Luis Garcia Jr. is gone, and with that trade to the New York Yankees on August 2, the Nationals have shifted their attention to a much bigger question: who is going to hold down first base for the long haul?
For now, the first look belongs to Abimelec Ortiz, and he has made a loud first impression. The 24-year-old first baseman/outfielder had appeared in 10 MLB games as of August 13, with 6 starts and 5 of those coming at first base. In a tiny sample, he has looked dangerous at the plate, hitting .333 with a .355 on-base percentage, .767 slugging percentage, 4 home runs, a 1.122 OPS and a 202 wRC+.
The bat has jumped off the page. The glove, not so much.
Ortiz carries a 45 fielding grade on the 20-80 scouting scale, which sits below average, and his early MLB defensive rating is minus-0.6. That leaves the Nationals with a familiar kind of dilemma: the upside is real, but the fit is still very much up for debate.
And Ortiz is not the only name in the mix.
When Ortiz has not been in the lineup at first, Andres Chaparro has handled the job. He had been viewed as the team’s first baseman for the rest of the season, but Ortiz has clearly forced his way into the conversation.
Chaparro has been productive too, posting a plus-3.8 offensive rating and a 129 wRC+. His defense has not helped his case, though, with a minus-2.4 rating, and playing him out of position at first is not expected to suddenly change that.
So the Nationals are left weighing one imperfect option against another. Ortiz has the hotter audition.
Chaparro has shown enough at the plate to stay relevant. Neither has locked the job down.
If the club wants another young swing at the position, Yohandy Morales is waiting in the wings. He is the Nationals’ top first-base prospect, even if he is not ranked among their top 30 prospects, and he is close enough to MLB-ready that a call later this season would not be a shock. Morales has spent more time at first base than anywhere else recently, logging 108 games there over the last two seasons compared with 56 at third.
His 2026 season at Triple-A Rochester has been strong. Morales is hitting .297 with a .918 OPS and a 134 wRC+.
The catch is that his defensive profile looks awfully similar to Ortiz’s, with a 45 fielding grade. In other words, he may be more of a sideways move than a clear upgrade.
There is one other path, though it looks like the least likely one: moving Brady House. That would create a domino effect at third base, and House has only one career start at first base across the minors and the majors.
If none of these internal options stick, Paul Toboni may have to look outside the organization this offseason. A free-agent search would be aimed at finding a real answer, not a placeholder. The names that stand out in that market are Rhys Hoskins, Alec Bohm, and Ryan Mountcastle, though the pool looks thin.
That is why these final games matter. The Nationals are not just trying to solve first base for this season. They are trying to figure out what the 2027 roster is supposed to look like.
In Other News...
Nationals Just Opened A Rotation Battle With One Big Spot Up For Grabs
The Nationals rotation picture shifted again when the club requested unconditional release waivers on Miles Mikolas, the right-hander they had already designated for assignment to clear a path for pitching prospect Jackson Kents big-league debut. For Washington, it leaves a familiar late-season roster question hanging over the staff, with the club carrying four starters and needing to decide how to bridge the next turn through the rotation.
Brad Lord is among the possibilities to take that opening, and right-hander Luis Perales is also in the mix if the Nationals choose to promote from within. For a team that has kept leaning on young arms and roster flexibility, this is less about one transaction than about how quickly it wants to settle the back end of the rotation while the rest of the staff takes shape. [Read more 🡒]
Nationals Prospects Had A Rough Friday For One Frustrating Reason
Friday was a reminder that a busy farm system can still deliver a long night. Across the Nationals affiliates, there were plenty of pitching matchups and scattered offensive moments to track, with Rochester, Harrisburg, Wilmington, Fredericksburg, Charlotte, Richmond, Hudson Valley, Fayetteville and the DSL Nationals all part of the scoreboard watch. For a player-development system, days like this can be useful in the big picture even when the results are uneven, because every level is offering a different snapshot of where things stand.
The frustrating part for Washington was how quickly some games got away, especially when early runs put the burden on the lineup to keep answering. A few clubs found enough offense to stay in it, while others spent most of the night trying to recover from the pitching side of things, which made the final lines feel more lopsided than the contests had been for stretches. For a prospect-heavy organization, that kind of Friday can leave you with just enough to note and just enough unanswered to keep following the next box score. [Read more 🡒]
Nationals Just Made A Telling CJ Abrams Infield Decision
Blake Buteras pregame announcement gave the Nationals a notable infield shakeup, with CJ Abrams set to spend more time at second base moving forward. The move is designed to keep Abrams in the lineup for his bat while giving Washington a cleaner defensive alignment on the left side of the infield, where his range and arm have been under the microscope all year.
Abrams will still see shortstop on occasion, but Nasim Nunez is slated to handle that spot more regularly as the club tries to settle on its best defensive setup. For a Nationals team still trying to balance development with production, the decision says plenty about where the organization believes it can get the most value out of one of its most important young players. [Read more 🡒]