The Nationals have reached the point where progress alone isn’t enough.
After posting their most wins in a single season since the 2019 World Series title, Washington enters the winter with momentum and a clear directive: improve the pitching staff. The bullpen and the starting rotation both need help, and president of baseball operations Paul Toboni appears to have more money to work with this offseason.
Still, the bigger challenge isn’t just finding upgrades. It’s deciding how aggressive to be - and how much that aggressiveness could affect the growth of the young arms already in the organization.
“The offense has performed, so now it’s about moving the pitching group forward,” Toboni said, per The Athletic (subscription required). “The decision that we’re going to be faced with at times is going to be like, 'OK, do we want to spend money on these players, even if it comes at the cost of the development of someone internally that we believe in?'”
That is the dilemma sitting at the center of Washington’s offseason. The easy answer for many fans is to go get immediate help and worry about the rest later. The harder part is that free agency has a nasty habit of punishing teams that pay for certainty and don’t get it.
The Nationals do need outside pitching help. That much is obvious.
After years of treating the problem with temporary fixes, this feels like the moment to make a real push to upgrade the roster. But the front office has to decide whether the best move is a major commitment to a starter like Trevor Rogers or Freddy Peralta, or a more measured approach built around strengthening the bullpen while still giving elite prospects room to develop.
And if Washington pays for a marquee arm who doesn’t deliver, the downside is real: another expensive mistake sitting on the books.
The case for spending is easy to make, especially after what this young group showed during the 2026 campaign. But as Toboni’s comments make clear, this winter is about more than opening the checkbook. It’s about choosing the path that helps the Nationals move forward without boxing themselves in later.
In Other News...
Harry Ford's First Nationals Season Raised A Bigger Question
Harry Ford arrived with the kind of reputation that can make a midseason addition feel bigger than it is, but his first season in the Nationals organization has mostly been a reminder of how hard it can be to carry that promise over from one level to the next. Acquired in the Jose A. Ferrer trade, Ford had a rough offensive run in Triple-A and then got a difficult introduction in the majors, even if his plate discipline stayed intact and he showed some signs of life in the minors before an injury opened another path back to Washington.
For the Nationals, the question now is less about whether Ford has enough catch-and-throw value to stick around and more about whether the bat can get back to the level that made him look like a possible everyday answer. Power is the missing piece, and without it, his profile starts to look a lot more like a fallback option than a starting-caliber catcher. The season is not close to what either side expected, which is why his next stretch will matter so much. [Read more 🡒]