Nelson Cruz going to the Washington Nationals on a one-year, $15 million contract is a bit of a surprising twist after rumors throughout Sunday that his likely destination was the Los Angeles Dodgers or the San Diego Padres, so the signing leads to two questions:
1. What do the Nationals, a team that currently doesn’t look like a viable contender in the National League East, want with a 41-year-old designated hitter — 42 on July 1 — who hit .221/.279/.438 in the second half in 2021?
2. Does the signing mean they have more moves to come to improve a team that went 65-97 last year — and now no longer has Max Scherzer?
As for the first question, Cruz did finish the 2021 season with 32 home runs with the Minnesota Twins and Tampa Bay Rays while batting .265/.334/.497, so his overall production remained very good. Still, that second-half decline is certainly worrisome, especially for a player his age, and perhaps the initial sign that Father Time is finally catching up to Cruz. If he does remain productive, however, Cruz gives the Nationals a good chance to have better-than-average numbers from the DH position: The majority of National League teams will probably end up rotating players through the DH slot, and recently we’ve seen a lot of American League teams struggle at the position due to a refusal to sign a full-time DH. Second, if Cruz is hitting and the Nationals are out of the playoff race, he is valuable trade bait. The Twins picked up a very good starting pitching prospect in Joe Ryan when they traded Cruz to the Rays, and the Nationals would look to do the same.
But let’s say the Nationals consider themselves potential playoff contenders. For any chance of that to happen, they will need a healthy Stephen Strasburg and a better Patrick Corbin. Strasburg has completed his rehab from last season’s neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome, a circulatory problem that limited him to five starts. (Strasburg also made just two starts in 2020.) He is scheduled to throw his first live bullpen session on Tuesday. Corbin last year went 9-16 with a 5.82 ERA, leading the NL in both earned runs and home runs allowed. He also struggled in 2020, so both he and Strasburg have a lot to prove before they return to their World Series-winning form of 2019. Call me skeptical on the front — especially with Corbin, after he got lit up last year.
Regardless, what the Nationals do have is money to spend. Their projected payroll right now, including Cruz, sits at about $150 million, via Cot’s Contracts. That’s well below the $200 million payrolls they ran from 2017 to 2020, let alone the new competitive balance tax (CBT) threshold of $230 million. Could they be a surprise landing spot for Carlos Correa? Lord knows Alcides Escobar is not the answer at shortstop. Correa switched agents to Scott Boras during the lockout, and the Nationals and Boras have a long history of deals: Strasburg, Juan Soto and Josh Bell are all Boras clients currently on the Nationals, as was Scherzer (although so were Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon, and both left the Nationals when they reached free agency).
Speaking of Soto, he kind of looms in the background of everything the Nationals do. He is still under team control for three more seasons — and the Nationals don’t want to spend those seasons rebuilding while hoping to sweet-talk Soto into a long-term deal. (He reportedly turned down a $350 million extension before the lockout.) So there is some urgency to win now while they have a superstar anchor in the lineup. Cruz might help a little, Correa would help a lot, but they would still need to scramble to fill out a rotation, without a deep farm system to make those necessary trades. Correa or not, it feels like the Nationals have to follow up Cruz with another couple of free-agent signings. (Maybe Trevor Story is a more affordable alternative to Correa, and there are veterans starters such as Zack Greinke, Michael Pineda, Danny Duffy, Johnny Cueto and Tyler Anderson still available in free agency.) Reportedly signing Aaron Sanchez to a minor league deal was a good start.
I doubt Cruz will hit like he did in the first half with the Twins, so I’m not sure the Nationals will get a good prospect for him in July, but at $15 million, it’s a reasonable move.
As for the Dodgers, with Cruz off the market, that only intensifies things for them, especially if Cruz was Plan B to Freddie Freeman as Plan A. If they end up with Freeman, maybe they end up the big winners here.