The Nationals have found the left-handed bat that they were looking for. Yesterday, Bob Nightengale reported that Dominic Smith has signed a one-year deal that will send him down I-95 to Washington. Robert Murray of FanSided reported that the deal was for $2 million, with performance bonuses worth up to another $2 million. According to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, those bonuses relate to the number of plate appearances Smith makes. The Nationals 40-man roster is full, so they will need to make a move in order to clear space for Smith.

After snagging Jeimer Candelario on a one-year deal in November, the Nationals have now filled both corner infield spots with free agent bounce-back candidates. In Washington, Smith might finally get the one thing he’s always needed: time. After six big league seasons, the 27-year-old Smith has never had a regular position, and has topped 200 plate appearances just once.

Nightengale also reported what might be the most important part of this story: that Smith will be playing first base for the Nationals. Although the team non-tendered Luke Voit earlier in the offseason, that was not necessarily seen as a certainty. Manager Dave Martinez said during the Winter Meetings that he hoped first base would be the primary position of 2022 rookie sensation Joey Meneses. Over the course of his career, Smith has spent more innings in the outfield than he has at first. It’s at least reasonable to imagine that playing every day at his preferred position could make a real difference to a player who’s never had the luxury of stability. Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago at the Winter Meetings, Nationals manager Dave Martinez told reporters that the team was looking to add a veteran starting pitcher. On Friday, MASN’s Mark Zuckerman reported that Washington did just that, making its biggest move of the offseason by signing free agent Trevor Williams. The two-year, $13 million commitment, per The Athletic’s Stephen J. Nesbitt, represents the team’s third-biggest contractual commitment, behind the long-term deals of Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin.

Williams played a significant role with the Mets in 2022, starting nine games while Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer were on the IL earlier in the season and making 21 relief appearances. Given New York’s glut of solid right-handed relief arms, he didn’t make the roster for the Wild Card Series against the Padres. Had he been on the Nationals in 2022, his 0.6 WAR would have been third on the staff, and his 3.21 ERA and 3.88 FIP would have been fourth (among pitchers who threw at least 25 innings).

Williams will immediately become the most reliable arm in Washington’s starting rotation. At Federal Baseball, Patrick Reddington noted that he had a 1.80 ERA against the Nationals in 2022, so if nothing else, they’ve co-opted a former tormenter. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and today’s team is the Washington Nationals.

Batters

If there’s any silver lining for a team that will likely be at the bottom of the division, it’s that this is a fairly decent floor for a last-place squad, unless it faces particularly bad injury luck. There are no projected stars remaining anywhere on the roster, but the Nationals do have a pretty good front line of fringe options at most positions. When we mash-up the ZiPS projections and the current iteration of the depth charts, no individual position combines for three wins, but no position comes in at under a win either. Players like Victor Robles, Joey Meneses, and Jeimer Candelario may not have exciting upside, but they’re at least major league players. I’d be midly surprised to see Washington lose 107 games, which it did last season even with a half-season from Juan Soto and Josh Bell.

ZiPS still sees CJ Abrams as risky and is just about out of hope for Carter Kieboom. There’s a bright spot in the form of Jake Alu, who destroyed pitchers in the high minors, even when you take the 2022 helium out of those numbers in the form of a translation. ZiPS doesn’t see him being a near-star offensive player, but the probabilistic measure I use had him as one of the best defensive minor league players; he’s listed as +5 runs at third base, and if ZiPS had been as confident about the translated defense estimate as it is about MLB defensive measures, the projection would actually be +12. Meneses gets a better projection than similar veteran surprise Frank Schwindel got after 2021, and ZiPS sees Alex Call as a legitimate stopgap corner outfielder of the Anthony Santander variety. Abrams, along with Keibert Ruiz and Luis García, has significant upside, and it wouldn’t take much to see any of these projections blow up in a positive way with some real steps forwards from these youngsters. Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals aren’t going to make the playoffs in 2023. They probably won’t even sniff .500; unsurprisingly, the team that traded Juan Soto along with everything that wasn’t nailed down this past season isn’t quite ready to compete for division titles. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try to get better, though – when the next generation of Nationals stars reaches the majors, the team would prefer to have some major league pieces already in place, mirroring the vaunted Cubs and Astros rebuilds of the 2010s. To that end, the Nationals made a signing I absolutely love yesterday, snagging Jeimer Candelario on a one-year deal worth $5 million, with $1 million in incentives.

Before the 2022 season, no one would have believed you if you told them Candelario would be a free agent this winter. In 2020 and ’21, he hit a combined .278/.356/.458, good for a 125 wRC+. He backed that up with decent defense at third base; all told, he looked like a comfortably above-average player carried by his bat. Then came 2022, an abject disaster; over 124 injury-interrupted games, he hit .217/.272/.361 and saw pretty much every statistical indicator tick downwards. The Tigers chose to release him rather than go through arbitration, which MLB Trade Rumors estimated at roughly $7 million.

For the 2020 and ’21 versions of Candelario, that would be a bargain. Quite frankly, I still think it would make sense after his poor 2022 season. The Tigers didn’t share my assessment, valuing the combination of money and roster space as more important than retaining his services. I’m not quite sure I understand it – they currently have two open spots on their 40-man roster and no in-house third baseman – but their loss was Washington’s gain. Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t too long ago that it was a delightful novelty when position players pitched. When Casper Wells came in from the outfield to chuck batting practice fastballs at the plate, it signified that the game had gone into a zone of silliness. Either the game was such a blowout there was nothing to be gained by taking it seriously, or it had gone on so long that both teams had run out of pitchers. In the latter case, that usually happened well after midnight, with all the slap-happy antics exhausted people tend to get up to.

But seeing a position player on the mound is no longer cause for giddiness and mirth. It’s almost commonplace; so much so that MLB had to institute a rule prohibiting position players from pitching in games where the score is closer than seven runs. Like a Foster the People song, the position player pitching got overexposed and lost its luster. What was once a reason to turn a game on is now a signal that you might as well turn it off.

Why are so many position players pitching nowadays? Well, there’s the serious answer, which has to do with bullpen construction and the proliferation of the max-effort relief pitcher. And then there’s the truth, which is that in baseball, unlike curling, it’s considered indecorous to concede a game you’re going to lose. That’s what the position player pitching usually means now: The game is out of reach, so let’s just get it over with, ideally with as little expenditure of time and effort as is practicable. Read the rest of this entry »

2023 Intern, Baseball Research & Development (R&D)

Location: Washington, DC

Summary:
The Washington Nationals are seeking multiple interns to join our Baseball Research & Development team for the 2023 season. As an intern, you’ll work on developing and applying your data science skills to baseball, performing research on baseball questions under the close mentorship of a team member of Baseball R&D. You’ll likely work on one project at a time, with plenty of time for model exploration and personal development. You’ll have the opportunity to work in a collaborative baseball front office daily at the stadium, watching baseball and engaging regularly with more senior members of our baseball operations group.

Internships are a key way for us to find future full-time members of our department, with many of our senior department members beginning as interns. While a pathway to a full-time position is not assured, many of our former interns have found full-time opportunities with the Nationals or other MLB clubs. While internships ideally span from Opening Day to November 1st, we’re open to candidates that may not be available for this entire period. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday’s 40-man roster deadline led to the usual squall of transaction activity, with teams turning over portions of their rosters in an effort to make room for the incoming crop of young rookies. Often, teams with an overflow of viable big leaguers will try to get back what they can for some of those players via trade, but because we’re talking about guys straddling the line between major league viability and Triple-A, those trades tend not to be big enough to warrant an entire post. Over the next few days, I’ll endeavor to cover and analyze the moves made by each team, division by division. Readers can view this as the start of list season, as the players covered in this miniseries tend to be prospects who will get big league time in the next year. I’ll spend more time discussing players who I think need scouting updates or who I haven’t written about in the past. If you want additional detail on some of the more famous names you find below, pop over to The Board for a more thorough report.

The Future Value grades littered throughout these posts may be different than those on the 2022 in-season prospect lists on The Board to reflect my updated opinions, and may be subject to change during the offseason. New to my thinking on this subject and wondering what the FVs mean? Here’s a quick rundown. Note that because we’re talking about close-to-the-majors prospects across this entire exercise, the time and risk component is less present here and these FVs are what I think the players are right now. Read the rest of this entry »

Biomechanist

Summary:
The Washington Nationals are looking for someone with wide-ranging expertise in applied biomechanics to join our team and enhance our Player Development and Performance Science processes. This individual will play a leading role in helping various stakeholders such as on-field coaches, Strength and Conditioning staff, the Sports Medicine department, as well as Baseball Operations and R&D staff, leverage biomechanical data to optimize player performance and health.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Collect, analyze, maintain, and communicate Performance Science data from a variety of data sources (on and off-field) in a digestible, applicable manner 
• Build infrastructure necessary for the efficient dissemination of findings from biomechanics analysis or other Performance Science initiatives to players and staff 
• Stay informed on latest academic research and technology pertaining to baseball Performance Science 
• Ensure that player performance decisions incorporate insights supported by existing Performance Science research  
• Collaborate with staff in Strength and Conditioning, Sports Medicine, R&D, Scouting, Hitting, and Pitching to develop pathways for implementing biomechanics data and research into their respective processes 
• Develop educational materials or programming to help introduce or teach biomechanics concepts to staff throughout the organization in an intelligible manner 
• Validate Performance Science equipment and establish corresponding data collection protocols 
• Execute internal research projects to deliver insights capable of maximizing player performance or wellness 
• Integrate Performance Science data with on-field performance data to improve individual player development plans or existing player evaluation models
• Lead the process of designing, evaluating, and rolling out novel Performance Science initiatives 

Requirements:

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements

• A graduate-level degree in biomechanics or a related field (Kinesiology, Biomedical Engineering, Motor Control, etc.) or demonstrated experience collecting, interpreting, modeling, and applying biomechanics data 
• Demonstrated experience with biomechanics or Performance Science research and data collection processes, including proficiency with markered and/or markerless motion capture, force plates, IMUs, computer vision, and/or EMG systems

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities necessary to perform essential functions

• Strong ability to teach, explain, and effectively communicate biomechanics or Performance Science concepts/findings to stakeholders of different backgrounds
• Previous research and/or applied experience working alongside athletes/coaches in elite sport is strongly preferred  
• Previous experience applying biomechanics specifically to the context of baseball is strongly preferred 
• Proficiency with R, Python, or another similar programming language is strongly preferred
• High proficiency with the scientific method, including research question design and hypothesis testing is desired 
• Spanish fluency is a plus 
• Experience with markerless baseball biomechanics systems such as Hawk-Eye or KinaTrax is a plus 
• Excellent attention to detail, critical thinking skills, and creativity
• Ability to work unconventional or long hours, including nights, holidays, and weekends

Physical/Environmental Requirements

• Must be able to lift and transport up to 50 lb.
• Must be able to access all areas of facility and spend prolonged periods of time in those areas.

All applicants for employment at the Washington Nationals are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 prior to commencing employment. Applicants who receive a conditional offer of employment will be required to produce proof of vaccination status prior to their first day of employment. Applicants with qualifying disabilities or bona fide religious objections may be exempted from this requirement or otherwise accommodated if they are unable to be vaccinated.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Washington Nationals.

Data Engineer, Baseball Research & Development

Summary:
The Washington Nationals are looking to hire a software engineer focusing on data engineering and infrastructure to join our Baseball R&D group. The data engineer will help ensure our datasets are well organized and accessible for our analysts and web developers. We are looking for candidates who are passionate about building impactful solutions around data workflows and enthusiastic about working in a baseball front office.

The Washington Nationals Baseball R&D group is responsible for deriving insights from our baseball datasets and building proprietary metrics and data products which are used to inform baseball decision making throughout our organization.

We prefer candidates who are willing to relocate to Washington, DC area for in person/hybrid work at Nationals Park but are willing to consider a fully remote option for exceptional candidates.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Build robust data imports that pull data from a variety of sources (HTTP API’s, cloud object stores like AWS S3, relational databases) and write to our internal data systems.
• Develop validation processes to monitor data quality and flag potential sources of error.
• Help with the deployment, orchestration, and monitoring of our data pipelines. We use Prefect for orchestration, utilizing Docker and AWS ECS.
• Design and build solutions to make working with our internal datasets easier. This work includes maintaining database tables and views, merging datasets from different sources for easier access, and possibly building internal API’s or other microservices to make data more accessible.
• Assist with the maintenance of our cloud computing infrastructure: manage and configure servers, databases, and other internal tools.
• Research and advocate for any new tooling that can aide in timely, accurate and accessible data delivery
• Write documentation
• Participate in code reviews

Requirements:

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, information science, or a related field.
• 3+ years of relevant work experience.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities necessary to perform essential functions

• Fluent in Python and experience with Pandas.
• Proficient with MySQL, PostgreSQL, or other relational database systems.
• Experience with Docker.
• Comfortable working on the command line in a Linux environment.
• Experience using git for version control.
• Some experience with R is preferred, but not required.
• Ability to work independently with close attention to detail.
• Enthusiastic about working in baseball.
• Authorized to work in the United States.

Physical/Environmental Requirements

• Office: Working conditions are normal for an office environment. Work may require occasional weekend and/or evening work.

Our Stack

• We write most of our imports in Python, using Prefect for orchestrating our data workflows, which are dockerized and deployed on AWS ECS. Our analysts work mostly in R.
• Our servers run Ubuntu Linux.
• We utilize several AWS services, primarily EC2, RDS, S3, ECS, Batch, EFS.
• We use MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB for our databases. We also leverage SQLite, DuckDB, DynamoDB for certain applications.
• We use Terraform, Ansible, and Packer for managing our infrastructure
• We use a self-hosted GitLab instance for our code repositories and for CI/CD.

All applicants for employment at the Washington Nationals are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 prior to commencing employment. Applicants who receive a conditional offer of employment will be required to produce proof of vaccination status prior to their first day of employment. Applicants with qualifying disabilities or bona fide religious objections may be exempted from this requirement or otherwise accommodated if they are unable to be vaccinated.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

Full Stack Web Developer, Baseball Research & Development

Summary:

The Washington Nationals are seeking a full stack web developer to join our Baseball Research & Development team. We are looking for candidates who are both passionate about building web applications and enthusiastic about the opportunity to work on software that has a significant impact within a baseball organization.

The developer will work on a small team to build and maintain an internal web application used by scouts, coaches, player development staff, and the baseball operations front office. Some key features of the site include scouting reports, video, player projections, custom reports and tools, and the display of both public and proprietary metrics related to player performance and evaluation.

We prefer candidates who are willing to relocate to Washington, DC area for in person/hybrid work at Nationals Park but are willing to consider a fully remote option for exceptional candidates.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and test new features, working on both the frontend and backend of the application
• Support and maintain existing features
• Investigate and resolve bugs
• Develop and deploy data imports and other background processing jobs
• Work closely with R&D analysts to display public and private metrics
• Write documentation
• Participate in code reviews

Requirements:

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, information science, or related experiences
• 2+ years of full-time web development experience

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities necessary to perform essential functions

• Ability to communicate clearly and effectively
• Ability to write clean, concise, and maintainable code
• Ability to work both collaboratively and independently
• Experience with modern programming languages (e.g. Ruby, Python, JavaScript) and frameworks (e.g. Rails, Django, Flask, Node/Express). Experience with Rails is preferred.
• Experience with frontend JavaScript frameworks, such as jQuery, Vue.js, or React.
• Understanding of relational database schema design, experience using MySQL & PostgreSQL, and comfort writing direct SQL statements.
• Experience with data visualization is preferred.
• Experience with Linux and using command line tools is preferred.
• Experience working with a large inherited codebase is a plus.
• Authorized to work in the United States

Physical/Environmental Requirements

• Office: Working conditions are normal for an office environment. Work may require occasional weekend and/or evening work.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Washington Nationals.

Performance Associate, Player Development

Summary:
Contribute to Washington Nationals Player Development for the 2023 season in a new full-time, high impact Player Development role. We are looking for qualified individuals who can aid our Player Development department by managing, overseeing, and developing player and coach-facing, data-driven processes throughout the season. In the offseason, daily tasks, research projects, and preparation for the upcoming season comprise the bulk of the work.

This is full-time position, and you will be joining the Nationals Player Development and Baseball Operations Departments as a key contributor moving forward.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Facilitate the management of accurate data reporting processes and structures to coaches, staff, and players.
  • Distribute a wide range of reports and communicate relevant insights to staff.
  • Monitor and analyze relevant trends in both on-field and practice settings.
  • Produce and contextualize advance scouting reports.
• Coordinate the use of player performance technology pertaining to both pitching and hitting, including wearable, radar-based, and camera-based systems.
• Collect, maintain, and organize data from all player development technologies.
• Maintain consistent testing and assessment protocols with all player development technologies and other methods of tracking.
• Collaborate with other members of Player Development, S&C, and Medical on assessing and monitoring player performance and injury risk.
• Spearhead continued education efforts on the uses and application of player development technologies and other data sources with coaches, staff, and players.
• Assist in researching new modalities and applications of player development technologies.
• Monitor public baseball research and emerging statistical tools, as well as all potential vendor data/technology opportunities.
• Other duties as assigned.

Requirements:

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent.
• Degree and/or relevant professional experience in the following fields is preferred:
  • Statistics
  • Sports Science
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Computer Science
• Demonstrated work (professional or personal) using any of R, SQL, Python is preferred.
• Fluency or proficiency in Spanish is preferred.
• Ability to write clearly and effectively in English and/or Spanish.
• Proficient in MS Office applications such as Excel and PowerPoint.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities necessary to perform essential functions

• Passion for creating data-driven plans, visualizations and engaging in research projects related to player development.
• Critical thinking skills to answer statistical and biomechanics-related questions and to test research hypotheses.
• Desire to learn about the ins and out of baseball player development and how data, tech, and sports science can make an impact on the field.
• Ability to relocate to (or close to) one of the Nationals affiliate cities.
• Familiarity and previous experience working with baseball technologies such as Hawkeye, Trackman, and a range of wearable technologies.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and organizational skills.
• The ability to translate and explain technical concepts and terms into digestible messages.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Effective time management.
• Uphold Core Values: Excellence, Performance, and Accountability. These core values set the tone in everything we do, help us succeed on and off the field, make a difference in the community and provide the best guest experience in sports.  It is important that the person in the position commits themselves to these core values so that we can constantly move forward in the same direction – Together.

Physical/Environmental Requirements:

• Minimum physical requirements: Ability to travel and gain access to various areas of the ballpark for prolonged periods of time during games and events. Able to lift and transport up to 25 pounds.
• Office: Working conditions at the team’s home facility are normal for an office environment. Work during road trips will vary depending on the visiting team’s set-up – being able to adjust to different workspaces on the road will be a regular part of the job.

The Nationals are a military-friendly organization actively recruiting veterans and spouses.

All applicants for employment at the Washington Nationals are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 prior to commencing employment. Applicants who receive a conditional offer of employment will be required to produce proof of vaccination status prior to their first day of employment. Applicants with qualifying disabilities or bona fide religious objections may be exempted from this requirement or otherwise accommodated if they are unable to be vaccinated.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

Player Development Analyst, Baseball Research & Development (R&D)

Summary:
The Washington Nationals are seeking a Player Development Analyst to join our Baseball Research & Development team. The Player Development Analyst will help summarize our baseball datasets to produce actionable insights, evaluate our player’s strengths and weaknesses, build player plans, and communicate regularly with Player Development staff. The analyst will also help analyze data from various tracking technologies such as Hawk-Eye, TrackMan, and Blast Motion and occasionally assist with the operation of these technologies. The analyst will report to the Coordinator of Player Development Analytics in Baseball Research & Development.

The analyst should be able to communicate findings well to all audiences, technical and non-technical. We are seeking candidates with particular interest in player development who have a desire to interact with staff, coaches, and players when appropriate. Effective communication skills paired with data science experience are essential.

This position is based out of West Palm Beach, FL.

The Nationals are a military-friendly organization actively recruiting veterans and spouses.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Analyze player tracking data and produce statistical summaries for coaches
• Build interactive web apps using R Shiny
• Design and build automated reports with informative data visualization
• Consult with R&D members on statistical modeling projects
• Assist with development of player improvement plans
• Participate in R&D code reviews
• Other duties as assigned

Requirements:

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements

• Undergraduate or graduate degree from a four-year college or university, preferably in Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or Computer Science
• Experience analyzing datasets and training statistical models using R, Python, SQL, or equivalent
• Playing background (baseball or softball) at the collegiate level or above and/or relevant experience is preferred
• Previous experience working with baseball datasets and tracking technologies is a plus

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities necessary to perform essential functions

• Effective organizational skills and attention to detail
• Self-starter with an ability to handle multiple tasks and responsibilities
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to present ideas clearly and concisely
• Enthusiasm for learning new skills related to programming, statistical modeling, and data visualization
• Uphold Core Values: Excellence, Performance, and Accountability. These core values set the tone in everything we do, help us succeed on and off the field, make a difference in the community and provide the best guest experience in sports.  It is important that the person in the position commits themselves to these core values so that we can constantly move forward in the same direction – Together.

Physical/Environmental Requirements:

• Ability to work in a high activity and heavily crowded outdoor professional sports venue
• Work is performed in both an interior/office environment and outdoors where the employee will be exposed to prevailing weather conditions
• Typically required to climb up/down stairs and walk long distances
• Ability to work flexible hours including nights, weekends, and holidays during the baseball season
• Potential for travel required (Washington DC, affiliate cities, or elsewhere)

All applicants for employment at the Washington Nationals are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 prior to commencing employment. Applicants who receive a conditional offer of employment will be required to produce proof of vaccination status prior to their first day of employment. Applicants with qualifying disabilities or bona fide religious objections may be exempted from this requirement or otherwise accommodated if they are unable to be vaccinated.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Washington Nationals.