A reason to smile for Luis Garcia Jr. as he is guaranteed a big pay day for his 2026 salary. Late yesterday, the Washington Nationals announced that they had tendered contracts to their seven remaining arbitration-eligible players while coming to contractual terms with catcher Riley Adams.

The Nats began the offseason with nine arbitration-eligible players and subsequently DFA’d both Mason Thompson and Jorge Alfaro leaving seven decisions for yesterday. MLB Trade Rumors listed Garcia as a player who could be non-tendered — and just my opinion — those videos that Garcia was posting on his Instagram stories for the past two weeks of running hills and doing speed and agility training might have saved his job.

Yesterday didn’t mark any monumental decision in the nearly two month tenure of Paul Toboni, the team’s President of Baseball Operations. But if you go by quantity, sure, he made seven simultaneous decisions in a day. Some teams had over a dozen arb decisions. Toboni had four slam dunk decisions, and three borderline calls to make. In all, the Nats tendered contracts to Garcia who had a $7 million estimated salary from MLB Trade Rumors, Josiah Gray $1.35 million, MacKenzie Gore $4.7 million Adams was estimated at $1.5 million, CJ Abrams $5.6 million, Jake Irvin $3.3 million, and Cade Cavalli $1.3 million.

Add all of that up, and it is $25 million towards the 2026 payroll. Now remember, some of those players can be traded just like what happened with Nathaniel Lowe last year when the Nats acquired him while he was arbitration-eligible, and the Nats had to go to an arbitration hearing for him, which the Nats won at $10.3 million.

Remember, Garcia has two more years of team-control and at 25 years of age, he is the longest-tenured player on the team. Garcia was signed as an international free agent from the Dominican Republic in 2016, even though he was born in New York. He made his MLB debut in 2020 and had what we thought was a breakout year in 2024 with positive defense and clutch power. But he regressed in 2025, and his defense and speed went backwards after he was negative in both columns. The defense was the big issue with -7 OAA and -17 defensive runs prevented.

While still putting up positive WAR in 2025 at +0.7 over replacement level, Garcia put himself in a situation that most thought he would be non-tendered or would have to settle for a contract closer to his WAR value of $5.6 million. Toboni didn’t sign Garcia to a set contract yesterday, and now it is an unknown what Garcia will get for his 2026 salary. Was that a mistake? For a team not swimming in money, we will see if Toboni erred on this one.

Also, Irvin, who was on the bubble as to whether he would get a contract, was tendered a contract. Up until July 4, 2024, the Nats looked like they had their No. 2 pitcher of the future. He was being named as a possible All-Star, and after that lengthy 8.0 inning start that day with a 2.80 ERA, and after that start, he was never the same again. Since that point, he finished the remainder of 2024 with a 6.50 ERA and diminished fastball velocity.

Irvin came into the 2025 season as a question mark. Was his arm healthy we kept asking? His season started off well, and then what did his manager, Dave Martinez, do on April 25th? He allowed him to pitch into the 8th inning again. What happened after that start was basically an instant replay of Irvin’s 2024 season. He went from a 3.19 ERA on April 25 and went the rest of his 2025 season with a 6.34 ERA and diminished velocity. And by the way, there weren’t one or two instances of pitching Irvin into the 8th innings of games, there were four, and each time afterwards he tumbled hard. Just when you thought his arm was getting healthy, he pitched great and was shoved and fell hard.

Even though Irvin had not reached the required 3-years of service time to reach arbitration, he got in due the Super-Two clause that is in the collective bargaining agreement. That also allowed Cavalli, with his 11 games pitched in the Majors, to get to arbitration by a matter of days when the team didn’t seem to care or wasn’t watching his service time clock.

That “Super Two” clause is a provision in the CBA that grants salary arbitration eligibility to players with between 2-and-3 years of service time. To qualify, these players must also rank in the top 22% of their service-time class and have at least 86 days of service in the preceding season — or in Cavalli’s case he got that service time on the injured list. These “Super Two” players can go through arbitration up to four times instead of the standard three. Cavalli only made it because the team kept him on the MLB injured list months beyond the time they needed to after TJ surgery.

The other player who reached arbitration with service time built up on the injured list was Gray. He hasn’t pitched in a game since April 2024. His name gets added with Irvin and others where you have to wonder if the team starts some of them in Triple-A as depth, and pays them their MLB salaries.

Add to all of the question marks, Gore and Abrams have both been prominently named to trade rumors. While there doesn’t appear to be anything imminent on a trade, Toboni has stated he is listening to all offers for players, including Gore, but emphasized the team is not guaranteed to move him. Toboni described himself as being “open for business” with his primary goal is to bring “as much value” to the organization as possible, and any trade would be evaluated through that lens. He explicitly mentioned that he would be “dumb” not to listen to offers for a desirable asset like Gore.

So the team has a starting pitching staff with multiple question marks. The team has two players recovering from TJ surgery, Trevor Williams and DJ Herz, one pitcher who hasn’t pitched in the MLB since April 2024 with Gray, then you have Gore who could be traded, Mitchell Parker who was relegated to the bullpen, Shinnosuke Ogasawara was DFA’d and outrighted to Triple-A, then a whole lot of active players like Irvin, Cavalli, Andrew Alvarez, and Brad Lord with MLB service time, and behind them top prospect Jake Bennett who got to Double-A this year.

If you take the pitchers in terms of MLB innings, you have Gore (532 IP), Irvin (489 IP), Gray (387 IP), Lord (131 IP), Cavalli (53 IP), and Alvarez (23 IP) as the healthy starters — and that is six arms for five spots. Most believe that Toboni will sign one starter as a free agent and will trade Gore. Yes, Gore will probably be traded — but will it be soon or by the July 31 trade deadline when he might have both Williams and Herz available?

On the infielders, the team has Brady House for third base, Abrams with 3-years of service time remaining, Garcia with 2-years of service time remaining, Nasim Nunez, Jose Tena and Andres Chaparro as their 40-man infielders.

Toboni has publicly addressed that he is open-minded on adding a catcher, pitching, and a first baseman. That all makes sense, since those are the three glaring weaknesses. If so, why did you tender deals to Adams, Irvin, and Garcia? He had a chance to save some money at yesterday’s arbitration deadline, and move on from three players on the bubble, and he didn’t. By tendering all of these deals and with no trades, Toboni’s CBT payroll is projected today at $111 million. Not a big number in MLB standards, but only $29 million from the 2025 Opening Day payroll.

Unless ownership plans to expand payroll beyond the $140 million they spent on Opening Day of 2025, where will this end up? There are so many questions and not enough answers. Toboni must have a master plan, right?