Baseball rumors that go viral on social media actually can turn into money if you are designated as an influencer. Buzz creates traffic and clicks. So why not pounce on the hottest tidbit leading into the Winter Meetings that MacKenzie Gore is due to be traded. That certainly isn’t going out on a limb. But leading readers to believe it would happen in days turned out to be false. The meetings in Orlando finished up early yesterday — but truth be told, the place cleared out Wednesday after the Rule-5 Draft was over.
We all know that Buster Olney’s tweet that got 711,000 views about Gore was based on the word of a couple of un-named front offices. All people really saw was, ❝ There is a perception in a couple of front offices that the Nats’ Mackenzie Gore will definitely be among those moved in the days ahead.❞ A week has now passed since that was tweeted out. At this moment, Gore is still with the Washington Nationals. Here is the original tweet from Olney:
Reasonably, Gore has a high likelihood of being traded. Those trade rumors were stoked by Washington Nationals President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, before he even arrived in Orlando for the Winter Meetings. He said in November that the team is “open for business” and willing to listen to all offers for players, including Gore. And Toboni stated his goal is to “bring in as much value as we can” to the organization, but stressed that they are not obligated to trade any player. Toboni is listening to all offers. And our hope is that he will be disciplined and hold-out for the best package.
“I think it would just be kind of negligent to not entertain [trade discussions]. CJ Abrams or otherwise, we’ll have our ears open — and the worst that can happen is we say ‘no’ and we go back to having our regularly scheduled programming and go from there.”
— Toboni said to the rumors on potential trades of Nats’ players
“A lot of that is we have some really good players that teams are interested in, and if they’re willing to ‘throw down,’ so to speak, it’s now just up to us, like, ‘Hey, do we want to seriously entertain these offers or do we want to move forward with trying to get the best out of these players?’”
“My guess is that, more than anything, if we’re going to entertain something for MacKenzie Gore … we’re going to hold a really high bar. Thinking of more than that, we’re probably going to want a player that can help us for years to come, or multiple players. But that’s all T.B.D. We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves one way or the other. We’ll just stay open-minded.”
One key point by Toboni is that he can say ‘no’ to teams. While he didn’t say it, there are wolves in sheep’s clothing who want to pull the wool over Toboni’s eyes. He’s the new guy in town. The youngest person as the highest ranking executive in baseball operations in any team. Dave Dombrowski, 69, is the oldest MLB front office lead executive.
TalkNats broke the story that Dombrowski, who was Toboni’s boss of nearly five years in Boston, was inquiring on Gore. Maybe that went nowhere. But a source told us that it was Dombrowski in late 2015 who took Toboni from an intern position and greenlighted his hiring in a full-time status as an area scout — and then two subsequent promotions to Assistant Director of Amateur Scouting and then to the Director of Amateur Scouting. That all happened before Dombrowski was fired. Toboni then got promotions from Chaim Bloom and Craig Breslow to VP positions and to the AGM.
Toboni, 35, is a year removed from being half of Dombrowski’s age. Do you think, given their baseball relationship, that Dombrowski would try to take advantage of his former protégé? People in Philly believe that this is Dombrowski’s final shot at winning a World Series. He turns 70 in 2026. The noteworthy question is whether Toboni is gullible enough to allow himself to be taken advantage of? You hope not.
Did you ever see the movie, Draft Day? Kevin Costner’s character is a football GM, and he specifically goes after a new GM, Jeff Carson, and takes advantage of him as the clock was ticking.
When the dust settles, all executives want to come out the winner in trades. It’s too early to call Toboni the winner in the Harry Ford trade for Jose A. Ferrer, but computer models say that the Nats won that trade.
We are about 60-days from Spring Training camps opening. There is still some time to make things happen. But the Nats have a ton of work to do. They need to build a bullpen, and certainly add a top-of-the-rotation starter, especially if Gore is dealt. On top of that, the Nats need a first baseman fix. None of this is new, Toboni himself listed these as areas of need along with the catcher spot that he plugged with Ford.
This comment was made in November before the trade for Ford:
— Toboni said in separate interviews
“I will say that we’re going to be really open-minded. I don’t think you can ever have enough pitching. We’ll be open-minded at the first base position, and potentially at the catching position. We’re going to see how it plays out, and what opportunities present themselves.”
This comment was made at the
Winter Meetings:
“Where my head goes first is pitching — starting pitching and relief pitching. That’s not to say those are the only positions we are going to tether ourselves to. But I think that’s probably the most realistic avenue.”
All good thoughts that align with new acquisitions you hope that Toboni can pull off in the days and the weeks ahead in an effort to build-out a better roster. Yes, it all starts with pitching. But there are other needs also.
So here’s the thing, the years that the former administration ignored the facts out there on the stress points of this team was borderline negligent. The least of the problems is that in this decade the only positive output at first base was from Joey Meneses in his two months of 2022 after the trade deadline. The position has been a revolving door of ineptitude since Ryan Zimmerman‘s 2019 season.
The catcher position has been even worse than first base. No team had negative defense in the past five years — except the Washington Nationals. Here are the stats for the past five seasons combined at dead last in catchers defense. A -11.5 for that stat compared to teams that averaged nearly +60.0 in that same timeframe. The Nats were a team that has forced Keibert Ruiz as a workhorse and received diminishing returns like forcing a round peg into a square hole. Add to that the worst team defense in that timeframe.
Of course pitching has been the real reason for failures and the bullpen ERA was the worst in baseball in 2025, and the starting rotation ERA was second worst only ahead of the Rockies this year.
And you wonder why pitchers have immediate success when they leave the Nats to go elsewhere. Fine, much of that is short-term gains, but we saw it with Austin Voth, Erick Fedde, and of course Patrick Corbin last year. Corbin threw the same slop, but just by having better catching, a better bullpen, and improved defense behind him, he bettered his ERA by 1.22 runs per 9.0 innings.
Newly hired catching coordinator, Bobby Wilson, can hopefully help the catching defense. The Nats framing, and the constant ‘unframing’ of pitches might be helped by the new ABS system, but that has limits on challenges. Better framing technique is still needed unless MLB goes to fully automated balls/strikes which is not part of the plan for the future.
The team should improve at defense, and new manager Blake Butera said this will be a focus and responded in interviews that both Daylen Lile and James Wood will be working on their outfield defense during the offseason. What we don’t know is whether the worst middle infield defense of Abrams and Luis Garcia Jr. can be fixed either by internal improvement or position changes. Their combined negative OAA was -18 in 2025. That is an issue that must be fixed.
Butera on CJ Abrams:
“I think we’re happy with CJ at short. To that point, we talk about everything. Everything’s on the table in terms of our defensive positioning with all of our outfield, infield, the catchers, obviously the first base position – which we’re all aware of is one spot we’re focused on as well. Whatever we can do to get our best lineup together, our best nine hitters, we’re going to make sure that happens.”
Toboni on CJ Abrams:
“He’s this dynamic athlete that has all this great athleticism that at times has manifested itself in really good defensive play. At times, it has manifested itself in less than that. But it’s our task to realize the best part of that for CJ, and for me that’s a very realistic outcome. When I watch him, there’s very little doubt in my mind that he can be a tremendous shortstop for years to come, defensively and offensively.”
And lastly, the quality of the pitchers must be upgraded. Better defense alone will not solve everything. You need better players. Yes, coaching them up could help also. But you really need legitimately better players too. This has to be a focus by Toboni, and one that he did address in the quotes above. Now it is a time for action, not just words.
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