What if, five years ago, the Washington Nationals had a soothsayer and a hypnotist on staff so they could see the future of every player and also mesmerize the stars they wanted to keep into staying in D.C.?
Or, put another way, what if the Nats, foreseeing their injury-riddled futures, let Stephen Strasburg and Anthony Rendon leave town? And what if Bryce Harper and Trea Turner, now playoff stars for the Philadelphia Phillies, and Juan Soto, who hit 35 bombs this season as a San Diego Padre, were still Nationals?
Why, oh, why, fans are tempted to lament, aren’t these fellows, or at least some of them, still in D.C? Just imagine …
I have. I have done a thought experiment reconstructing the most likely implications if the Nats had signed Harper, Turner and Soto but avoided Strasburg and Rendon. You would think — I sure did — that this Nationals Fantasy World would be quite cheerful.
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But I was wrong. Most likely, making the correct decision on all five stars would have been a heartbreaker for the Nats. Even in a fan fantasy in which the Big Three stayed, the Nats now would have little else.
They almost certainly would not have won the 2019 World Series or any other title. Their rotation next season would be Trevor Williams, Jake Irwin and Jackson Rutledge, then question marks. They wouldn’t have young up-the-middle core pieces in CJ Abrams, Keibert Ruiz, Josiah Gray and MacKenzie Gore. They wouldn’t have uncovered Lane Thomas and Joey Meneses in the game’s remainder bin. They wouldn’t have top-10 minor league prospects in Dylan Crews and James Wood. Instead, their farm system would provide only a few useful ETAs in 2024 and 2025. Future, bleak.
The Nats might, in other words, strongly resemble the Los Angeles Angels, who went 73-89 despite having Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout. Would they even be as good as San Diego, which won only 82 games despite having six big stars — six, not three — in Soto, Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis, Xander Bogaerts, ace Blake Snell and closer Josh Hader?
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At this point, a good fan should probably say: “Hold on, Boz. There are many permutations of what the Nats could have done. It’s not just, ‘Sign all three, or don’t keep any of them.’ The past four seasons — 112 games under .500 — have been painful. Team-building isn’t the only pleasure that fans get. Star-watching is fun, too. Seeing an entire great career, such as Cal Ripken’s in Baltimore, is a central baseball joy. If they all leave town, then we don’t have that, either.”
That’s true. Ironically, after the Nats won in 2019, they tried to preserve that pleasure. They signed their World Series MVP through 2026. Unfortunately, he couldn’t stay healthy.
They never dreamed Strasburg would win only one more game. Or that Patrick Corbin, signed for five more years, would never be the same after five postseason relief appearances and would become one of the worst starters in MLB. Those pitchers, combined with Max Scherzer (signed through 2021), were the Nats’ security blanket.
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Their presence was supposed to help make D.C. a logical place for Turner or Soto, who were controlled for two and five more years, to stay long term. The idea that the Nats would lack stars — or finish in last place the next four years — wasn’t in play. Then the dominoes started falling.
Looking into a team’s past is like untwirling spaghetti. But I’m fascinated by how dreary one of the best cases — not keeping Strasburg or Rendon but somehow keeping the others — would be. Every decision has consequences. Let’s follow the likely impact of keeping the Billion Dollar Trio whom everyone loves — in the abstract.
In our hypothetical world, Harper would take the Nats’ 10-year, $300 million offer in September 2018. Or, more likely, the Nats would stay in an all-winter free agent auction, outbid the Phillies and sign Harper before 2019 for more than the $330 million for 13 years that he got.
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Soto would grab the 15-year, $440 million offer the Nats made in the summer of 2022. (By now, he may wish that he had.) And before he became a free agent, Turner would take a deal like the 11-year, $300 million haul he got in Philadelphia.
So for nearly 1.1 billion of our imaginary dollars, Nats fans could still have these three (possible) future Hall of Famers. Where would they be now?
With Harper back aboard, the Nats would not have signed the $50 million class of free agents during that 2018 offseason who were central to the World Series title. They included Corbin; team leader Brian Dozier (20 homers); the 29-homer, 106-RBI catching tandem of Yan Gomes and Kurt Suzuki; and fourth starter Aníbal Sánchez, who almost no-hit the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series. There’s no ring without them.
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As we imagine the subsequent years, the Nats’ equation never has a solution. Rendon, Strasburg and (the retiring) Ryan Zimmerman have to be replaced, and Corbin never arrives. The payroll overhang of planning to keep all of the Big Three restrains the ability to add free agent talent.
We know the players they actually got (for $70 million) in the offseasons before the 2020 and 2021 seasons, including flops such as Will Harris, Starlin Castro, Eric Thames and Brad Hand, as well as good value in Josh Bell and Kyle Schwarber. Those additions weren’t nearly enough.
By the 2021 trade deadline, the blowup was underway. The Nats discovered that Scherzer, by himself as a two-month rental, wasn’t worth a top Los Angeles Dodgers prospect. The Nats got Gray and Ruiz only by adding Turner, who was not on that long-term megadeal, to the trade.
By 2022, the Nats would have been a mess no matter what master plan they had followed. But if the Nats still had Harper-Turner-Soto, they probably would have avoided 107 losses — and would never have gotten Crews with the No. 2 overall pick.
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Now let’s return to the real Nationals world, without Harper, Turner, Soto, Scherzer, Rendon and Strasburg.
It’s a scary but also promising place. No one knows yet how the youngsters will pan out. But we know the team’s only dead-weight contract after next season is $70 million owed to Strasburg, not the 10-times-greater sum that might still be owed Harper, Turner and Soto.
By 2025, the Nats’ small payroll will be tiny. If they don’t add multiple major free agents, it’s malpractice, no matter who’s the owner. The Baltimore Orioles, Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers — who lost 110, 110 and 102 games two years ago but all reached divisional series this fall — should serve as checkbook inspiration.
For most teams, here’s reality: You catch a wave, ride it as long as you can, then paddle out and wait … and wait … and wait for the next big wave.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that, after an eight-year thrill as the second-best regular season team in MLB, the Nats went out with the tide. Even with a crystal ball, they would still be better off obeying the natural order of baseball things and rebuilding with new players rather than trying to spend a billion bucks clinging to the past.
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