Photo by Sol Tucker for TalkNats
We are a little over a day from turning the calendar to 2026. In the baseball offseason, time feels short when the month is January. That point marks about six weeks to the opening of Spring Training camps.
There will always be that fan who thinks winning is easy. Things were very different 11 years ago when the Washington Nationals won the NL East in 2014 and seemed to just need some tweaks to get them to the next step. The 2014 Nats roster was stacked. They had three consecutive winnings seasons, and two NL East titles in that span. But nothing is as easy as it looks on paper.
In early December 2014, the Nats traded LHP Ross Detwiler to the Texas Rangers for infielder Christopher Bostick and RHP Abel De Los Santos. A few days later, the Nats made a franchise changing deal when they traded outfielder Steven Souza Jr. and LHP Travis Ott for RHP Joe Ross and a PTBNL who was later named as Trea Turner. That trade would change the Nats’ future. Then the Nats traded RHP Tyler Clippard for third baseman Yunel Escobar to move Ryan Zimmerman to first base. The Nats made a whole bunch of minor league signings including Dan Uggla and Heath Bell, but did not make one MLB free agent signing during the entire offseason until well into January 2015.
Out of nowhere, on Jan. 21, 2015, Ted Lerner, in a clandestine move, signed RHP Max Scherzer to a record-breaking contract for a pitcher at $210 million. Nobody saw it coming. It was kind of Lerner’s gift to the fanbase.
“Obviously, Scott Boras goes [direct] to ownership for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks: because that’s where the money is.”
— Peter Schmuck once wrote.
The signing caught almost everyone off-guard as the Nats already had Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmerman, Gio Gonzalez, Tanner Roark, and Doug Fister as their five starters. It was clear that somebody wouldn’t stay in the rotation after Scherzer was acquired — and it ended up that Roark was moved to the bullpen.
Why hire into a strength were the questions being asked at the time. Why would the Nats blow their budget and go over the CBT cap to sign another starter? Foresight was the answer. Fister and Zimmermann were both pending free agents after the 2015 season. And Lerner believed in Scherzer to be the difference maker. He was right.
“Ted Lerner went out and signed Max Scherzer and gave him a record contract, record years, and he was annihilated for it! They told him that was a mistake. That was an overpay!”
— Scherzer’s agent, Scott Boras, said afterwards
Notice who Boras gave the credit to, the owner, not the GM, in this case. As the story went, Boras and Lerner negotiated the deal together at Lerner’s home in Palm Springs, California. The Nats owner wasn’t getting any younger, as he was turning 90 that year, and maybe there was more urgency. Hindsight proved that the deal was one of the best free agent deals in years.
The team believed in starting pitching, and pitching wins you championships to the point that Bryce Harper exclaimed, “Where’s my ring?” after Scherzer was signed. Well, things don’t always happen per the plan. Harper and Scherzer did their parts winning the two most prestigious awards in baseball for their tremendous 2015 seasons. Some of the others didn’t do their parts.
That entire offseason, the Nats only signed two free agents to MLB deals, Scherzer and in February, Casey Janssen was signed to a deal to help the bullpen.
Sometimes when your roster looks its best, it disappoints. And the opposite can be true that when your roster doesn’t appear to be good, it over-achieves. Right now, the Nats roster does not look good, if we can be honest. FanGraphs has the Nats at 75 wins as of today in their projections. With only one MLB free agent signing so far with Foster Griffin (+2.0 WAR), and add the trade for Harry Ford contributing +0.8 to this 2026 season as the team’s best catcher, the rest of the improvement has to come internally unless there are more moves to come.
President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, has a plan. He just isn’t showing his cards like a good poker player. The roster seems to be close to finished. There will be some Spring Training competitions, especially at catcher. Did you know that if Keibert Ruiz and Ford are the only two catchers on the Opening Day roster, that as of today, Ruiz would be the oldest position player on the roster at 27 years of age?
On that 2015 team, the team leader was Jayson Werth. Notice that as soon as Werth was gone, we saw a very different Harper in 2018. There were so many distractions on that team — and they didn’t make the playoffs. Some would say that the 2015 team didn’t make the playoffs, but that was for different reasons, and Werth was injured in May of that season with a broken wrist that sunk his year. Without him around, look what happened to that team. Poor managing, poor coaching, key injuries, lack of leadership, and a struggling middle infield — and yes, a bad bullpen.
With Mark Lerner running the Nats since his father’s passing nearly three years ago, how come he doesn’t see the deficiencies in his product? Or does he see it — and chooses to ignore it? You need a veteran leader, and if Toboni doesn’t want to make a move, Lerner has to do what his father did and take it upon himself to plug that hole.
Be bold and decisive, because at the end of the day, this is your company, Mr. Lerner. And Toboni reports to you. This doesn’t even need a baseball analytics genius to see the answer that is so crystal clear. You must find that leader. In 1953, in a New Yorker cartoon by Alex Graham, the extraterrestrials ask to see the President with the catchphrase, “Take me to your leader.” Please, take me to this new leader.
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