The Washington Nationals’ local media awards offered a tidy snapshot of where the organization stands headed into the offseason: a team still sorting out its future, but with a brighter core than it had a year ago.
That shift showed up in the vote totals. James Wood took home Nationals Player of the Year for the second straight season, collecting 62% of the vote. CJ Abrams, also a 2026 All-Star, finished second with 37.5%.
Wood wasn’t running away from weak competition, either. Abrams pushed him, and Cade Cavalli was in the mix as well.
Cavalli’s recognition was more than just a nod from the media - the right-hander also received an extension from the Nationals and was named Pitcher of the Year in unanimous fashion. He now looks positioned to pick up some down-ballot National League Cy Young Award votes, with his stock still climbing heading into next season.
The 2026 honors also included a first. Jacob Young and Nasim Nunez were named co-winners of the Good Guy Award, making them the first pair of players to share the honor.
The award goes to players who make a significant impact in the local DC community, and both have spent plenty of their free time giving back. For Nunez, it was his first time winning the award.
Young, meanwhile, had already earned the same recognition in 2024.
The awards were officially announced in a Nationals press release on September 26, though the news was easy to miss with the season essentially over by then.
In Other News...
Nationals Park Hosted A Wild Baseball Show Washington Fans Felt Personally
Nationals Park turned into something closer to a summer carnival than a standard ballpark night as the inaugural Banana Bowl brought a different kind of baseball spectacle to Washington. The championship game mixed live baseball with theatrical flair, celebrity cameos and nonstop entertainment, giving fans the sort of offbeat show that can feel especially personal in a city still fond of its Nationals alumni and the ballpark they once called home.
The Texas Tailgaters and Savannah Bananas wound up giving the crowd a tense finish before the night settled into a winner, and the connections to Washington only made the atmosphere louder. Former Nationals pitcher Jordan Zimmermann showed up with Texas, while Ryan Zimmerman was part of the Bananas side, turning a novelty event into something with a local edge that had Nationals fans leaning in all the way to the end. [Read more 🡒]
CJ Abrams Still Has A Real Shot To Keep Shortstop
CJ Abrams entered last season with his defensive future under a microscope, and the Nationals spent time weighing whether a move from shortstop to second base might best fit his long-term outlook. An injury cut into the reps he would have needed to get comfortable on the right side of the infield, but the club still saw enough progress to keep the conversation alive as the offseason moved along.
Manager Blake Butera said Abrams has improved at both spots and will get a real chance to compete for the shortstop job in spring training, which keeps the door open on a position the Nationals had once seemed ready to revisit. Even if most of Abrams playing time is expected to come at second base, the front office has not shut the book on him handling shortstop in 2027, leaving this winter as an important stretch in defining where he fits best. [Read more 🡒]
Miguel Sime Jr. Is Giving The Nationals A Real Pitching Dilemma
Miguel Sime Jr. wasted little time making a case for himself in his first professional season, giving the Nationals a young arm worth tracking closely as he moved from Single-A to High-A. The right-hander, drafted by Washington in 2025, piled up strikeouts and logged a 2.99 ERA in 23 starts, showing the kind of bat-missing stuff that tends to force a club to think bigger about a pitchers long-term role.
Simes performance has already created a familiar development question in D.C.: keep him in the rotation or eventually push him toward the bullpen. The Nationals have plenty of time before they have to answer it, but his early success means the conversation is only going to get louder if he keeps missing bats at this pace and keeps proving he can handle starting work. [Read more 🡒]