Written by Dylan McCrink a.k.a. NatsFanatics
Four days. That’s all the separation in time between the two published versions of Paul Toboni that Nationals fans got in the last week.
On November 4, Toboni published a letter to the fans, and it was a good letter. It walked through a Year 1 that genuinely went better than anyone projected: 77 wins against a 65-win projection, a team in contention through late July, a run differential that swung from -212 all the way to +6, the biggest single-season jump in franchise history, and a farm system that went from the bottom of the sport to a Rochester Triple-A club that won the International League.
But for all the honesty in the letter, it never said the one thing fans have been waiting years to hear. There was no spending pledge in it. Not a name, not a number, not even a hint. The perfect opportunity in a controlled environment to say it.
And then, on Monday, sitting down on the Nats Chat podcast, Toboni got asked the question directly by Al Galdi: “Has ownership green-lit significant free-agent spending” if you decide it’s the right move? His answer was nine words long, and I don’t think Nationals fans should gloss over them.
“Yeah, we’re going to be active in free agency.”
That might be as close as we will ever come to a sentence akin to spending. I believe him. And I want to be clear about why, because it’s not blind faith. Toboni has given me zero reason to doubt anything he has said or done in the year-plus he’s run this team.
Compare him to the latter years of the previous regime — and it’s not even close: this is a front office that is constantly moving and shaking and embracing change. Free-agent signings, trades before the season and in the middle of it, waiver claims, call-ups to patch the bullpen for a night. The churn never stopped, and it was churn with a purpose. Performance got rewarded here, and names didn’t protect anybody.
When Dylan Crews needed to start the year in Triple-A, Toboni sent him there, and it shocked everybody, but I think it benefited Crews in the long run. His expected numbers were better than his results all season, and the growth is coming. Of course now, he and Daylen Lile are a focus of trade rumors, and that is a story for another day.
You want the clearest example of how this front office works? In March, the White Sox designated Curtis Mead for assignment, and Toboni got him for a minor-league catcher named Boston Smith. Mead then came to Washington and hit 17 home runs with a .852 OPS. And in July, Toboni turned around and flipped him to Boston for Connelly Early, a left-hander who now projects into the front half of the 2027 rotation. A DFA’d player, acquired for almost nothing, turned into a potential rotation piece in four months. That’s the kind of trade tree that gets a fan base to trust you when you say the word “active.”
So if you asked me to grade Year 1, I’d land on a B+, and I’ve argued A- before, so I don’t hand that out lightly. The wins, the run differential, the young core, the extensions for Cade Cavalli and, reportedly, Jacob Young with the news breaking right here on these pages last week.
All of it points the same direction. But there’s one hole in the résumé, and everybody reading this already knows what it is: 42 blown saves. Not just a franchise record: A major league record.
The Nationals used 41 pitchers last season trying to stop the bleeding, and Brad Lord was the only reliever from the Opening Day roster who made it through the entire year without being sent down or let go. To Toboni’s credit, he never stopped trying to fix it in-season. But midseason is the hardest time to build a bullpen, and everybody knows it unless you do something dramatic at the trade deadline. Now he has a full offseason to work on a revamped bullpen.
Which is why “active” can’t stay a vague word. Here’s what it has to mean. It has to start at the back of the bullpen. Toboni said it himself on that same podcast: there are “a couple guys that are proven, proven guys up top” in this relief class, and the Nationals are going to “smoke all those opportunities out.” That’s his standard, in his own words. And it has to include a real addition to the rotation. Not a stopgap, not a warm body to eat April innings, but a starter who makes the Cade Cavalli–Connelly Early–Andrew Alvarez group better by standing next to it. And here’s the thing that nobody can hide behind anymore: the money is there.
The Nationals have roughly $64.8 million committed in player salaries for 2027 via Spotrac, a large margin for the fewest dollars in all of baseball, and Toboni called that flexibility “a really good thing” in the same interview. The Stephen Strasburg contract era ended after this past season while sitting on the books as dead payroll for all but six games in seven long seasons costing $245 million not including medical costs. There is no financial excuse left on the table.
Now, do I think “active” means a five or six-year mega deal? I don’t, and honestly, I don’t need it to. The window, as you look at James Wood, is through the 2030 season, and you want like four years for any key player. The immediate window is two years to encapsulate CJ Abrams also. Two-to-four years work, and one year deals as stop-gaps could be strategic.
This team is moving in the right direction, but it still has things to figure out before it’s a year-after-year playoff contender, and spending big like the team did in 2015 – 2021 is nothing like today’s game as nobody can keep up with the Mets or the Dodgers.
We’re not a poor team, and we’re not the richest team, and that’s fine. I’d rather be the team that spends smart, the happy medium, and lets a player-development staff that clearly gets more out of players than the old one find the hidden gems on good deals. Toboni has proven to ownership that the time to spend is now. I trust them to do it the right way.
If I could sit in a room with him, I wouldn’t even ask for a dollar figure, because I understand why he’ll never give one. I’d ask for the shape of the shopping list. Are we talking mid-rotation starters, back-end starters? Right-handed? A couple of high-leverage lefties for the bullpen and some workhorse righties? Give fans that much, and we can match the names and the price tags to the mold ourselves. Because that’s really what fans deserve here. Not a blown-up bridge with the front office, just real information about where their team is headed.
And to be fair to Toboni, he’s already given more of that than we’ve gotten in years. That letter last week didn’t contain a single promise, almost the opposite as Toboni expressed his fears of moving backwards — not by design but by results because building a baseball team has few certainties as the Dodgers found out this year.
Toboni treated the fans like shareholders of this club, like he answers to us, and I don’t think that should be taken for granted. He is bought into this team, and so am I. He has my support.
But support isn’t a blank check, and “active” is still an intangible word. Nobody attached a number to it, and nobody attached a name. So the winter gets graded against his own word. He finally said it out loud. Now go be active!
SIDEBAR: The Other Headline From That Podcast
Lost under the spending quote was the other thing Toboni said on that podcast, and it matters just as much. Asked about CJ Abrams‘ position for 2027, Toboni said: “I do think he’s probably gonna be playing more second base than shortstop,” while stressing it’s his guess for now, with clarity hopefully coming by spring training.
I think he’s right. Abrams is coming off a 30-30 season, with 33 home runs, 106 RBIs, 34 stolen bases and over 30 doubles, all while leading National League shortstops in homers and RBIs. But the glove at shortstop is what it is: minus-17 Outs Above Average and 20 errors this season. In his short run at second base, he didn’t make an error. If this team is going to be in the best position to win, second base is probably where Abrams belongs.
Does that complicate an extension someday? Honestly, I’m not sure. There are no reported talks unless you trust Jim Bowden’s comments last week that this is going to happen with Abrams and Wood. Keep in mind, Abrams is under team control through 2028, and I’d rather deal in what we actually know than in the fuss that got whipped up last week, when one analyst’s opinion on television somehow hardened into a story about demands that Abrams never made.
Abrams’ agent said the real version back in August: Abrams wasn’t thrilled about the move, he’s team-first, and he’s always viewed himself as a shortstop. That’s old news, not new news. But it’s a conversation about winning, and on the field, Toboni’s answer is the right one.
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