Washington Nationals news & notes: Nats enter offseason thinking they are close…

Notes and quotes on the Nationals going into the 2024-25 offseason…

Looking at the season as a whole in late August, GM and President of Baseball Operations in D.C., Mike Rizzo, told Audacy’s The Sports Junkies the continued development of the club’s pitchers was one of the biggest positives from the Washington Nationals’ 2024 campaign.

“You’re seeing really the development of four major league starters kind of coming together in the same season, which is unlikely to happen often,” Rizzo said, referring to MacKenzie Gore (25 years old), Jake Irvin (27), Mitchell Parker (24), and DJ Herz (23) taking the mound all summer in the majors (or close to it) in the big league rotation. “I think that’s the biggest pro for me, the state of our pitching at the big league level, at the upper minor league level, and at the lower minor league level has never been better for us, never flourished as much.

“We’ve never had as much depth as we’ve had right now.”

“We’re in a good spot with our young starters and still the guys we’ve got coming up,” Davey Martinez said when the manager talked about the state of the organization over the final weekend of the regular season.

“With Cade [Cavalli] hopefully being healthy next year in Spring Training [after Tommy John surgery in 2023).

“We had this guy [Brad] Lord that did really well. [Travis] Sykora, who’s pitched, as you know, really well. [Jarlin] Susana is developing really well. We’re really excited about our starting pitching.”

As Rizzo told the Junkies, it’s not just the pitching he’s excited about, with talent in the field developing along with the arms in the organization.

“When you add [James] Wood and [the Nationals’ top prospect Dylan] Crews — in the near future, you’re looking at five, six, seven players that’s going to be the core group of your team in the very near future.”

Rizzo was talking to the Junkies about the pros and cons of fielding the young team the Nationals did down the stretch and in one response he acknowledged the hard parts of having prospects learn the game in the majors.

“The cons are the growing pains,” Rizzo told the Junkies. “All of these young players, they all don’t develop and blossom at the same time. So there’s bumps and in the road.

“Like I’ve said, development’s not linear, there’s bumps in the road, you have to live and die with that throughout the season…

“Inconsistencies and the sometimes the lack of fundamentals are definitely the biggest cons that I’ve seen throughout the season and things we have to work on.”

In order to take the next step, and once again compete, will the Nationals’ front office supplement their core players with some free agent or trade acquisitions this offseason?

“I say this all the time,” Martinez said over the final weekend of the season, “we have many, many conversations when the year is over. For me, that’s something for [Rizzo] and [Nats’] ownership to decide. Yeah, I’d love to have a couple veteran guys, but give me 26 players, and we’ll do the best we can. I tell the coaching staff that every day, ‘No matter what, we got to get these guys to play hard every day,’ which we’ve done.

“But I will tell you this though, I really do believe that we’re close. We really are. And we got some pieces in there that are going to be really good.

“As I’ve said before, I think a lot of these guys could be future All-Stars, so I’m excited about that.”

And when he says he thinks they’re close where does his mind go to justify those thoughts?

“It goes to watching the growth of these guys, one,” Martinez said. “We talked about where the power is going to come from. I think some of these guys will eventually develop that. Once again, you saw James [Wood] in a big moment hit the ball to left field, home run. I think you’ll see more of that as he gets a little bit more mature. I think our right fielder [Crews] is going to drive the ball, catcher [Keibert Ruiz] is going to drive the ball. We get our shortstop [CJ Abrams] back, as you saw, he had a really good [first] half. I think it’s just a matter of time before he puts it all together throughout the whole year. So we’re going to be good. Now, if they deem that we need a couple extra bats in our lineup, that would be awesome. So we’ll see.”