Mid-Season Top 30 Nationals Prospects Update

Now that we are at the All-Star break, there has been some serious moving and shaking among the top thirty prospects in the organization since we published our list in February. Five players have graduated since then (45+ days on the active roster for Jacob Young, Mitchell Parker, Nasim Nuñez, Trey Lipscomb, and Drew Millas), three of this weekend’s draft picks are going straight onto the list, and several existing names have moved around, with one pitcher jumping seventeen spots and another falling off entirely as the biggest changes in either direction. We also welcome five new names toward the back end of the list. All are pitchers, a testament to how much growth there has been in organizational development.

Updated Top 30

1) James Wood (same)

After being the team’s best player in spring training, Wood was dominating at AAA before a hamstring injury in late May, slashing .355/.465/.596 in 202 PA, including .316/.409/.658 against lefties, which Mike Rizzo and Davey Martinez were trying to say with a straight face was something that he needed to work on. The injury probably delayed his arrival in DC by two weeks, but now he is here, and hopefully for good (the early returns have been very promising in most ways, but I wish he would lift a few of these 105+ mph rockets in the air).

2) Dylan Crews (same)

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when Crews started the AA campaign by striking out over half the time and not hitting for any power, then tweaking a hamstring, but starting in May, he hit .290/.359/.460. He played a strong center field in a very pitcher-friendly league. Now he’s in the much more hitter-friendly International League, and a good showing there (.253/.306/.407 in his first 20 games) could mean a one-way ticket to DC before the end of August.

3) Brady House (up 1)

House has run hot and cold this season as he adjusts to playing a full minor league schedule for the first time, but he has mostly been good, hitting for a 115 wRC+ as one of the youngest players in the Eastern League and leading the Senators in home runs. Interestingly, House’s BABIP is still well below anything he has posted so far as a professional, despite better walk and strikeout rates than in the past suggesting that he is being more selective as a hitter. Is this a blip? An adjustment to be made? Regardless, his recent promotion to AAA means he has an outside chance of a September call-up to the majors.

4) Cade Cavalli (down 1)

Cavalli missed the 2023 season after tearing his UCL in late March (and having established himself as one of the Nats’ five best-starting pitchers in the spring), but should return to serious (non-rehab) action this month. However, the multiple pauses in his rehab so far and the shifting explanations about those pauses are certainly a red flag. He so far has struck out 13 against five walks and a hit in his three brief rehab appearances (a total of 8.1 innings), and hopefully, the ambiguity will get cleared up with a return to action this weekend.

5) Travis Sykora (up 4)

Sykora had not pitched professionally when we did our preseason rankings, which is not terribly unusual for a high school pitcher in their draft year. Surprisingly, he skipped complex ball entirely and went directly to Fredericksburg, where he has shown elite stuff (63 Ks in 45.1 innings) and a growing trail of elite results (0 or 1 runs in four of his last five starts). Still, he could see Wilmington before the end of this year if he continues to strike out close to two guys per inning with his three-pitch arsenal. This is a feather in the organization’s cap - Sykora was billed as a fastball-splitter guy in the draft but has demonstrated that his slider might become an elite pitch, too.

6) Cayden Wallace (previously unranked)

He was acquired this past Saturday as part of the Hunter Harvey trade. Wallace is a strong defensive third baseman with a solid bat, carrying a 118 wRC+ for AA Northwest Arkansas this year before straining an oblique on May 22nd. While rehabbing in Arizona on July 6th, Wallace was hit by a pitch that fractured a rib, so we likely won’t see him play in the Nats’ system (almost certainly in Harrisburg) until early next month. Wallace provides House insurance and adds depth to a system that needs it.

James Wood (Photo via Rochester Red Wings)

7) Daylen Lile (up 3)

Lile earned a midseason promotion to Wilmington last year (remember, he missed all of 2022 due to Tommy John surgery) and, after a hot start, hit for a rather pedestrian 85 wRC+ over the remainder of the season. Might that same scenario play out again? Lile recently moved from Wilmington to Harrisburg and slashed .286/.344/.357 in his first week’s games, including roping a single to right-center on the first pitch he saw at the level. The ceiling here is Michael Brantley, which is a high ceiling; Brantley finished third in AL MVP voting in 2014 and compiled over 34 WAR in his career. He’s a lefty outfielder with a smooth swing who will hit a lot more doubles than home runs and doesn’t have the arm to play anywhere else. Pay attention to this one over the next year and a half.

8) Yohandy Morales (down 3)

Yoyo’s game power had yet to appear in the minors before he pulled a hamstring in May and hit the injured list. Despite just a pair of home runs this year in 146 plate appearances, Morales was holding onto a 90 wRC+ when he went on the shelf. The Eastern League is a brutal place for hitters in the early part of the season - eight of its ten teams are located north of the Mason-Dixon line and deal with mostly miserable weather for baseball well into May - so there is reason to hope that Mid-Atlantic summer heat will warm up his lumber. But now that he is almost a full-time first baseman, the power tool needs to show up more regularly for him to catch up with some of the movers on this list.

9) Seaver King (not previously ranked)

An interesting first choice for the Nationals’ new draft team, King is a swing-happy athlete who transferred from Division II Wingate to Wake Forest after an impressive summer in the Cape Cod Summer League and with USA Baseball. He played four positions at Wake Forest but spent most of his time at third base, hitting .308/.377/.577 and stealing 11 bags in 12 tries. He is an athlete who will get every opportunity to stick at shortstop first in a Nats system that is thin on middle infielders, and he comes from the Keibert Ruiz-Luis García Jr. school of high contact rates with the swing above happiness. Interestingly, King is a friend of House and was at the latter’s draft party in 2021, and now finds himself in the same organization.

10) Robert Hassell III (up 1)

Hassell was well on his way toward reestablishing his bona fides as a safe hitting prospect (his fall 2022 hamate surgery slowed his bat all last year) before he landed on the injured list in mid-June. Bobby Barrels has cut his strikeout rate by a full third from last year, and he was getting on base frequently enough almost to match last year’s thirteen steals (he has eleven). The power is not one hundred percent back, but I am less concerned about the current lack of home runs (three) than the paucity of doubles (six). He might end up as the strong side of a platoon, but it would be nicer if he were one-hopping more walls. You can still dream on an outfield of Wood, Crews, and a Hassell/Young platoon situation…if Lile doesn’t beat him to the punch.

11) Andry Lara (up 16)

Some of us (*raises hand*) had all but given up on Lara ever being a factor again before this season, even though he quietly had a very good finish in 2023 over his final nine starts. He started 2024 strong in Wilmington and after six starts was promoted to AA Harrisburg, where he has yet to miss a beat, giving the Senators a quality start in his first five outings there while striking out a batter an inning and holding opponents to a .191/.274/.352 line. Notably, Lara has been very durable for a young pitcher, scraping 100 innings each of the last two seasons, and if he continues on this track will be making a case to join the big club next year, when he will be just 22 years old.

12) Jarlin Susana (up 6)

If you look at Susana’s standard stat line, you might not be terribly impressed by the 4.47 ERA or 1.367 WHIP in a repeat at low-A. Still, the encouraging news is that Susana is back to striking out batters at a comparable clip (12.9 K/9) to two years ago when the Nats acquired him in the Soto trade and has yet to allow a home run in over 60 innings. He still walks way too many guys (4.7 BB/9), but the floor here is an elite late-inning reliever who touches 103 with an un-hittable slider and just blows lots of batters away. If Susana can ever cut that walk rate to the sub-4 range he could still end up as a starter.

13) DJ Herz (up 1)

It took all of three major league starts for Herz to demonstrate the kind of ceiling he has, albeit against one of the weakest lineups possible (the Marlins). Still, thirteen strikeouts and no walks is quite an accomplishment, regardless of the opponent. Even if Herz winds up a reliever at the end of the day, he has clear value; because his changeup is his best pitch, he has some reverse platoon splits going on. If his slider gets a little tighter he will at worst be a multi-inning weapon against hitters from both sides of the plate.

14) Caleb Lomavita

With Lomavita’s insertion here, the Nats effectively got two top-fifteen prospects in their system for a year and a half of a setup reliever, a trade you should make every day of the week and twice on Sundays. There are no exciting prospect catchers in the system, and Lomavita should go a long way towards changing that. His swing profile is similar to Keibert Ruiz, but he is significantly more athletic (swiping 12 bases in 16 tries this year) and has a stronger arm. Even with his free-swinging approach, Lomavita barrels many baseballs, hitting .322/.395/.586 for Cal this past year. Catcher timelines are hard to predict, but he should be an exciting one to follow.

15) Cristhian Vaquero (down 9)

“El Fenómeno” was billed as an elite five-tool athlete when the Nats used virtually all of their international bonus pool on him two and a half years ago. Speed? Check. Glove? Check. Arm? Check. Hitting? Eh, it’s been okay, although his solid on-base skills have fallen off significantly in his first full year in A-ball, leading to an unimpressive .162/.277/.266 line and 70 wRC+. Power? Nonexistent, and therein lies the issue. Vaquero’s saving grace is that he’s still a teenager and young for the level, but he has put only six balls over the fence in over 700 minor league PA, and more of his extra-base hits result from his burner speed rather than hitting the ball hard. Fortunately, there are so many outfielders ahead of him in the system right now that the Nats can afford to take their time with him.

16) Victor Hurtado (down 3)

In past years, the Nats have spent most of their international money on one player (see Vaquero and Lara above), but Hurtado was one of two top Dominican prospects that the team signed this past winter. He’s projected to be more of a hitter than Vaquero, but the terrible hitting environment in the DSL (where he is one of the youngest players in his class) and the still-existent developmental problems with the Nats’ Dominican operation (their 2023 DSL team was historically bad, but other than Rizzo asking close friend Johnny DiPuglia for his resignation as head of the international department no changes were made) perhaps contributed to Hurtado’s slow start. He has been heating a bit late and is now hitting .200/.268/.341 in his first 24 games. We will know a lot more once he’s stateside in 2025.

17) Jackson Rutledge (down 10)

I’m just a guy who writes about baseball. Still, I feel like it’s time to move Rutledge to the bullpen, especially as a small armada of pitchers is pushing him from below in a surge of developmental improvement, and it does not look like it is happening for him. Tall guys (Rutledge is 6’8”) can consistently have more trouble repeating their mechanics and release points - everything is longer. Sometimes, they figure something out in their late twenties and go on to argue as perhaps the most dominant starter ever of any era - Randy Johnson cut his walk rate by almost 80% at age 29, precipitating a twelve-year run as one of the best two or three pitchers in the sport - but most guys don’t turn into Randy Johnson. I would like to see Rutledge have a chance to air it out more as a two-inning guy or possibly a closer. The emergence of so many other arms gives the Nats the flexibility to temporarily change Rutledge’s role to see if he can help the major league team in 2025 - his last option year. But a 1.65 WHIP and 4.60 FIP are not good.

18) Elijah Green (down 6)

Is there a Sean Doolittle out there that the Nats can hire for hitters? I’m only half-joking because right now, Green - and Vaquero (along with almost every other semi-promising bat below AA) - look totally and completely lost. An elite athlete with an extremely questionable hit tool would have been an okay gamble at the time for a team with a deep farm system and a proven track record of developing hitters. However, the Nationals were neither of those things in June 2022, and the jury is still out on the latter. Green is repeating Low-A right now and has gone backward at the dish. He has more homers but fewer extra-base hits, is walking less, impacting the baseball less on the rare occasions when he impacts it at all (his BABIP is down almost a hundred points), and somehow striking out even more frequently, up to 46.1% from last year’s 41.9%. His wRC+ has slid from 87 to 70, which is backup catcher territory…in A-ball. If Green doesn’t have a strong closing kick in him this season, it could be time to drop him out of the top thirty entirely.

19) Jake Bennett (down 11)

After undergoing Tommy John surgery last September, Bennett will not pitch at all in 2024, and of course, the speed of his progression upon returning to the mound next year will depend on many factors. Given that he will be eighteen months removed from getting zippered when he starts spring training, I imagine that he will open the minor league season pitching right away, probably where he left off in Wilmington, but with the possibility of a quick promotion to AA after three or four starts. Let’s not forget that Bennett was that rarest of breeds in the Nats’ system, a pitcher who already had command when drafted while also ticking all of the other boxes (6’6”, 234, can reach the upper 90s) that Mike Rizzo loves. If he follows the growth pattern of the organizational pitchers this year, he could jump right back into the top ten.

20) Luke Dickerson (previously unranked)

The final of three Nats selections on the first day of the draft, Dickerson cemented the perception that this isn’t the war room of Kris Kline and Mike Rizzo anymore (even if Rizzo is still in charge). In no world would Kline have drafted a cold-weather high school kid with a compact build (5’11”, 197) who never strikes out (literally, he had zero Ks as a senior). Dickerson didn’t even get on the field until late March because he was starring in Morris Knolls’ (NJ) state championship run in…hockey. Mike Trout. It will take a fair amount of money to sign him away from his UVA commitment, but this is another outstanding athlete with elite contact skills who should do well in the Nats’ system.

21) Kevin Made (up 2)

The other piece of last summer’s return for Jeimer Candelario from the Cubs (along with Herz), Made was more of a lottery ticket, an athletic middle infielder with the arm to stay at shortstop who might not hit enough to become a regular as he moves up. He had a rough go post-trade at Wilmington last summer, slashing .137/.232/.192 in twenty-two games. This year went much better (.239/.353/.327), particularly that career-high OBP, better enough that he recently moved to AA Harrisburg. Made is young and athletic enough - and has done just enough - that he could become a glove-first everyday middle infielder someday.

22) Andrew Pinckney (same)

As the eighth outfielder on this list, Pinckney probably doesn’t excite many people, certainly not casual fans. But there is a 2-3 WAR player in there, and whether that comes with the Nats or another team is an open question, given that he is already older than the seven above him on this list. Pinckney will probably never walk enough to be much more than that, but he could do a pretty good Lane Thomas imitation. Pinckney is fast, can play center but is better suited to a corner, has some pop, and can get around on fastballs - does that sound like the Lane Train to you? He will almost certainly be in AA all year, but there is a decent chance that unless he crumbles over the rest of this season he will be in Rochester next April, and then you never know what can happen from there.

23) Zach Brzykcy (down 8)

Scrabble Jr. is currently rehabbing from Tommy John surgery that cost him the entire 2023 season, but there is a chance that he will make his major league debut before the end of this season. Before the injury, Brzykcy was striking out many batters, registering 95 punchouts in 61.1 innings two years ago. He did, however, also walk 29 guys, and given that command can take extra time to return following TJ surgery, I have moved him down here. Thus far in his rehab tour, he has struck out 21 and walked 7 in 17 innings.

24) Angel Feliz (up 1)

A shortstop from Santo Domingo, Feliz was the second top-25 international prospect on which the Nats spent big last winter. He is huge for a teenage shortstop (6’3”, 185), and scouts think he might eventually have to slide to third base, but for now, he is being given every opportunity in the middle of the diamond in the DSL. The bat is playing well in a small sample thus far (.315/.390/.461, so far the third-best DSL slash line by any Nats prospect after teammate Dashyll Tejeda - an insane .377/.472/.607 while repeating the level - and 2014 Victor Robles). As with Hurtado, it will be easier to see where he fits in the big picture once both play in Florida next summer.

25) Brad Lord (previously unranked)

This honestly feels low for the unheralded Lord, who has gotten on the prospect's radar this season in a big way. With the Eastern League in general and Harrisburg in particular being pretty pitcher-friendly, you have to grade Senators pitching on a bit of a curve, but still. Check out Lord’s innings/earned runs in his thirteen starts at the A+ and AA levels (only his first this year was at the lower level): 4.1/0, 4.2/2, 4/4, 5/0, 6/0, 6/0, 6/2, 6/1, 7/0, 6/0, 6/2, 7/0, 7/0. That’s five earned runs in his last sixty-two innings at AA. Where did this come from? Lord was a cromulent pitcher for Fredericksburg and Wilmington in 2023, but he didn’t stand out in any way save his command - his 2.1 BB/9 was the best on the Blue Rocks staff by any pitcher with more than ten innings to his name. This year he has sharpened that command even more within the zone, upping his K/9 rate from 7.2 to 9.4 and slashing his H/9 from 9.5 to 6.6. This is a significant improvement across the board. Having watched half a dozen of his starts, he reminds me of Jordan Zimmermann (relative to the level). If he reaches anywhere close to that ceiling at the major league level as an 18th-round pick (just two years ago!!!)? That would be one of the biggest wins in organizational history.

26) Andrew Alvarez (previously unranked)

The organization’s 2023 Pitcher of the Year, Alvarez was the Opening Day starter for AA Harrisburg and went at the assignment with a will, throwing five no-hit innings with seven strikeouts. He ultimately made ten strong starts for the Senators before getting the call to AAA, and he will likely be occupying the same role next year that Herz and Parker have held this year, as he will be Rule 5-eligible for the first time this winter and thus added to the 40-man roster. Alvarez is a bulldog on the mound with a broad if not overpowering arsenal, and there is hope that the 2021 12th-round pick can at least be an up-and-down starter.

27) Jeremy De La Rosa (down 2)

Ah, the perfect illustration of how much the Nats’ system has changed since ye olde fire sale of 2021. JDLR was the fifth or sixth overall prospect in the organization; now, he’s no more than the ninth-best outfielder. A shoulder injury kept him out for the first month, and rehabbing in low-A for three weeks. Now he’s repeating Wilmington and off to a slow start, although his power is up from last year (when he was recovering from hamate surgery).

28) Dustin Saenz (previously unranked)

Saenz cracks the list despite not throwing a pitch until this month due to injury (and thus far, only in rehab appearances in the FCL). I thought about leaving him off entirely, but as a southpaw starter with a demonstrated track record of growth at multiple levels, I ultimately felt okay about putting him here above two relievers who could be moving quickly. Hopefully, the missed time won’t forestall his methodical rise through the organization too much.

29) Orlando Ribalta (previously unranked)

A bit old for a prospect, the huge (6’7”, 245) and hard-throwing Ribalta was fine last year as he pitched at all five minor league levels. He still issues too many walks (4.0 per 9) but has seen a massive spike in his strikeout numbers thus far, punching out 32 batters - he had 36 Ks all of last year - in the first two months of the 2024 season at Harrisburg before getting promoted. He is still adjusting somewhat to AAA (perhaps it was the ABS - his bad outings at the level were all on weekdays before MLB went to the challenge system full-time). Still, there is a potentially dominant late-inning reliever in there. We could see him rocking a curly W before the end of this month.

30) Marquis Grissom Jr. (previously unranked)

Grissom’s dad spent his first six seasons in this franchise’s original iteration as the Expos, and hopefully, the son can do the same. Grissom Jr. walked 62 batters in just over 90 innings across two college seasons, but last year - in just his second pro season - he cut that to 13 over 41 innings. This year he has kept the walks down but also seen a significant increase in strikeouts, which earned him a late May promotion to Harrisburg and has him on the radar as a bullpen option for the majors as soon as next season.

Mid-Season Top 30 Nationals Prospects Update

Updated Top 30

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