared Young, who impressed on both sides of the ball in his extended look last season due to the departure of Pete Alonso and the non-entity that was Jorge Polanco. Young batted .266/.330/.429 while playing 641.2 innings at first. 

There’s an outside chance that Polanco would get another crack at first base, but it seems like DH or bust for Polanco in 2027.

Here we have a nice view of the iconic Wrigley Field scoreboard, with the simple (non-digital) message board below it, a board that existed from 1982 until the Ricketts family bought the team in 2009. This photo was sent to me by BCB reader Cary Noren — and again, a reminder, if you have any Cubs/Wrigley photos you want me to sleuth, send ‘em along!

My first instinct was that this was in the later parts of that era with the “46” as the Cubs starting pitcher, which would be Ryan Dempster. Dempster started eight games against the Pirates at Wrigley Field during his Cubs career. But none of those eight games match the innings we see on the board.

So, I had to look at some other pitchers.

There were two other Cubs starting pitchers who wore 46 during this time frame: Steve Trachsel (1993-99) and Jason Bere (2001-02). (Trachsel also returned briefly to the Cubs in 2007, but did not start any games against the Pirates at Wrigley that year.)

Bere started four times against the Pirates at Wrigley in his two years with the Cubs. None of those games match what we see here.

Okay, so the Cubs No. 46 pitcher is Trachsel.

Trachsel started 186 games for the Cubs between 1993 and 1999. Oddly, only five of them were against the Pirates at Wrigley Field.

Only one of the five games matches what we see here. This game was played Tuesday, June 3, 1997. We are about to enter the bottom of the second inning and there’s no score. You can tell it’s an inning break — there’s a non-baseball message on the board and no batter, ball, strike or out is indicated.

The Cubs lost this game 3-1. The Pirates scored a run in the top of the third and the Cubs matched it with a solo home run by Scott Servais in the bottom of the inning. But that’s all the Cubs could score. Trachsel threw eight solid innings, allowing two runs on eight hits and striking out seven, but the Cubs did not muster any more offense, with just four other hits, all singles, apart from Servais’ home run. Mel Rojas, who had a terrible half year for the Cubs before being traded, allowed a run in the ninth that wrapped up the scoring. Attendance was 17,317, which pretty much matches the half-full bleachers we see. The No. 34 who started for the Pirates that afternoon was Steve Cooke.

What I find interesting is that in 1997, there were still very few people in the bleachers wearing team gear — just one Cubs T-shirt that I can see and just a few Cubs caps. It would take another few years before people regularly wore team gear to Wrigley Field.

Just another slice of history from our favorite ballpark, now from nearly 30 years ago.

While Seiya Suzuki’s market with the Seattle Mariners seems genuine, the M’s are more known for the road of reclamation than diamond-shaped pegs in diamond-shaped holes. OF Dylan Crews has been discussed as a “popular name in trade talks” according to multiple reports, including Washington Nationals beat writer Spencer Nusbaum of The Athletic. The right-handed hitting 24 year old has above-average range, checking boxes with every consecutive descriptor in this sentence for Seattle’s goals this winter. Seattle and Washington have well-aligned surpluses and needs, giving these rumors enough heft to consider in greater detail.

Crews is better known than most 79 wRC+ hitters with a .217/.285/.363 line with 225 big league games under their belt. The No. 2 overall pick in 2023 was co-stars with RHP Paul Skenes on a staggeringly dominant Louisiana State University squad which won the College World Series. Raised in the suburbs of Orlando, FL, Crews was considered a shoo-in, high-floor prospect with his mature, high-OBP approach, excellent athleticism, and oodles of contact paired with laser-sharp contact. He debuted in 2024, after starting the year in Double-A Harrisburg and could have easily been the heartbeat of the new era of Nationals baseball.

Instead, he’s seemingly on the block. That’s because his progression at the plate has been what many scouts feared. Here’s what the Baseball Prospectus scouting team had to say for Crews ahead of the 2024 campaign, see if you can spot the harbinger:

The second-overall pick in last year’s Amateur Draft, Crews is viewed by many as the best collegiate position prospect since Adley Rutschman. He already looks like a polished, five-tool player, flashing strong exit velocities with regularity, showing great bat-to-ball skills and excellent strike zone judgment. The glove should play in center field and Crews’ speed should make him a threat on the basepaths. You need to squint to find a weakness in his game, but it’s possible that a propensity to hit the ball on the ground might make his over-the-fence power simply good as opposed to elite. Crews demolished low-minors pitching before finishing the season with a brief stop at Double-A. He has an outside chance of making his major-league debut late this year and should be thrilling fans in the District of Columbia for years to come.

It’s the grounders, stupid. Hard contact on the ground is better than middling contact on the ground, to be sure, but if you’re hitting the ball hard into the dirt you’re sacrificing the extra-base hit potential many players need to thrive in a league where high-level defensive athleticism and size comes more standard each year. This was the concern with Crews, as it has been with many otherwise exceptional talents, including Julio Rodríguez. For the Nats, that had to change.

After disappointing 2024-25 campaigns, Washington made a bit of a statement by sending Crews down to Triple-A Rochester at the end of spring training. The goal there was to work on improving his mechanics and getting the ball into the air more. Working with Rochester hitting coach Shawn O’Malley, under the visitations and guidance of Nats minor league director of hitting C.J. Gillman (who is, you may recall, now the Mariners hitting coach), Crews had the best minor league stretch of his career by expected outcomes, and earned a May call-up back to the bigs.

And yet… the breakout didn’t quite come. While it was his best big league season at age 24, and not injury-hampered by the oblique malady that waylaid his 2025, a .223/.289/.374 line with an 82 wRC+ in 443 PA across 109 games is more fourth outfielder than second coming. You really can read into his line what you want to see, which makes it so tough to evaluate what Washington might want for him, though they’ve seemed to invest in James Wood, Daylon Lile, and Jacob Young as their trio of primary outfielders.

Do you buy Crews as the slugger in the clip below, who chopped his groundball rate by over 10% from the year before and remained within the navigational beacons at a 24.2% strikeout rate? Might we see a leap forward since he undershot his xwOBA by over 20 points, put up strong barrel and hard hit rates, and spent much of this year still getting used to mechanical adjustments? And is his above-average in-zone contact rate enough to draw a contrast between him and the inevitable Jarred Kelenic concerns?

Or do you see the pedestrian walk rates since turning pro and fear the balanced profile that made Crews such a dynamic threat is simply not cut out for big league ball. Kelenic concerns may not derive from his contact rates per se, but the fact that he’s done nearly all his damage thus far on fastballs. Perhaps you like his lefty-mashing ways, but don’t want to see Seattle pay a premium for essentially a weak-side platoon bat.

If Crews were a Mariner already, it’d be enough to sell me on at least another part-time role. But acquiring him would require moving one of their starting pitchers, almost certainly. It would likely cost Bryce Miller or Emerson Hancock to make the move, working in part off what our sister site Federal Baseball put together as value options for some potential trades. Getting a will-be-25 year old who won’t reach arbitration until at least 2028, with a peerless pedigree and a floor as a solid defensive outfielder who can cover every position and spell Brendan Donovan or Lazaro Montes is highly appealing.

But is he worth Seattle’s time to acquire? I am on the fence. If you see Crews as taking somewhat incremental strides forward the way hitters often do, I’m still hesitant. Baseball Prospectus sees Crews more favorably, having him as a league-average hitter by their Deserved Runs Created+ metric, accounting for his batted ball profile beyond just his results. That makes him already a big league regular, given good foot speed and glovework, with the upside for genuine excellence that’s rarely available at this age.

In a season Seattle might not get tons of time to acclimate due to the owners planned lockout, acquiring a corner outfielder who is already well-known by part of the coaching staff is an added edge. But wow, Crews has to hit, and in a season at long last likely make or break for Jerry Dipoto, it’s a big leap to put perhaps your primary upgrade of the season on a guy who’s next big year in the pros will be his first.

According to reporting from Spencer Nusbaum of the Athletic, the Nationals are unlikely to hand out multi-year deals to relief pitchers. Given how bad the bullpen was last season, this is probably not what fans want to be hearing. The Nats bullpen was truly painful to watch last season. With that in mind, not shopping at the top of the market is a risk.

While this is a risky move, and will not be popular with fans, there is logic behind this decision. Relievers are very volatile from year to year. Even the best bullpen arms in the sport can have sudden, unexpected fall-offs. A lot of the more analytically minded teams in the league do not love handing out big contracts to relievers, especially ones in their 30’s.

Last offseason was a great reminder of why some teams are hesitant. A lot of big name relievers signed large contracts early in the offseason. The likes of Edwin Diaz, Devin Williams, Robert Suarez and Ryan Helsley all signed multi-year deals. Out of those four pitchers, Suarez was the only one who lived up to his contract in year one. 

Meanwhile, Williams, Diaz and Helsley all posted ERA’s over 4. Phil Maton and Kyle Finnegan also struggled in the first year of their deals. There were some hits, such as Suarez, Luke Weaver and Tyler Rogers. However, giving these bullpen arms big money is a risky investment.

Arms such as Adrian Morejon, David Bednar and Alex Vesia would certainly win the headlines for Paul Toboni, but would they be worth the money? Morejon is going to be the most expensive, but he would also be the one I am most confident in. He does not turn 28 until February, and averages almost 100 MPH from the left side. There will be a crazy bidding war for him though, so I doubt the Nats end up winning that.

While Bednar and Vesia both have a long track record of success, history tells us they may not work out. Both of them have lost velocity over the past few years. It has not harmed them yet, but as they get deeper into their 30’s, that could be a concern. That is the type of thing Paul Toboni is absolutely paying attention to.

Even in Nats history, we have seen the risk of signing these relievers to long-term deals. The most prominent example of this is Will Harris. After five great years with the Astros, the Nats signed Harris to a 3-year deal starting in his age 35 season. His body did not hold up into his mid-30’s, and he only ended up making 28 appearances for the Nats.

We have laid out the risks of signing these relievers to multi-year deals now. However, there is a big risk in not taking action. This Nats bullpen set the all-time record for blown saves in 2026. You cannot just run back the same unit and expect different results.

Paul Toboni will have to do something to fix this bullpen. He started that process at the trade deadline, but that has to continue into the offseason. A pricey one-year deal for Raisel Iglesias is something I suggested yesterday. As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a bad one-year deal.

Obviously, that is not totally true, but there is logic behind that saying. Even if the player is bad, it only hurts you for one year. The team does not get anchored to a player who they quickly realize is not someone they want. I think this is the best way to find an impact arm while minimizing the risk.

Another option would be to make a trade for bullpen help. The Nats did that last trade deadline, but they went for unproven options. Will Dion looks like a hit and Yovanny Cruz clearly has potential, but the Nats need more.

If Paul Toboni were to trade for a reliever, it would have to be an established big league arm, preferably one with high leverage experience. In one of my Dylan Crews mock trades, I sent him to the Angels for Samy Natera Jr., a young, controllable bullpen piece who has already shown great swing and miss stuff. A trade along those lines makes a lot of sense, and seems like it would be in Toboni’s wheelhouse.

There is a world where Paul Toboni could make a good enough bullpen without giving out a multi-year deal. However, he would have to get creative to get that done. If the Nats signed Iglesias and traded for Natera, I would be very bullish on the bullpen entering 2027.

It is worth noting that there are some pieces currently on the roster. I like Orlando Ribalta, Will Dion, Erik Tolman, Brad Lord and Riley Cornelio. However, there is still a clear need for true high leverage guys. If Paul Toboni finds one or two more arms, I think the ‘pen would fall into place nicely. I understand not wanting to shell out a multi-year contract, but there still needs to be big moves to complete this bullpen.