The Washington Nationals may have spent all of 2026 watching Keibert Ruiz rebuild his value, only to turn around and consider moving him while the market is hot.
That’s the twist here. A year ago, after the Nationals brought in top catching prospect Harry Ford from the Seattle Mariners, it looked like Ruiz’s run in Washington could be winding down after a rough stretch from 2022-25. He had been a below-average hitter and defender, and Ford’s arrival only sharpened the sense that change was coming.
Instead, Ruiz forced the issue. Ford opened the 2026 season in the minors, giving Ruiz room to take hold of the job, and he ran with it. Even after Ford later came up as the backup, Ruiz did enough to remain firmly No. 1 on the catcher depth chart heading into next season.
The case for dealing him is simple: Ruiz’s stock is back up.
Across 105 games, he hit .280/.316/.443 with 10 home runs, 24 doubles and 48 RBIs. He stayed on the field for the most part, posted an OPS+ of 107 and a wRC+ of 105, and both numbers cleared the league-average line of 100.
His defense also took a step forward. Ruiz finished with a fielding run value of plus-two, the best mark of his career, and a plus-three framing grade that landed in the 70th percentile among major league catchers.
There are still teams that will look at the last four seasons and wonder whether 2026 was the real thing. But Ruiz’s overall body of work this year made him look like a legitimate big-league catcher.
His fWAR came in at 1.9, and among catchers with at least 150 plate appearances while playing the position, he ranked 16th. He was also one of just 20 catchers with at least 150 plate appearances to post an fWAR of 1.0 or better while staying above league average in wRC+.
That kind of profile tends to attract attention, especially from clubs looking for catching help. And that puts Nationals president of baseball operations Paul Toboni back in the center of the conversation.
Toboni has already shown he’s willing to make bold calls when he thinks they help the organization long term. Last offseason, he sent staff ace MacKenzie Gore to the Texas Rangers for five top-30 prospects even though Washington’s rotation was already thin.
After Jake Bennett impressed in the Arizona Fall League, Toboni used that momentum to bring in high-ceiling pitcher Luis Perales in a prospect-for-prospect swap. Before trade deadline talks really got rolling, he moved infielder Curtis Mead to the Boston Red Sox for potential frontline starter Connelly Early.
And he later traded Luis Garcia Jr. to the New York Yankees even though Garcia still had another year of club control left before free agency.
That track record makes Ruiz available in theory, even after the season he just had.
Ford’s 2026 showing wasn’t enough to make anyone comfortable handing him the starting job next year. Still, that may not stop Toboni from making a move if another club comes with a strong enough offer for Ruiz.
So while Ruiz enters the offseason as Washington’s top catcher on paper, he also looks like a name that could pop up quickly in trade discussions. The Nationals have already shown they’re not afraid to sell high, and this winter could bring another test of that approach.
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Nationals Face A Defining Offseason Call On Their Pitching Plans
The Nationals are heading into an offseason where the pitching plan is impossible to ignore. President of baseball operations Paul Toboni acknowledged the need to upgrade the staff, and the conversation in Washington now centers on how aggressive the club wants to be while trying to keep faith in its own arms. It is the kind of balancing act every front office faces, only this one matters even more after a successful recent season gave the organization a clearer sense of where it stands.
Washington has options, at least in theory, but each comes with tradeoffs. Free agency could bring immediate help to both the rotation and bullpen, while the clubs internal pitching prospects offer a cheaper path that might take longer to pay off. The Nationals are sorting through how to reinforce both groups at once, and the answer they settle on should say plenty about how quickly they believe the roster can move from encouraging to truly complete. [Read more 🡒]
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 🡒]