In late March, the Nationals traded a young catcher named Boston Smith for an Australian infielder named Curtis Mead, who had been solidly below-average in 488 career plate appearances — and was just designated for assignment by the White Sox, a team that lost 102 games in 2025. And then late Saturday night, the Nats flipped Mead to the Red Sox for left-handed pitcher Connelly Early, which was both their first trade deadline deal and a clear self-assessment for the new front office and coaching staff.
They are feeling very, very good about the organization’s ability to develop hitting — and particularly power — in the majors and minors. They have every reason to, too, given that Mead went from floating in the ether to having a breakout year, including 17 home runs in less than four months. Players up and down the Nats’ major league roster are also tracking toward career highs in homers, if they aren’t there already. Which is all why it made perfect sense to trade from a position of strength (bats) to improve a glaring weakness (arms). (ESPN first reported the Mead-Early trade.)
Some more top-line details: Early is only 24 and will be under team control for another five years after this one (through 2031). Mead, 25, is controllable through 2030. Early has been on the injured list since July 1 with left elbow inflammation, which underscores the inherent risk of swapping a hitter for a pitcher who’s never thrown more than 104 innings at any level. But the Nats’ front office is intimately familiar with him, seeing that Paul Toboni, the team’s first-year president of baseball operations, was a key decision maker when Boston drafted Early in 2023, as was Devin Pearson, now one of Toboni’s assistant general managers in Washington. (Toboni has now done two deals with his former club.)
The deadline is Aug. 3, meaning the Nats could just be getting started. Shortstop CJ Abrams is generating real interest, according to multiple people familiar with his market, though it would take a massive return for the Nats to move him while hanging on the edge of the wild-race race. It wouldn’t require nearly as much for them to part with first baseman Luis García Jr. or starter Foster Griffin — though Griffin, an All Star with a 2.68 ERA, is in a higher tier than García, who would be a lefty platoon bat for a contender.
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And if the Nationals can improve on their 53-52 record over the next week, they could very well seek bullpen help while weighing offers for the players above. If the Mead-Early trade revealed anything about their broader deadline approach, it is that it’s not necessarily a binary choice between buying or selling.
Early has allowed a ton of hard contact in 91⅔ innings this season. But he’s still managed a 3.44 ERA while mixing five to six pitches. Advanced metrics love his changeup. His extension, which measures the distance between the rubber and where a pitcher releases the ball, is well above average, a trait the Nats’ front office likes. And with the Red Sox, obvious needs lined up at the perfect time.
The Red Sox just ripped off a 15-game winning streak and needed more offense for their playoff push. The Nats, confident they can replicate the process that revived Mead’s career, leaped at the chance to bring in a high-upside pitcher they know well. The Red Sox have the pitching prospects to backfill Early’s spot. The Nats have a handful of intriguing infield prospects, including Brady House, who will join the team Sunday to replace Mead on the active roster (which The Athletic first reported). That’s the anatomy of a one-for-one trade of young big leaguers.
House will be the next test of just how well the Nats can coach up power hitting in the majors, which they’ve done with multiple players now by emphasizing pulling the right pitches in the air. A first-round pick in 2021, House started the year with the Nationals and struggled with contact and pitch selection. When he did connect, he hit the ball hard more often than not, resulting in seven homers in a limited sample. But he also struck out 50 times, nearly a third of this plate appearances, while working only 13 walks. Righties have chewed him up.
That’s not to say that House’s next two months should color the assessment of trading Mead for Early. House’s promotion doesn’t mean the Nationals necessarily view him as their third baseman of the future, especially given how they pulled Mead from obscurity to effectively replace House for a few months. But House, who just turned 23, is coming off an encouraging stretch in AAA. And if the major league staff can keep turning him in the right direction, Saturday’s deal will make even more sense.
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