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On July 30, 2021, less than two years removed from a championship, the Nationals traded Max Scherzer and Trea Turner to the Dodgers for two highly regarded prospects in Keibert Ruiz and Josiah Gray. Having opened that door, the Nats would go on to trade Juan Soto for MacKenzie Gore, CJ Abrams, James Wood, and three additional players. All told, the Nationals’ 2021-22 teardown generated the following returns, through 2025:
- CJ Abrams, 10.2 bWAR for $2.25 million
- Lane Thomas, 6.4 bWAR for $7 million
- MacKenzie Gore, 5.7 bWAR for $4.86 million
- Keibert Ruiz, 4.8 bWAR for $16 million
- James Wood, 3.7 bWAR for $1.1 million
- Josiah Gray, 3.0 bWAR for $5.5 million
...plus Robert Hassell III and Jarlin Susana, still prospects.
Mike Rizzo, put into an impossible situation by Nats ownership, absolutely crushed the teardown. He traded the core of a championship team and brought in the core of a championship team. It is a credit to him and the Nationals’ scouting staff that he did as well as he did. It is also stunning that having succeeded at it, the Nationals are starting the cycle all over again. That list above is a scathing indictment of the Lerner family, which was given a gift -- a young, inexpensive core of baseball players -- and did nothing to support it. The Nationals may now go the entire 2020s without putting a winning team on the field, simply embarrassing in this day and age. Don’t blame Rizzo, though. He did his job better than anyone could have expected.
