Washington Nationals Top 41 Prospects

The son of speedy former Angels outfielder Reggie Willits, Eli was originally going to graduate in 2026, but he reclassified to 2025 and was still 17 (and a half) on draft day, when the Nationals made him the first overall pick and signed him for a whopping $8.2 million. Willits was assigned to Low-A Fredericksburg starting in late August and comported himself well there for the final few weeks of the season, slashing .300/.397/.360. He turned 18 during the Winter Meetings and is back with the Fred Nats to start 2026, where he’s been a little slower out the gate (but looks fine).

Willits’ youth makes it easier to project that he’ll add relevant strength to his kind of boxy, medium frame over the course of the next several years, and if that comes to fruition, we’re talking about a true five-tool player. His track record as an amateur hitter was outstanding and he’s a great shortstop defender — power is arguably the only piece of his prospect puzzle that’s currently missing. Willits’ swing looks like Colt Emerson‘s did three years ago. He creates big hip-and-hand separation, and his wrists turn over in that classically explosive, baseball-y way through contact. To say Willits was overwhelmed by pro velocity last year would be an overstatement (he hit .300), but again similar to Emerson, his spray chart against fastballs does not include pull-side contact; he has been a little too late against A-ball fastballs to pull them. This is sometimes a warning sign that a hitter’s swing is too long for big league success, but it’s too early to say that’s true of Willits. He has plus hit tool projection, and we like the quality of his hitting hands enough to project nearly average raw power for him even though he’s a smaller-framed athlete.

And we don’t want Willits to get too big, because excellent shortstop defense is a big part of his star-level forecast. He’s a plus infield athlete with great range and body control, and he made some sensational plays in the hole to his right after the draft, adjusting well to the speed of the pro game. His arm is fine for shortstop, and he’s one of the few players in the minors who makes us wish we still did present and future throw grades, because he’s young and athletic enough to justify projection on a skill that tends to be static for most players. Willits’ defense gives him a relatively high floor, and his feel for contact makes him a good bet to be an everyday shortstop eventually, but his profile’s X-factor is his power, which could make him a franchise-altering star with Goldilocks Zone physical growth.

While he was still an amateur, Susana had a very, very late velocity spike and progressed from throwing in the mid-80s to the mid-90s in a short period of time. Because he popped up late relative to his peers, most of the pool money when he was first eligible to sign had already been committed, and he opted to wait a year so that more teams could pursue him with a meaningful bonus. The Padres signed him for $1.7 million and pushed him to camp in Arizona during 2022 minor league spring training. Susana had only pitched in eight official games on the complex before San Diego traded him to Washington as part of the Juan Soto deal.

After a walk-prone 2023 and a rough first half of 2024, Susana turned a corner that June and dominated for the rest of the season. He ended up working 103.2 innings (40 more than the prior season), struck out 35.4% of his opponents, and generated groundballs at a whopping 59.9% clip. Just when Susana had nearly demonstrated the stamina and durability of a big league starter, his 2025 was defined by injury and a change to his delivery. He suffered a Grade 1 UCL sprain in early May and was shelved for two months. He came back in July and looked awesome for another month, including two dominant starts in one week against a prospect-laden Erie club (10 innings, 23 strikeouts), before Susana tore his right lat and needed surgery. At of the start of the 2026 season, his timeline for return is sometime in the middle of the summer.

Healthy Susana has extraplanetary stuff. It’s easy to point to his velocity as an impact attribute — he touched 103 mph several times in 2025, and he’s always had elite velo when healthy — but it’s his slider that’s easily his best pitch. There are times when it has cutter-y movement, but it has eye-crossing downward bend at its best, in the Brad Lidge slider mold, except it’s as hard as 92 mph. It’s a slam dunk 80-grade weapon that generated misses at an incredible 58% clip in 2025. Susana’s arm slot came down throughout 2024, which changed the approach angle of his fastball compared to his time in San Diego, but his lower body is still quite upright throughout his delivery, which has kept his release height a shade above the big league average. Its possible his fastball’s bat-missing performance might keel off a bit as he faces upper-level hitters, but for now, it’s missing bats at a nearly plus-plus clip thanks to its overwhelming velocity.

Susana barely used his changeup the last two seasons. It’s currently a glorified two-seamer in the 92-94 mph range. One out of every 10 or so is good, but he often casts it and it sails on him; the ones that flash have enough tailing action to miss bats. His slider has enough utility as a strike-stealer and finisher against lefties that he might not ever need a changeup, but some kind of splinker/splitter thing might emerge down the line, as tends to be the case for a lot of the pitchers today who have lower arm slots like Susana.

The lack of a consistent third pitch, and Susana’s recent injury history, certainly color his forecast with relief risk. But his size, the lefty-dousing utility of his two elite pitches, and the possibility that his arm speed might eventually yield a good changeup gives him top-of-the-rotation ceiling, which is a designation we reserve for precious few prospects here at FanGraphs. Even if Susana ends up in the bullpen, we’re probably talking about one of the best couple of relievers in all of baseball.

Ford was a toolsy high school catching prospect with rare speed and power, but a lot of work to do on defense if he was going to stay back there, with center field a viable alternative were he to stagnate. The Mariners picked him 12th overall in 2021, gave the Georgia Tech commit a little more than $4 million to sign, and overhauled Ford’s crouching style to something that more closely resembled a big league catcher’s. He was shuttled through the minors pretty aggressively, hitting above the league average the entire time, and reached the bigs as a 22-year-old in 2025. The Mariners dealt Ford to the Nationals during the offseason as part of their trade for Jose A. Ferrer, a potentially elite lefty reliever, and Ford began the 2026 season at Triple-A Rochester, where he’s seemingly in line to eventually be called up and exhaust his rookie eligibility.

Ford’s career has progressed in some surprising ways. He had a huge arm as a high school prospect but has struggled some with throwing accuracy as a pro, and while he can sometimes still pop sub-1.8 seconds, he tends to more consistently live in the 1.95 range with mixed accuracy. Both his throwing and framing are sufficiently good for him to be a big league catcher, but he really shines as a ball-blocker, both because he has good hands on balls in the dirt and because he has great lateral agility and toughness.

The other surprising aspect of Ford’s career to this point has been how consistently he’s made an average or better rate of contact. His hands are pretty noisy in the box and he can often be late on fastballs because of this, but he has still managed to produce strikeout rates in the 19-23% range as a pro, and he posted a 77% contact rate throughout 2025. While the hitch in Ford’s swing should give one pause about his ability to continue doing this, his power and plate discipline are still rather good for a catcher and give him other offensive elements to take the pressure off his hit tool. He has power to both gaps, and runs well enough to turn some singles into doubles and steal a dozen bases or so throughout the year. If you trust your eyes, then there’s still some hit tool-related bust risk to Ford, but his performance track record allays them enough for him to be valued like a soon-to-be primary catcher.

Cruz was born in the D.R. but went to high school in South Florida and showed impressive raw power at the 2024 Draft Combine (though he was one of the event’s slower runners). The Cubs signed him in the third round for $620,000 (the slot value of the pick was $826,000), which was enough for him to forgo his commitment to Miami. He began 2025 as part of the Cubs’ extended spring training group and spent the summer in the ACL, where he slashed .270/.314/.431 with 18 extra-base hits in 48 games. He was traded to the Nats as part of the 2025 deadline deal for Michael Soroka and then was a bit of a black box (the complex schedules end before the deadline and Washington chose not to promote him to Fredericksburg after) until the start of 2026, when Cruz hit so well during his first few weeks of full-season ball that he was quickly promoted to Wilmington.

Cruz has already begun to get stronger and develop more power, and he has done so faster than I would have guessed considering how wiry and skinny he looked at the Combine. His under-the-hood TrackMan data corroborates this, as his 2025 peak exit velocities (110 mph max, 105.5 EV90) and hard-hit rate (43%) were all in the ballpark of the major league average already, and he isn’t done growing. He generates this power via electric lower-body athleticism throughout his swing, and he has enough strength in his hands to do damage even when his elaborate cut isn’t well-timed. There’s real juice here already, and there will probably be more at peak.

We didn’t know a ton about Cruz’s contact ability upon his entry to pro ball because he wasn’t a showcase fixture in high school. What we’ve learned since is that he appears to be a flawed hitter who is talented enough to thrive anyway. His big leg kick and pull-oriented style leave him vulnerable to many sliders, but he’s excellent (and very dangerous) covering the down-and-in portion of the strike zone, and shows some ability to get extended and cover up-and-away fastballs with oppo doubles power. This is a dangerous young hitter with big bat speed, and enough feel to hit to weaponize it even though he is probably going to strike out a good bit.

On defense, Cruz bends well and has very soft hands. He makes crisp throws with the flick of his wrist, but his max-effort arm strength is closer to average. It isn’t out of the question that he stays at shortstop, but it’s far more likely that he has to move off of it, and third base is where his skills would shine most. Cruz is shaping up to be a lower calorie Junior Caminero, where the bat speed and weaponized power are enough to really value him as a prospect even though he still has some hit tool risk due to breaking ball identification issues. He moves into the Top 100 with this update.

Sykora had offseason hip surgery in 2024 to address discomfort that he had been feeling for a couple of years, and he missed the first month of 2025 rehabbing. He hit the IL again in the middle of the season with a triceps injury, and then developed a UCL tear that required Tommy John in August, which means he’ll miss most of 2026.

The fact that Sykora pitched as well as he did during his 2024 pro debut despite being physically compromised is incredible. He made 20 excellent Low-A starts and posted a 2.33 ERA, a 1.87 FIP, a 39.2% strikeout rate (yow), and a 8.2% walk rate in 85 innings. During his narrow window of health in 2025, Sykora again looked awesome, with his average fastball velo up a tick to 96 mph before he blew out. Sykora has a three-quarters arm slot, but his front side stays tall throughout his delivery. It’s a funky operation that gives him the option of running a two-seamer down toward his arm side or elevating his fastball at the belt. Sykora did much more of the latter in 2024 while holding mid-90s velo all year despite his hip discomfort. Even as a high schooler, his fastball command was fairly advanced for a pitcher his size and age, but a 8.2% walk rate in a 6-foot-6 guy’s debut season is even better than one could have hoped for, and Sykora did that through injury.

Sykora’s slider, which doesn’t spin very much but is aided by its natural downhill trajectory, is often used as a strike-garnering pitch bending in at the top of the zone, especially against lefties. It has enough depth to act as a finishing pitch in the dirt, too, though it’s more often deployed in the zone. His splitter combines with the elevated version of his heater to attack north and south. The direction of the splitter’s movement has been all over the place since Sykora was in high school, and he’s working on making it more consistent. Both of his secondary pitches generated miss rates north of 50% in 2024 and 2025.

This is a young fella who can articulate the “what” and “why” of his repertoire and mechanics beyond what is typical of a prospect his age. His pitch mix and command are relatively complete, so he’s not necessarily going to be behind the developmental eight ball when he returns from TJ. He’s still tracking like an impact mid-rotation starter, but rather than coming in late 2026, his debut will likely be sequenced more in a way that maximizes the amount of time a rebuilding Nats franchise can control his rights.

A very famous prospect since his high school underclass days, Rosario’s mid-to-upper-90s fastball used to miss frustratingly few bats because of its shape. He ran an ERA over 7.00 during both his sophomore and junior year at the University of Miami despite sitting 95-96 mph with a plus slider and splitter. The Rangers quickly overhauled Rosario’s delivery, most notably his arm slot, which became much more vertical than when he was an amateur. It totally changed the way his fastball played without sacrificing his arm strength or the quality of either secondary pitch, and it also improved his command, as his line to the plate became much more direct and comfortable-looking than when he was in college. In a 2024 split evenly between Low- and High-A, he posted a 36.9% strikeout rate, a 3.7% (!) walk rate, and a 2.24 ERA across 88.1 innings.

Not long after the 2025 Top 100 list came out (Rosario was ranked 39th), the Rangers announced that he would need elbow surgery, though the exact timing of his injury was left vague. Months later it was reported that he still hadn’t had surgery, with Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News saying the Rangers and Rosario were “working through some unrelated issues.” Industry sources indicated to me at the time that he had a separate, non-baseball medical concern that had to be resolved before his elbow could be addressed. He still hadn’t had surgery when he was traded to Washington in the MacKenzie Gore deal during the offseason, but a more recent report indicated he had surgery in March. Assuming a standard recovery from that point forward, he’ll be back in early-to-mid-2027 having missed two whole seasons.

The time off obviously creates a great degree of uncertainty about how Rosario will look when he returns, and the mysterious (and understandably private) nature of the issues that contributed to the delay in his TJ are even more difficult to account for when you’re trying to line him up on a prospect list. But his look and performance in 2024 — mid-90s heat and three plus pitches, including a potentially elite splitter — reads a lot like Trey Yesavage’s scouting report. This year would have been Rosario’s 40-man platform season, and he’s a name to file away for the next Rule 5 Draft if the Nationals choose not to roster him after the season.

A Mississippi State commit, Harmon signed for late-first-round money as Washington’s third-round pick in 2025. The spindly 6-foot-5 righty has a very nasty two-pitch foundation — a mid-90s cutter and a plus-plus curveball — in the mold of the modern power pitcher. His shortcomings — mechanical inconsistency, lack of glove-side pitch execution, lack of a tertiary pitch — are common for pitching prospects this age. In Harmon’s case, these issues all stem from the length of his arm stroke, which makes it really difficult to repeat. At some point his arm action might be shortened in the same way Dylan Cease‘s was. Harmon can land his breaking ball for a strike right now, but he’s not nearly as good at getting it to finish off the plate to his glove side. He’s raw, but I really like pitchers with this combo of a cut/ride fastball and a dynamite vertical breaking ball, because those are bat-missing markers you can’t just teach a guy to replicate. There are two potential 70-grade pitches lurking here, and a premium relief outcome is a realistic fallback if Harmon’s control doesn’t develop as hoped. I’m speculating here that his proclivity for spin will allow him to develop a good bridge breaking ball.

Sime, an LSU commit from New York City who signed for $2 million, looks like a mirrored image of José Alvarado. He’s built like Alvarado at a monstrous 6-foot-4, he has a long, overhand arm swing similar to Alvarado’s, and Sime (pronounced siMAY) brings triple-digit heat and a devastating slider to the party. Sime touched 102 in Washington’s Spring Breakout game and will sit 95-99 throughout his starts. His fastball might play down against better hitters because it rides downhill and Sime struggles to command it. He isn’t the most graceful, athletic mover, and his delivery requires a ton of effort for him to throw this hard.

Every cubic inch of his 250-plus pound frame is squarely in the “relief likelihood” prospect bucket (he’s walking a batter per inning as of publication), but Sime is about as exciting and nasty as a teenage version of that prospect can be. He was working with a slower, low-80s curveball in high school and has now added a gyro-style slider to his mix, and that pitch has been utterly devastating during the start of 2026, more than his fastball. He worked with a splitter in high school, but that pitch has largely been absent in the early portion of Sime’s pro career. His arm angle appears a bit higher now than in his amateur days, which might impact what kind of offspeed pitch he eventually settles on. This is a high-upside relief prospect who is way down in A-ball. There are outcomes where Sime is a dominant reliever and ends up toward the back of a future Top 100 list once he’s closer to the big leagues. In the meantime, he’s worth developing as a starter if only to give him plentiful reps with his secondary pitches. Hopefully that will help him harness his stuff so he isn’t walk prone in a way that hinders his impact.

“Jugglin'” Jackson Kent was a two-sport athlete in Illinois who matriculated to Tucson for college and broke out in his draft year as a redshirt sophomore. Washington challenged him with an aggressive debut assignment, but Kent thrived and K’d a batter per inning across 123 innings split between High- and Double-A. After starting 2026 on the IL with an ankle sprain, he was back for a few short outings just prior to list publication, and in those showed a pronounced arsenal-wide velo spike compared to 2025.

Kent is a four-pitch lefty straddling the starter/long reliever line because of the violence in his delivery. His head whack is uglier than most big league starters, but he has four viable pitches and has thrown strikes in both of his fledgling high-level seasons in the rotation. A plus-plus bat-missing changeup headlines Kent’s repertoire. While his delivery is noisy, Kent is able to locate his changeup consistently, and his delivery helps him convince hitters that they’re seeing a fastball out of hand before that pitch sinks below their barrels. His curveball has tighter break than his slider, but he barely uses it because his changeup has been his preferred option against lefties. If Kent can improve his breaking ball command, then he’ll pretty cleanly have a starter’s skill set, ugly delivery or not, and again he’s relatively inexperienced for his age because he redshirted and relieved as an underclassman at U of A.

Whether his 2026 velo spike will stick is another matter. Kent is throwing three ticks harder than he did last year — his fastball is sitting 95, while his slider’s average velo is currently 87 mph — but he’s only done so for a couple of innings as of publication, and his peak velos aren’t way above last year’s. At this point I think it’s more likely he’ll settle into his usual 91-9 mph range once he is stretched out. Kent bears some resemblance to Rays lefty Ian Seymour, another mechanically messy changeup artist who had minor league success as a starter but moved to the bullpen pretty quickly once reaching The Show. Kent is in that vein, but he should still make a meaningful impact on a big league staff even if he indeed ends up in a bullpen.

Not to be confused with Devin Fitzgerald, Larry Fitzgerald’s son, Fitz-Gerald was signed away from a North Carolina State commit for $900,000 in 2024. He crushed the complex in Arizona for six weeks in 2025 and earned a promotion to Low-A Hickory, where he hurt his shoulder diving for a ball after just 10 games. During the offseason, he became one of the several exciting players included in the MacKenzie Gore trade, and was aggressively assigned to High-A Wilmington at the start of 2026.

Fitz-Gerald is a skillful player with a heuristically pleasing profile — switch-hitting shortstop with contact skills — but he isn’t all that explosive of an athlete or swinger. Graceful body control, creativity, and a well-calibrated internal clock allow him to make crafty plays at shortstop, but his twitch, range, and the quality and quickness of his actions are all at least a shade beneath the average big leaguer’s. He’s a balanced in-the-box athlete with great plate discipline, and has average bat speed and barrel feel from both sides of the plate, giving him gap doubles power right now, with a chance for more depending on how much strength he can layer onto his smedium (but well-composed) frame. There are outcomes where Fitz-Gerald adds meaningful strength and power but moves to second base (the good version of this looks like Jed Lowrie), and there are outcomes where his contact quality stays lighter, but he remains a viable shortstop (Joey Wendle). Because he isn’t the twitchiest guy, the pursuit of strength might not necessarily yield more in-game power, but it’d almost certainly mean he’d end up moving off short. Monitoring which fork in the developmental road Fitz-Gerald seems to be taking will be a key part of evaluating him over the next two or three years as he climbs toward the big leagues. This forecast leans more toward the well-rounded, lower-impact shortstop version of events.

A surface-scratching righty with big arm strength, Garcia’s role and abilities have been expanding and improving since he transferred from Pasco Hernando State College to FGCU for his junior season. He didn’t even begin that year as part of Dunk City’s rotation, but he moved into it part of the way through conference play and buoyed his draft stock into the sixth round. The Nationals have been aggressive with both his promotion pace and his innings count, as Garcia worked 96 frames in his first full season and broke 2026 camp with the Double-A roster after he had made just six starts in Wilmington the year before.

Garcia has had a velo spike in the early portion of 2026, and his fastball sat 96 mph during Washington’s Spring Breakout game, up three ticks from his average fastball velocity in 2025. While there are reasons to pump the breaks on assuming that his heater will sit there in perpetuity, that’s a big enough leap to assume he’ll retain at least some of that spike across a starter’s load of innings. Whether or not Garcia’s fastball will actually be effective is another matter. He gets to a vertical arm position and creates backspin and plus vertical life on his heater, but its downhill plane made it fairly vulnerable to good contact last year, and he has started to lean more heavily on his cutter and slider to navigate early counts. His breaking stuff is of the low-spin variety, and its whiff-generating performance is impacted by his early-count usage. Stuff models love it, but visually, Garcia’s feel is lacking and so, too, is the consistency of both his slider and cutter’s movement. At times, he’s throwing what look like nasty 90-mph sliders; at others, he’s quite scattered.

Garcia walked 14.1% of opponents in 2025 and is struggling even more than that to start 2026. He’s a mobile, explosive athlete but not the most coordinated one, and that’s where this long-term relief projection is coming from. The Nats still have two to three full seasons to develop him as a starter before they need to decide whether it’s a feasible long-term role for him, and his arm speed and athleticism (this is a 6-foot-2 guy generating just shy of seven feet worth of extension) are exciting ingredients. Even though he has traversed the mid-minors quickly, Garcia is still more of a project than he is a rapidly ascending, imminent big leaguer. But less than two years after he was a sixth-rounder, he’s now valued more like a guy who’d go late in the first round or early in the second.

Perales struck out roughly 12 per nine while struggling badly with walks throughout the first four seasons of his career with the Red Sox before he had Tommy John in the middle of 2024. He returned toward the very end of the 2025 regular season, labored through 11.1 Fall League innings, and then was swapped in a challenge trade for lefty starter Jake Bennett (a deal I liked the other end of) after some of Boston’s braintrust transitioned into leadership positions with Washington. Perales broke 2026 camp as part of Rochester’s rotation, and early on has continued to struggle badly with walks.

Release inconsistency plagues Perales, who struggles to throw strikes at a clip north of a 60%. He has nearly elite arm strength and will sit 97-100 mph, albeit in shorter outings than is typical for a starter because he often fails to work deep into games; he has finished the sixth inning of a start just once in his entire career. Though his surgery will likely afford the Nationals an additional option year, Perales’ timeline to flesh out his innings count to a starter-y level is so compressed that he’d project as a reliever here even if he had better command. That said, his stuff is good enough that he should still be a very good one. In addition to his upper-90s fastball, Perales has a cutter that will touch as high as 96, and he mixes it with a mid-80s slider in unpredictable fashion. The nasty changes of shape and velocity allow him to bully the strike zone (when he can find it) without precision and still limit contact quality and generate a lot of whiffs. Perales’ splitter is also nasty, but his feel for locating it is so bad that it’d be surprising if it performed like a plus pitch. The role he’s destined for isn’t necessarily that of a setup man or closer, but it’s possible he could be a multi-inning, mid-game weapon, and that’s still a role to value highly, as Perales’ arm strength is enough to overwhelm big league hitters.

Washington gave Dickerson a whopping $3.8 million to forgo his commitment to Virginia, a notoriously tough school from which to pry high school commits. His pro career got off to a white hot start with a quick promotion to full-season ball, but during the last 12 months, holes in Dickerson’s swing became more apparent and he’s struck out quite a bit at Low-A Fredericksburg, where he’s back to start 2026. He ran a 73% contact rate in 2025 and has been a bit more whiff prone than that to start this year. Though he has short levers, Dickerson’s bat tends to enter the zone late, and he swings underneath a lot of fastballs. He’s strong and capable of making all-fields doubles contact when he does find a barrel, and his speed helps turn some of his awkward line drive contact into even more two-baggers. With a crowded group of middle infielders assigned to Fredericksburg to start the season, Dickerson has moved off shortstop and is playing a mix of second base, third base (he’s made some nice plays there already), and center field. He has the long speed to develop in center, but needs reps there to get a feel, let alone be properly evaluated. Dickerson’s eventual role will probably be in a Dylan Moore utility mold, where he plays all over the place and runs into some extra base hits amid elevated strikeouts.

Fien was last year’s 12th overall pick and signed for nearly $5 million to eschew a commitment to the University of Texas. One could argue that he was the centerpiece of the MacKenzie Gore trade, although I didn’t; I am on the lower end of the Fien enthusiasm spectrum. The scouts and clubs who liked him the most before the draft considered him a mid-first-round prospect, and one of the best couple of high school hitters in the class. I wanted to reflect a combination of Fien’s industry value and my skepticism, and ranked him 34th on our Draft Board.

Fien definitely has talent. He swings hard, he has impressive power for his age, he can throw, and he was one of the top performers on the high school showcase circuit, with a 1.045 OPS in events tracked by Synergy Sports from 2023 to 2024. But the length and awkward look of his swing gave me pause about his ability to hit pro stuff. His look in pro ball after the draft and so far this spring has reinforced these notions. Fien’s hands load really high, he has an incredibly short and closed-off stride in the box, and he is very upright throughout his operation; think Giancarlo Stanton’s swing if he kept his feet closer together. Will this make it impossible for Fien to dip and scoop low pitches in pro ball? So far it has, as Fien struggles to do anything with pro breaking balls. He has an authoritative top hand through contact, and he flattens out to cover belt-high pitches with power. This is itself an uncommon skill and a reason to be excited about him as a prospect, but it’s tough to see him being a complete hitter with his current setup.

Fien was drafted as a shortstop and played there after the draft with Texas, but his hands, actions, and throwing accuracy were all suspect enough for him to project to right field, which is where he’s played so far in 2026. Fien’s arm looks awesome from the outfield when he can put his entire body into each bolt, and he could be a plus right fielder with a plus arm once he gets more comfortable out there. If he keeps striking out this frequently, however, it won’t matter where he plays. This FV grade is the same as Fien’s pre-draft evaluation. He hasn’t played enough for us to conclude for sure that this isn’t going to work — he was put on the IL after four games with left wrist inflammation — but that outcome is quickly in play.

Tejeda worked just over 40 total innings across a two-year college career spent in the Florida and Florida State bullpens. He signed for $225,000 as a priority Day Three pick, a potential late-bloomer with freaky size and athleticism, but undercooked stuff and pitchability. Already Tejeda has made developmental strides in proportion with his actual gait. It appears the Nationals have raised his release point a little bit, which has added depth to his breaking ball, and he has drastically improved his fastball command. It isn’t shocking that a pitcher this size with relatively little college experience would have a late uptick in these areas, but it’s a very positive sign for Tejeda and the Nationals dev group that these things have improved this quickly.

Tejeda’s size allows him to generate over seven feet of extension with ease. His delivery is elegant and balanced, especially for an athlete his size. The long-term command projection here is exciting, and at the start of 2026, Tejeda has reclaimed the mid-90s arm strength of his college days after it had dipped when he was stretched out last year. But his breaking stuff is blunt and soft, and his good changeup comes and goes, and is mostly still just projection. This is the pitch mix of a reliable, durable backend starter whose freaky size and relative inexperience give him some late-bloomer traits that make me want to value him slightly more than that.

De La Cruz signed for $500,000 last April and became one of Washington’s best DSL hitters, with a .294/.448/.450 line and nearly twice as many walks as strikeouts. He has some of the mechanical markers of a dynamic, power-hitting threat, and yet he is still able to move the bat around the zone with precision and posted an 84% contact mark in his debut. He had 12 extra-base hits in 39 games and stole 15 bases (he was caught five times) while mostly playing center field. De La Cruz is a fringe center field fit right now and will need to get faster as he matures to stay there. His right tail outcome is as a well-rounded leadoff hitter who plays a solid center field.

Suarez has a shot to mature in the Goldilocks Zone, where he fills out enough to have power but not so much that he has to move out of center field. He’s a mature-looking hitter who stays inside the baseball and works from gap to gap with doubles pop right now. At a lanky 6-foot-2, he looks poised to grow into more strength as he matures and might gradually hit for more and more power, similar to what Maikel Garcia has done in Kansas City. Right now, he’s a slower-twitch guy whose game is about grace and feel more than explosion. Suarez’s defensive feel should allow him to stay in center field even if his pure speed slips a little bit deep in his 20s. He ranked 12th in the 2026 international class and signed for just shy of $2 million.

Serrano has feel to hit and exciting physical projection, and was among the better prospects in the 2026 class to sign for less than $2 million. His feel for altering his posture to make flush contact, rather than just his hands, is pretty special. It allows him to make lots of airborne contact no matter the pitch location. If he ends up getting strong enough for that contact to turn into doubles and homers, Serrano will be an everyday corner guy. A lack of speed makes him likely to settle in a corner at peak, especially if he grows into the kind of power his frame portends. He’ll begin his career in the 2026 DSL.

Clemmey, a lanky Rhode Island lefty, was drafted by Cleveland and signed away from a Vanderbilt commitment with a $2.3 million bonus, then was traded to Washington in the 2024 Lane Thomas deal. Though he has struggled with walks as a pro, Clemmey has actually increased his chances of being a big league starter (at least in my estimation) because he has been able to maintain major league-caliber stuff across 116.2 innings and is checking more visual scouting boxes than ever, as his delivery has been toned down and become more repeatable-looking. The version of Clemmey that seemed possible in high school — that this enormous guy with the violent delivery would fill out and throw 100 — probably isn’t on the table any more because he isn’t the most gifted, limber mover, and he’s fairly stiff in the hips. But he has an innings-eater’s size at a broad-shouldered 6-foot-6, and his underlying strike-throwing (the per-pitch strike rate of both his fastball and slider is 63% since the start of 2025, per Synergy Sports) is also better than a guy walking a career six per nine.

Clemmey sits 92-95 with rise/tail shape, more tail when he throws the two-seam version of his fastball. He touts an east/west attack that relies on him throwing his mid-80s gyro slider in the zone for strikes. His changeup tends to have long tail, and Clemmey has gone through stretches where he struggles to locate it, but at the start of 2026, he was faring better in this regard. None of his pitches are plus and his repertoire looks like that of a backend starter. It’d still be justifiable to project on it because of Clemmey’s combination of youth and size, but I’m not inclined toward that because the level of arm speed, explosion, and general athleticism here are pretty vanilla. Clemmey’s post-2027 40-man timeline has him on pace to traverse the upper minors during the next two seasons and then break in as a spot starter in 2028, when he’ll be 23. He’ll pitch at the back of someone’s rotation for as long as he can throw strikes.

Ortiz broke out in 2023 with a 33-homer campaign, then had a bit of a performance dip in 2024 before a 2025 resurgence at Double- and Triple-A — .257/.356/.479, 25 homers — preceding his inclusion in the Mackenzie Gore trade with Texas. Ortiz is the player from that trade most likely to make a near-term impact on Washington’s big club, as the 24-year-old broke camp at Triple-A Rochester, where he is hitting cleanup while sharing reps with Andres Chaparro.

The husky Ortiz is a well-rounded hitter with above-average bat speed and enough barrel feel to weaponize it. His swing path can sometimes be long to the up-and-away quadrant of the zone, and he swings underneath fastballs frequently enough out there that he posted a slightly below-average in-zone contact rate in 2025. But Ortiz gets to enough of those pitches that to say his swing has a hole would be too much. He can bang doubles to all fields and crush the occasional middle-middle mistake to his pull side. Though Ortiz has surprising bodily verve for a stout, 5-foot-10 guy, he lacks the enormous power and physicality of an impact first baseman and is more likely to wind up performing in the bottom half of his peer group at that position. That would still make him a valuable role-player and contributor to the next competitive Nats team, however.

Petry was a mountainous Florida high schooler who ended up at South Carolina, where he posted a 1.123 career OPS and .661 SLG thanks to his strength-driven power. He struggled with strikeouts as an underclassman, but cut his K% to 17.6% in a junior season shortened by a sprained shoulder and raised his draft stock into the second round. Was the strikeout reduction (Petry had fewer in-zone whiffs versus fastballs, too) a small sample mirage, or did he make an actual adjustment? The position his hands load in seemed to change, and wasn’t as low as his sophomore year. He still had some underlying miss and chase issues (especially against elevated fastballs), and he struggled with strikeouts after the draft, including during a rough Fall League stint. Petry still hit for power and posted plus peak exit velocities, and he has been thriving in Wilmington during the early portion of 2026. He is at his best when he can get fully extended against pitches on the outer third, which he has the strength to punish from pole to pole. Though he has corner outfield experience, a lack of mobility and speed will likely relegate Petry to first base. A good outcome for him would be production similar to Luke Voit, where he’s a five- or six-hole threat in a good lineup.

Cornelio was a famous high school prospect thanks to his prototypical pitcher’s build and mid-90s fastball, but industry concerns about his violent delivery and sketchy command pushed him to TCU, where he barely pitched until his junior year. As a pro, Cornelio has demonstrated remarkable durability as he’s climbed to Triple-A as a starter and eaten an average of 130 innings the last two seasons. Long-term, he is still more likely to be a reliever. Though his delivery is cleaner than it was in the past, he still has a bit of a head whack and often spins out on his heel through his release, markers of mechanical inconsistency that result in scattered pitch locations. He also has crude feel for his changeup, which he barely throws.

But Cornelio should be a very reliable middle inning arm because he throws hard and has a great slider. He’ll bump 97-98 early in starts and hopefully can sit in that area for an inning at a time while bending in his trademark mid-80s slider. Cornelio’s slider is hard and moves late. It can sometimes look cutter-y and lack depth, but it generated an elite miss rate in 2025 and has been a effective weapon for the entirety of his prospect lifetime. Even as a starter, Cornelio’s pitch usage has been roughly 90% fastballs and sliders, and he struggled severely with changeup location during my early 2026 look at him. He’s now on Washington’s 40-man roster and is likely to debut as a spot starter (news that he’d be called up broke just before list publication), but as his option years drip away, it’s likely that he ends up shifting into a seventh-inning relief role.

Jones was a fixture on the high school showcase circuit who signed for $500,000 rather than go to Oklahoma State. He’s an enormous developmental catching prospect at 6-foot-2, 256 pounds. A tremendous ball-blocker and precocious pitch framer with an average arm, he emphatically checks the boxes associated with a long-term catching prospect in terms of physicality and skill. At the dish, he’s a fairly slow-twitch swinger who’s having some strikeout issues due to his tardiness to the contact point. At his size, Jones has strength-driven doubles power, the kind that plays as a backup catcher.

Lomavita is an athletic catching prospect with good power for his size and position. That power comes from his big, elaborate leg kick and move to the baseball, which utilizes his whole body. So noisy are his movements that Lomavita often commits to swinging earlier than is advisable, and he has had issues chasing pitches way out of the strike zone for his entire time as a prospect. But he is a dangerous enough mistake hitter (especially against hanging breaking balls) that his offensive skill set isn’t bad for a catcher, even though he’s going to be a low OBP guy.

Lomavita hasn’t been as sensational a defender as he was projected to be coming out of college, and is instead tracking more like an average catcher. Twitch and agility allow him to block well and exit his crouch quickly when he throws, but botched exchanges and inaccuracy suppress his caught stealing rate, and his framing is still a bit below average. There’s enough power here to consider Lomavita a meaningfully toolsy catching prospect, but he still carries with him the statistical warning signs that existed while he was in college, and his defense is tracking below his pre-draft forecast. It’s the defense that needs to improve for Lomavita to have any pathway toward a role as a primary catcher. For now, he’s tracking like a good backup.

King transferred to Wake from Division-II Wingate but had experience against top competition before he arrived on campus, as he raked on Cape Cod and was among the most impressive athletes on the Collegiate Team USA roster the summer before he was drafted. His lone season at Wake went well (.308/.377/.577) while King played multiple positions (in order of frequency: third base, center field, shortstop, second base).

Despite his performance track record, he was still viewed as more of an athletic developmental project than a polished player come draft time. This remains so. In his first full season, King slashed just .244/.294/.337 as he struggled with chase and timing. Though his tools shined in the Fall League, he is still more a prospect of projection than one likely to yield short-term big league results. He isn’t yet a polished shortstop defender (he’s seen his first pro action at second base in 2026) and can be error-prone both fielding and throwing, while on offense his swing’s length makes it very difficult for King to time fastballs. For a narrowly-built guy, the verve with which he swings once he gets his body rotating is very impressive. He has roughly average raw thump, but unless the way King’s hands work changes drastically, his power is going to play down in games. And that’s before we even consider the impact that his lack of plate discipline will have on his overall production. It’s going to be important for King’s shortstop defense to polish up because his future big league fit is likely in a utility role.

James signed for $2.5 million rather than head to Ole Miss and was assigned to Low-A Fredericksburg to start his pro career in 2026. Part of the crowded infield contingent there, he has played a mix of second base, third base and left field as of list publication. A terrific low-to-the-ground athlete, James can be slow to approach grounders and makes some plays unnecessarily close at first base. This is more an issue of polish and the speed of pro ball rather than talent, and he should still become a good infielder with time. While it was obvious that James had a power-over-hit skill set as a draft prospect, the degree to which that is true is coming into greater focus. He is pummeling pitches with power when he connects, but he’s struggling to make adjustments to pro sliders. James can really run, he’s strong, and he has power to both gaps. He’s a fun, toolsy dev project who is probably going to take a while to mature on both sides of the ball.

German is a medium-framed middle infielder who signed for $400,000 in 2025. He spent his first pro season as the DSL team’s leadoff man and offensive catalyst, a well-rounded switch-hitter who also has the actions to develop at shortstop. German has better bat speed from the left side of the plate and enough pull power to yank out the occasional mistake. He’s fairly small but is built well enough to layer on more strength without sacrificing athleticism, though we’re probably talking about strength that leads to big league viability rather than big power, similar to Geraldo Perdomo. This is definitely the biggest “arrow up” prospect from Washington’s 2025 DSL class to this point, though he likely doesn’t have overt ceiling due to the limitations of his size.

Swan was a 6-foot-4 high school shortstop whose fastball velocity exploded after he started pitching full-time in college. He became an exciting potential late-bloomer with nearly elite arm strength as he entered the Dodgers system, and he was graded as a 40+ while we waited to see whether he’d develop better body control and secondary stuff with pro tutelage. As he enters his third full pro season, we’re still collectively tapping our feet and checking our watches after his second consecutive campaign with a walk rate close to 15%. Swan, who was traded as part of the Alex Call deal, has now sustained upper-90s velocity across more than 90 innings in a single season, but his fastball’s ineffective angle and movement limited it to a 6% swinging strike rate last season, comfortably below the average big league fastball performance. As a result, he has tended to lean on his cutter and slider in traditional fastball counts. His slider is effective, but the cutter was vulnerable to damage in 2025, surrendering a .384 xwOBA on contact.

Swan has begun using a changeup much more to start 2026, and he’s had outings where that pitch has shown promising action. Having a pitch that finishes down and to his arm side helps diversify his mix, but his lack of mechanical consistency and fastball playability look like they’ll force him to the bullpen even if his changeup keeps improving. But a platoon-neutralizing weapon would go a long way to helping Swan root into a stable middle relief role, which is still very much in play for him and his forecast during this cycle.

Franklin has tracked an an overachieving tweener outfielder since signing, with above-average offensive performances at each minor league level (including Triple-A) despite lacking a show-stopping tool. He was traded to Washington as part of last summer’s Michael Soroka deal and is at Triple-A Rochester as of this update.

Franklin doesn’t give away at-bats, he hits the ball hard (though often on the ground), and he plays with great effort and motor. His hands are authoritative, and his hard-hit rate has been comfortably plus for the last two seasons, but he probably won’t hit for much game power with this swing (which produces a ton of opposite field contact, especially against fastballs) except against lefties. A plus corner defender, Franklin’s speed is a bit stretched in center field. He’s an OBP-driven part-time outfielder who should play a role mashing lefties and upgrading his team’s corner outfield defense late in games.

Cabrera is a smaller guy whose swing features big, aggressive launch even though he isn’t the strongest, most powerful hitter. He was able hit for power in 2023 and 2024 before he had a batting line — .256/.364/.366 — more commensurate with his physical ability in 2025. He was traded to Washington as part of the MacKenzie Gore deal and was sent back to Low-A to start 2026. There are times when Cabrera uppercuts a pitch at the belt and looks like a miniature Juan Soto, but he is allergic to spin and likely won’t have the offensive skill set to profile as an everyday player. He runs well and plays a fearless, bold brand of center field defense, as he high tails it from gap to gap and looks very comfortable at the catch point. Cabrera’s defensive ability should help him play a role as a team’s fifth outfielder.

Sales’ pro debut — 94.2 innings combined between the Tigers and Nats systems (he was in the Kyle Finnegan trade), 2.85 ERA, 26% K%, 7.3% BB% — marked his second consecutive season approaching 100 innings with starter-quality strike-throwing. He has begun 2026 on the IL with a vague upper body injury that, according to a source, is related to his torso rather than his arm. Healthy Sales has two nasty breaking balls in a cutter and slider that both generated plus miss in 2025. He can throw a slower curveball into the zone and uses it more often against lefties, who had a .750 OPS against him last year. The next box Sales needs to check to continue projecting as a starter is an offspeed pitch that will help keep lefties off of his back. As his repertoire is currently constituted, he should be a good middle reliever who’ll face righties as often as possible.

Randall spent two collegiate seasons at Arizona (he barely pitched in 2023 due to injury), and then one as a starter at the University of San Diego, where he first began to look like an efficient sinker/slider prospect. He was promoted to High-A West Michigan after a hot start in 2025, then traded to Washington for Kyle Finnegan at the deadline. Randall walked just 20 guys in 109.2 innings during his full season debut, attacking east and west with five different pitches that all finish in different parts of the strike zone. The hulking righty’s arm slot is nearly sidearm on release, and he can work with tail in on the hands of righties, sink changeups away from lefties, and bend sliders and cutters to the glove side of the plate. He can throw basically any pitch for a strike in any count, which further aids his ability to induce weak groundball contact. Randall lacks a plus weapon, but he should settle into a spot starter or bulk relief role because of his control and consistency.

Lara signed in July of 2019 and due to the pandemic didn’t pitch until 2021, when he responded positively to a fairly aggressive assignment that saw him finish the year in full-season ball. It made Lara famous, but even though he was incredibly young, his game has always been more about polished strike-throwing than big stuff and projection, and that remains true. He was added to the Nationals’ 40-man roster after the 2024 season, debuted in 2025 as a reliever, and is back at Triple-A Rochester (and in the Red Wings’ rotation) to start 2026.

Lara’s fastball is very hittable because of its downhill plane and lack of movement. Instead, he has relied on his slider and, more often to start 2026, his splitter as a way to garner whiffs. The splitter generated plus miss in a limited sample last year, and so far early this season, Lara’s use of the pitch has nearly tripled. It’s becoming his best pitch and should soon be a suitable big league finisher. Lara’s strike-throwing was a big part of his profile until last season, when he walked five batters per nine. His softer build and below-average athleticism are indications that his regression in this area wasn’t simply a blip. He doesn’t have the precise fastball command to keep that pitch out of trouble, and will likely need to rely on his slider when he needs to throw a strike. He has the look of a good org’s no. 5-7 starter, more on the fringe of the rotation than a definite part of it.

Mota signed for $250,000 in 2022 and had two strong statistical seasons to start his career before his strikeouts began to creep into a problematic area. Mota swings really hard and has been among the org leaders (and minor league leaders, for that matter) in hard-hit rate the last couple of years, with marks just north of 50%. His swing’s length is a serious issue, however, and his contact rate has tended to be down around a completely unplayable 60% because he is underneath so many fastballs.

Mota is a similarly mixed bag of extremes on defense. His range and footwork are sensational, but his hands are only fair and his exchange can take too long. The Nationals have begun deploying Mota in center field some of the time, and he’s still getting a feel for it. What’s more important is that his contact rate gets to a place of viability. Mota is a freaky enough athlete to carry some prospect value even though he’s a low-probability big leaguer because of the strikeouts.

Ramirez signed for an even million dollars in January. Fairly new to the outfield, his prospectdom is grounded in his uncommon size (and power projection) for a young switch-hitter. Based on my international scouting sources’ opinions and data tracking, Ramirez has considerable hit tool risk.

Bazzell attended Dallas Baptist for a semester, then transferred to Tech during his freshman spring and redshirted. He spent his redshirt frosh season playing third base before moving behind the plate in 2024. A career .330/.431/.530 college hitter with more walks than strikeouts, Bazzell is undersized for a big league catcher. His lack of size and strength impacts his ball-blocking (which is inconsistent) and framing (which is below average, though not awful), but he can really throw. His compact stature has him out of his crouch quickly, while a super consistent and short arm stroke generates pop times in the low-1.90s and often right on the bag. Bazzell began catching on one knee in the middle of 2025, and he might need some time to get a feel for blocking and framing in that style. His lack of physicality manifests at the dish in well below-average power, but his hips are loose, his hands are quick, and Bazzell has a history of plus contact hitting. He has the look of a third catcher whose best tool is his arm.

Feliz is a stiffer-bodied athlete who plays baseball with a high center of gravity and funky-looking actions. His swing is also odd, as he cuts downward at the baseball in the extreme and sprays almost exclusively opposite-field contact. But Feliz is also a heady, crafty, high baseball IQ player who always seems to find a way to put the ball in play or make plays on defense. He is a versatile defender (2B/3B/SS) and has the same creative zest at each position. While Feliz has tended to be an above-average contact hitter, the nature of his swing and spray chart are bizarre enough to be skeptical that will continue. He projects as a skills-y extra infielder.

Cortesia signed for $1.92 million in 2025 and was generally considered more of a skills-over-tools utility type prospect. His DSL debut reinforced those notions, as he slashed .317/.440/.358 with just four extra-base hits. Cortesia tracks the baseball well and moves the barrel around. He’s a competent shortstop with a medium frame and modest projection. He has a realistic utility infield ceiling barring continued improvement of his bat-to-ball ability to an elite level.

Hernandez was a well-regarded international amateur prospect (he ranked 16th in the 2025 class) with purportedly stellar contact skills and a gorgeous lefty swing. In his DSL debut, as the youngest player on the roster, he managed the best contact rate in the entire organization (tied with Keibert Ruiz and Kevin Bazzell) at 87%, with an absurd 83% contact rate on pitches out of the zone. But Hernandez is so lacking in strength right now that lots of this contact was playable for defenders, and he slashed just .225/.277/.275. Hernandez is a skillful smaller guy who isn’t yet strong enough to swing hard. He requires considerable projection in the strength department, as well as on defense, to attain the big league standard. You can make an age-based forecast for Hernandez’s strength if you want — he turned 18 in February — but because he’s a smaller-framed athlete, I’m inclined to take a more conservative approach.

After an outstanding 2024 pro debut in the DSL, Feliz was the most reliable Nationals starter in the FCL, with a 4.8% walk rate and 2.20 ERA. He doesn’t throw all that hard and is slightly undersized, but he’s well-built and has two secondary pitches that flash plus and have big results. His low spin “pelota muerta” slider and mid-80s changeup both have late downward sink but move in opposite directions. A cutter gives Feliz a fourth pitch, supplementing a starter’s command and repertoire foundation, but probably in a depth capacity.

Brown’s dad played football at Texas A&M and then San Francisco State, and it’s there that the family settled and Sam went to high school. He began his college career at Portland, transferred to Washington State for his junior year, and then was aggressively assigned to Double-A by the Angels right after they drafted him. Brown had a great first half in 2025 and was traded to the Nationals at the deadline as part of the return for Andrew Chafin and Luis García. He isn’t as powerful as the typical corner defender prospect, but he tracks pitches well, has excellent plate discipline and pitch recognition, and boasts enough pop to rack up doubles from foul line to foul line. Brown runs okay and can play some left field in addition to his primary first base. The positional versatility makes him more rosterable as a low-end platoon piece akin to Jake Bauers.