So, when both Luis Garcia and Yadiel Hernandez went down with injuries … the Nats active 26-man roster sports exactly ONE originally drafted/signed player (that being Victor Robles).
That’s pretty amazing.
Check out the big board, where all of our rosters are tracked in one place.
Now, in all fairness the roster does contain several players acquired as prospects in trade, which is kind of the point of a rebuild, so I thought it’d be interesting to squint at our rosters right now and do quick arithmetic of the roster construction to show where we are.
This data is as of 8/23/22 and depends on my Big Board being accurate (which it may not be b/c transactions are sneaky sometimes). Only looking at active players, not DL/restricted.
MLB Roster: 26 man.
- Home Grown: 1 (Robles)
- Prospects Acquired in trade; 6 (Ruiz, Voit, Abrams, Adams, Thomas, Grey)
- MLB FAs: 5 (Hernandez, Cruz, Corbin, Finnegan, Cishek)
- MiLB FAs; 9 (Vargas, Meneses, Franco, Sanchez, Espino, Edwards, Ramirez, Arano, Clippard)
- Waiver claims: 5 (Call, Palacios, Abbott, Harvey, McGee)
So … 14 of our 26 active players right now were MILB signings or Waiver claims. Wow.
Lets take a look at the current AAA roster. Same analysis
- Home Grown: 9 (Berrera, Sanchez, Alu, Stevenson, Johnson, Banks, Cavalli, Adon, Cronin)
- Prospects Acquired in trade: 2 (Casey, Thompson)
- MLB FAs: 0 of course.
- MiLB FAs 14 (Johnson, JRodriguez, Nogoski, Flores, Gushue, Ponce de Leon, Kilome, Verrett, Weems, Sadzeck, Garrett, Machado, Baldonado, Avilan)
- Waiver claims: 3 (Fox, Murphy, Perez)
- Rule5: 2 (Brill, Taylor)
Yes, I realize that two of were originally our players (Johnson, Rodriguez). They left and came back, so they’re MLFAs. Also Gushue was initially acquired in trade, but left and came back. This is 2022 acquisition methodology.
So, 30 players in AAA, and 19 of them are basically ‘filler’ players b/c our system hasn’t generated enough depth to fill the AAA roster. At least we have 9 home grown players here, but of this group really only a couple are true prospects in jeopardy of pushing to the majors.
How about AA?
- Home Grown: 17
- Prospects Acquired in trade: 3 (Lara, Hassell,Harris)
- MLB FAs: 0 of course.
- MiLB FAs; 6 (Martin, Garcia, Herrera, Dopico, Gonzalez, Garcia)
- Waiver claims:
- Rule5: 1 (Young)
17 of the 27 on the Roster home grown as expected (and another 3 are trade acquisitions). But its a little suspect that we have 6 MLFAs in our AA. A couple of these MLFAs in Harrisburg are in their upper 20s and are clearly too old for the level. On the bright side, 6 of the 7 guys getting starts are home grown, which is a good sign.
High-A?
- Home Grown: 26
- Prospects Acquired in trade: 4 (Millas, Barley, Alston, Gausch)
- MLB FAs: 0 of course.
- MiLB FAs; 2 (Candelario, Merrill)
- Waiver claims:
- Rule5
So, 30 of 32 players on the roster home grown or acquired prospects.
Low-A:
31 players, 30 of which home grown and the one remaining is a trade acquisition in Wood.
Not much to look at below AA … this was more just a “holy cow look at the MLB roster” kind of post.