“Isn’t this trade deadline kind of a mindfuck?”
That’s how a member of the Nationals’ front office put it to me in late July, a week before Monday’s deadline passed. The Nats weren’t supposed to be so competitive this season — if competitive at all — meaning the decision to buy or sell was expected to be fairly easy, at least up to the tough choice of whether to deal shortstop CJ Abrams.
But then they kept winning a tad more than they lost, mostly because of their league-best offense (and very much in spite of their abysmal bullpen). And so somewhere along the line, as a reaction to the team’s surprising record, explosive lineup and obvious lack of pitching, the decision to buy or sell morphed into figuring out the best way to do some of both, which seemed like a shift from what was once a stubborn plan to just use 2026 to prepare for the future, not to actually invest any more in … 2026.
“Yeah,” I replied, “mindfuck feels right.”
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Now, on the other side of the deadline, the hybrid approach certainly brought more selling for the future than buying for the present. That was expected, too, especially after the Nats lost five in a row to end last week, which dropped them to 4 ½ back for the National League’s final wild-card spot, now 5 ½ after they lost their sixth straight Monday night.
There was, then, a well-reasoned baseball case for most of what the Nationals did in the last 10 days, if not all of it. We’ll get to that in a minute here. But there’s also well-earned frustration for fans who are tired of rooting for a team that believes the best path forward is to trade some of its best players, even when it’s on the outer edge of the playoff race.
Paul Toboni, the team’s first-year president of baseball operations, kept saying Monday evening that he still believes in this club, that it still has an “it factor,” that it could still “go on a heater here soon and put us right back in the mix,” which is why he felt a responsibility to improve the current bullpen while also subtracting from the lineup and a paper-thin starting rotation. Which begged the question of how, if he truly believes in the Nats’ chances of making a run, he justifies trading their most reliable starter, Foster Griffin, for four unproven pitchers. Which, once again, comes down to the heavy tension between now and later while trying to build a sustainable winner. Which gets even more complicated with an ownership group that hasn’t spent anywhere close to real money in free agency — or with pre-free-agency extensions — since 2022.
“It’s one of the hardest things about my job, balancing the here and now with the future,” Toboni said. “I think every baseball fan that’s really, really into it understands it. I think if they’re asked, in practice, how do you do that … it becomes a lot more challenging, you know what I mean?”
Here are some snippets of how he explained it from there:
“ … And so what I try to do is just be real with everyone. Like: ‘Hey, if the goal here is to be good for a long period of time, you only have so many opportunities to make this foundation really strong.’ … “ … but if we pass up those opportunities to create this really strong foundation — live with me for a second on this metaphor — basically we’ll be moving into the house without the foundation being totally strong. And it might turn out that two, three years down the line, we might have to move out of the house because the foundation is cracking …”
“ … but at the same time, yeah, just speaking from the heart, I believe in the guys in the locker room and I believe in what they can do. And I can see how it would be received as: ‘Hey, you’re telling me you believe in this team but then you just shipped out, you know, one of our better pitchers.’ I get that. What I would say is basically it’s probably my brain and heart at odds, too. …”
“ … we want to make sure this is really stable while at the same time, yeah, when I say that, I hope when Woody hears it or CJ hears it or whoever hears it — Blake — they sense that it’s genuine.”
Toboni is aware that the fan base is not his only audience, that he has to sell the clubhouse on the long view, too. Woody is James Wood, a 23-year-old who is already one of the best hitters in the sport. CJ is CJ Abrams, the star shortstop who the Nats held onto through the deadline, maintaining an extremely high bar to move him. Blake is Blake Butera, the team’s first-year manager. Over the last week and a half, they’ve said goodbye to Curtis Mead, who had an .852 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, Luis García Jr., who led the National League in slugging percentage, and Griffin, who made the NL’s All-Star team with a 2.77 ERA at the break.
On Monday night, the Nats lost because — wait for it — their pen couldn’t hold a late lead. Wood left after feeling discomfort in his left oblique. The vibes are turning fast.
Soon, then, there could be more time to look ahead and analyze what the Nats received for Mead, García and Griffin. The total haul, factoring in a minor league trade that sent outfielder Christian Franklin to the Orioles, included 10 players, nine of them pitchers. The deals included …
- Mead to the Red Sox for left-handed starter Connelly Early
- García to the Yankees for four right-handed pitchers: Jack Cebert, a starter, plus Ben Grable, Yovanny Cruz and Jake Bird
- Griffin to the Guardians for left-handed pitchers Will Dion and Josh Hartle; right-handed pitcher Kendeglys Virguez; and outfielder Nick Mitchell
- And Franklin to the Orioles for right-handed pitcher Joe Glassey
As for immediate help, Toboni listed Early, Cruz and Dion as pitchers who could contribute in August and September. Early is working his way back from the injured list, where he landed in July because of elbow pain. Cruz, a flamethrower, is already in the majors. Dion, a soft thrower who gets a lot of chase, appeared in 12 games for the Guardians this year. Bird, 30, has 227 career relief appearances between the Rockies and Yankees. He could also chip in soon as a marginal improvement over one of the Nats’ low-leverage arms.
The Mead-Early trade was probably the best example of dealing for now and later, as the Nationals traded from a clear strength (hitting) for five-and-a-half years of a big league starter that Toboni drafted while working in Boston. The García and Griffin trades, while including major league-ready relievers, seemed more focused on stockpiling minor league arms to mold, which should give the Nats a shot at better pitching depth in upcoming years. For Griffin, who is a two-month rental for Cleveland, the Nationals only received one player (Hartle) in the Guardians’ top 25 prospects, at least according to MLB Pipeline. Virguez is already a reliever at 22. With any trade of this nature, the Nats are betting on their player development system.
Notably, none of Mead, Griffin or García were penciled in as major contributors to start the year. They signed Griffin to a one-year deal out of Japan, which also means he will be a free agent this fall. Mead was adrift before the season, just released by the White Sox, then had a breakout season under the Nats’ new coaching staff. Much like Mead, García unlocked much more power by improving his pitch selection and pulling the ball in the air more. Through the dispassionate lens of logical roster building, flipping each of them now, at what could be the height of their value, made perfect sense.
But for the past four summers, Nats fans have been told to turn away from a shoddy product because there’s a new reliever in the minors with an intriguing fastball. Then, it was Jarlin Susana. Now, it’s Ben Grable, plugged right into an all-too-familiar mind trick of ignoring what you can see to believe in what you can’t just yet. Two things can be true, as Toboni said Monday when describing the conflict between his head and heart: His front office, new to the job, deserves the opportunity to build a foundation without the burden of what happened before they arrived. And yet, after four months of competitive baseball, after what felt like the first warm days of a long overdue spring, it’s fair for D.C. to wonder when this kind of deadline selling will stop. Maybe next July.
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