Just five seasons after winning the franchise’s first World Series, Davey Martinez and the Washington Nationals enter another year of a rebuild. But with this young prospect-filled core it won’t be long until they are competing for an NL East title. Last season with a projected win total of 59 wins, the “Scrappy” Nats surpassed that with ease winning 71 games (+12 win differential). The road back to the top of the NL East will certainly take time with the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies at the top. Getting top prospect pitchers from the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres via blockbuster trades, Josiah Gray and MacKenzie Gore will be heavily relied upon as two aces of the rotation entering their second year in the Nations Capital.
Projected Starting Rotation:
Josiah Gray
The hard-throwing right-hander enters this season as the Nationals’ Opening Day starter. Gray, 26, is the first Nats Opening Day starter not named Patrick Corbin (’22-23), Max Scherzer (’15-16, ‘18-21) or Stephen Strasburg (’12-14, ‘17) since Livan Hernandez in 2011. Patrick Corbin will start the second game of the season. Gray is coming off a season where he posted an 8-13 record over 159 innings pitched. Over 30 starts he pitched to a 3.91 ERA with 143 strikeouts and 80 walks. Baseball is a game of adjustments and this season Gray is still trying to fine-tune some of his pitches. He added a cutter, a sinker, and a sweeper to his arsenal last season. His four-seam fastball usage dropped significantly from the previous year. Coming off an all-star appearance last season he considered the Nats top starter and was for of the ’23 season. He has the opportunity to showcase himself this season with another full year around the corner.
2024 Projections: 10-14 3.97 ERA 170 IP 164 SO 82 BB
MacKenzie Gore
In his first full season as a big league LHP Mckenzie Gore, 24, showed the Nationals just how valuable a piece he is for them going forward in his 27 starts. Over 136.1 innings pitched he tagged a 7-10 record to go with a 4.42 ERA. Gore struck out 151 and walked 57 as well. In 2022 with the San Diego Padres before getting traded in the prospect haul for Juan Soto, he went 4-4 with a 4.50 ERA in 13 starts. Gore has looked great this spring picking up where he left off as he and Gray may have run out of gas last September pitching more innings than they had ever before. He has great stuff and command with an elevating fastball deceptive curveball and change-up. Staying consistent will be the key for him this year. Last season he had a 2.56 ERA in his seven wins and a 2.59 ERA in his seven no-decisions. But in the 10 losses, he pitched to a boasting 7.71 ERA. In his most recent start in the Grapefruit League vs. the Mets, Gore struck out 10 over 4.2 innings but gave up eight earned runs.
2024 projections: 10-11 4.22 ERA 165 IP 168 K 58 BB
Patrick Corbin
34-year-old Patrick Corbin enters the final season of the six-year, $134 million contract that he signed after winning the World Series in 2019. Corbin is one of two players who have remained on the team since then (Victor Robles). He is coming off a nightmarish season where, well in simpler terms, Corbin has a statistical outlook to argue he could be the worst pitcher in all of baseball. He went 10-15 with a 5.20 ERA over 180 innings pitched. In the 32 appearances, he struck out 124 and walked 57. Since the start of the 2020 season, he has the highest ERA over any qualified starter. In his first three starts, he went 1-2 with a 7.71 ERA. And over his final six starts, he went 1-4 with a 7.63 ERA, about five innings per outing. Many starts were a struggle to make it out of the first inning sometimes not even registering three outs. Is there any reason to believe that anything will change with him this season? The best-case scenario is to somehow trade him at the deadline. If not then he may have a chance to get moved to the bullpen or get cut down the line.
2024 projections: 6-14 5.44 ERA 178 IP 133 K 62 BB
Jake Irvin
In one of the more bright spots for the Nats last season, Jake Irvin did decent of the back-end starters during the second half of the season. The 27-year-old rookie from Oklahoma is 3-7 with a 4.61 ERA with 99 strikeouts and 52 walks. While the win/loss record is not pretty by any means, Irvin did the most he could with the opportunity he was given. With rotational injuries, he filled in nicely. He made his debut on May 3 vs. the Cubs and pitched a solid 4.1 innings, allowing two hits, striking out three and walking four. The one thing for Irvin this season is to get his walk and strikeout numbers elevated. He posted an incredibly low 17 K% and 22 BB%, showing his inability to put opponents away while at times getting them to a spot he desired. Besides a few rough starts later in the year, Irvin demonstrated that he can be a dependable league pitcher. He will get the same SP role during the ’24 season.
2024 projections: 6-11 4.78 ERA 126 K 67 BB
Trevor Williams
Being one of the two vets on the pitching staff last season Trevor Williams played his role as the no. five starters. The 31-year-old went 6-10 to a 5.55 ERA over 144.1 innings pitched to go with 111 strikeouts and 53 walks. Williams will more than likely start the season again in the rotation but the odds that he will end the season do not appear high. The Nationals signed Williams to a two-year $13 million contract hoping he would fare out as the no. 5 starter. Before last season he had spent the previous two years as a swingman with the Mets. He had not topped more than 100 innings since 2019 when he was pitching with Pittsburgh. Fumes began to show towards the end of last season: over his final 13 starts, he had a mountain-high ERA of 7.28 and did not get past the five-inning mark in many (4 2/3 innings per). Williams has always had more success in the bullpen than he did with the Mets, but to begin the year he will be a starter again. The bullpen decision will be made further down the line.
2024 projectons: 4-7 4.82 ERA 92 K 29 BB
