2024-2025 Offseason News
Editors Note: Check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and our top ten list!
A day after putting in some work on a bunch of guys who will probably never be anything more exciting than, say, a good eighth-inning setup man, we are back to dreaming big. All five of the players in this fifth tier have incredible athletic ability and crazy amounts of potential, but to date none of them has shown it across a full minor league season. There is so much variance here that I had to expand the description of our third tier (church ceiling, tomb floor, in case you forgot) to something grander in both directions. Who among this group will soar with the choral notes in the dome of St. Paul's? And who will not make it out of Horatio Nelson's crypt?
Tier 5: Cathedral Ceiling, Crypt Floor
Pos: OF | 2025 Age: 20 | B/T: B/R | 2024 Level: A |
MLB Comp: Michael Siani
Acquired: signed as an amateur international free agent, 1/15/2022
AVG/OBP/SLG: .190/.291/.303 | HR: 5 | SB/ATT: 29/35 | wRC+: 82
I would pretty easily accept arguments to drop Vaquero as many as ten spots on this list, although his profile doesn’t really fit in the fourth tier but more in the third; “El Fenómeno” has not been very phenomenal in his career to date - certainly not at the plate, where the power tool has yet to show up (8 home runs in 876 professional PA). What is even more concerning is that in his first extended exposure to full-season ball, Vaquero’s walk rate fell by forty percent and his BABIP was quite low (.295) for someone with his elite speed that should be legging out more infield hits than the average bear. He might be a candidate to give up switch hitting at some point; his platoon splits are narrow, but he only took up switch-hitting after fleeing Cuba for the Dominican Republic as a teenager and having one less skill to focus on might benefit him. He is a very capable center fielder, but spent more time in right field last year because Elijah Green happens to be even better. Vaquero will probably repeat low-A to start the year, and hopefully this time around it goes better for him.
#18 Victor Hurtado
Pos: OF | 2025 Age: 18 | B/T: L/L | 2024 Level: R-DSL |
MLB Comp: Teoscar Hernández in a 99th percentile outcome
Acquired: signed as an amateur international free agent, 1/15/2024
AVG/OBP/SLG: .218/.310/.331 | HR: 3 | SB/ATT: 3/4 | wRC+: 76
The more hyped of the Nats’ two biggest international signings last winter, Hurtado projects as a slugging outfielder who remains mostly projection right now. He got off to a slow start through his first ten games in the Dominican but finished strong. He is already playing mostly left field as a teenager (Dashyll Tejeda manned center for the DSL team the majority of the season), which means that the bat and in particular the power are going to have to meet those projections in order for him to remain a viable prospect. He should get a chance to be a regular starter in the FCL this spring with the possibility of a promotion to Fredericksburg at the end of June if he hits in Florida.
#17 Elijah Green
Pos: OF | 2025 Age: 21 | B/T: R/R | 2024 Level: A |
MLB Comp: Michael A. Taylor in Kam Chancellor's body
Acquired: 2022 amateur draft, 1st round/5th overall
AVG/OBP/SLG: .208/.293/.355 | HR: 13 | SB/ATT: 39/42 | wRC+: 94
Hoo boy, here we go. Green has probably been the most hotly debated Nats prospect in the two and a half years since he was drafted (yes, even more than Dylan Crews or James Wood). We all know the drill; elite athlete, 60-grade or 70-grade tools across the board…except the one that matters the most. Of Green’s 880 professional plate appearances, a whopping THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN of them (that number deserved being written out in full and in all caps) have ended in a strikeout. And this isn’t a Javy Báez or a Victor Robles being unable to avoid chasing sliders in the other batter’s box - Green has a decent eye! His issue is making contact on pitches in the zone. Now, Mike Rizzo likes to say that guys need 1000 plate appearances before one can start to fully judge them, and Green probably won’t hit that mark until sometime in May of 2025. And he did actually hit well for two solid months late in the Fredericksburg season, slashing .276/.355/.485 in July and August (while still striking out 72/186 times). You can live with the whiffs if he is smoking 110+ mph line drives the rest of the time - I fully believe he could compete with good major leaguers in a home run derby right now, his home runs are that eye-popping. But he has to actually do it, and he will almost certainly have to do it in the righty hitter’s graveyard of Wilmington in 2025 after two full seasons in low-A. The absolute ceiling here is “Mike Cameron with 40-homer power” (and Cameron had close to 50 WAR as it was), so I’m not going to fully give up on Green yet. But I don’t plan on counting on him either.
#16 Angel Feliz
Pos: SS | 2025 Age: 18 | B/T: R/R | 2024 Level: R-DSL |
MLB Comp: can we dream of a righty-hitting Corey Seager?
Acquired: signed as an amateur international free agent, 1/15/2024
AVG/OBP/SLG: .310/.381/.468 | HR: 4 | SB/ATT: 27/35 | wRC+: 127
Feliz was the other big international signing for the Nationals last winter, but unlike Hurtado he a) hit well all season long, earning a nomination as a DSL all-star, and b) stayed up the middle, playing all but one game at shortstop despite already being big for the position (6’3”, 185) as a 17-year-old. Feliz is a good athlete (in addition to the 27 steals he had three triples in 48 games) who should stay at shortstop at least for a couple more years as he continues to grow and fill out - although he might eventually be ticketed for third base. If you have an MiLB.tv subscription and don’t mind tuning into some day baseball from Florida, you are going to want to watch Feliz and the next guy on this list on a regular basis as they form a potentially elite middle infield/left side of the infield for the Nats’ Complex League team.
#15 Luke Dickerson
Pos: SS/2B/OF | 2025 Age: 19 | B/T: R/R | 2024 Level: HS |
MLB Comp: Jake Cronenworth (also played hockey!)
Acquired: 2024 amateur draft, 2nd round/44th overall
AVG/OBP/SLG: n/a | HR: n/a | SB/ATT: n/a | wRC+: n/a
As someone who has coached six different high school sports myself, I love multi-sport athletes, and it would not be hard to talk me into moving a hockey star who ohbytheway broke Mike Trout’s single-season New Jersey home run record several spots higher on this list. But as explained in the methodology, I do care about the floor, and we not only haven’t seen Dickerson in a single professional game yet, we don’t even know yet where on the field he will play. The athleticism is pretty elite (6.3-second 60-yard dash time), but his arm isn’t quite as strong as the rest of him and might force a move to second base or center field in the future. The Nats believed in him enough to give him a $3.8 million bonus, the largest for a non-first rounder since bonus pools became a thing. He, Feliz, Hurtado, Tejada, and Sir Jamison Jones should make for an exciting top half of the lineup in West Palm Beach in 2025.
Two days and two tiers to go! We will be back tomorrow with a much more experienced group of eight players, only one of whom has not yet been inside a AA clubhouse, including four of our top ten overall prospects.
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