The Nationals have made a clear point this fall: when they choose to lock someone up, they want more than just talent.
That’s the message president of baseball operations Paul Toboni carried into the GM Meetings in Las Vegas this week after the club handed out its second extension in as many months, following the four-year deal with center fielder Jacob Young last Friday. Toboni said the organization has been deliberate about the players it has targeted for extensions, and that Young fit the profile from every angle.
“We've been very intentional with the couple [extensions] that we've had, extending players that we really believe in,” Toboni said. “Not just the player, obviously, but the person and the leader that they are.
“With the recent extension with J.Y., that's exactly how we feel. He's exactly what we want out of a position player.
He embodies all the things we want our position players to embody. And to be honest, it's not all that different from Cade.”
Young’s new deal runs through 2030 and includes an $8 million club option for 2031, according to a source who spoke to MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand. The 27-year-old had been arbitration-eligible before the agreement came together.
Toboni said the sides had been talking for a while before things finally moved forward.
“We had had conversations over the course of the year,” Toboni said. “His representatives and I were talking about a number of different things over the course of the last few weeks, and one of them ended up being Jacob. We just finally decided as of whenever it was, a couple weeks ago, that it was probably something that made sense to roll up our sleeves and try and figure out if there was something there.”
For the Nationals, Young’s value starts in center field. The 2021 seventh-round pick has turned himself into a defensive weapon, making highlight-reel plays and finishing as a back-to-back Gold Glove Award finalist in 2024 and ‘25. This season, he ranked in the 96th percentile in the Majors with +11 outs above average.
But the extension wasn’t only about the glove. Young took a real step forward at the plate this year, setting career highs in home runs with 10, triples with three, RBIs with 50, on-base percentage at .318, slugging percentage at .390 and OPS at .707. He also improved his average launch angle to 12.2, raised his barrel percentage to 5.7 percent and cut his strikeout rate to 16.6 percent.
That growth, paired with what he brings every day in the clubhouse, is a big part of why the Nationals moved now. Young received the club’s Heart & Hustle Award in both the 2025 and ‘26 seasons, and Toboni pointed to that side of his game as much as the production.
“What he means to our clubhouse and the type of person he is, that’s where my mind initially goes,” Toboni said. “I think he really fits well with our way of doing things, and I think he still has a bunch of defensive upside remaining. But he made huge strides offensively this year, and I think there's this eagerness on both J.Y.'s end, but also our end, to see what can continue to come from that.”
With Cavalli already extended and Young now under contract for the long haul, Toboni was asked whether more deals could follow as he heads through his second winter running the Nationals’ front office.
“I think I've spoken about it in the past: it's on our mind with a number of different players -- obviously, J.Y. having been one of them,” Toboni said. “So it'll continue to be on our mind, and we'll see where it takes us.”
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