NASHVILLE – In rattling off the positions they need to fill this winter, the Nationals will say first base, third base and left field. They’ll acknowledge Luis García isn’t guaranteed to retain his starting job at second base. But what about center field?

When the 2023 season ended, the Nats were playing Jacob Young every day. And though the rookie (who opened the year in Single-A) acquitted himself well, he hardly has the track record or pedigree to suggest he deserves to be handed the job.

Which brings us to Victor Robles. The guy who has started in center field on Opening Day each of the last five seasons.

Robles started Opening Day this year, but he went on the injured list in May with a back ailment, and after a brief return in June he went right back on the IL and remained there the rest of the year. He was very much out-of-sight, out-of-mind as the season concluded, leaving his future in doubt.

The Nationals, though, have retained the 26-year-old. They initially declined a $3.3 million club option for him but soon after agreed to terms on a lesser deal to avoid arbitration. He is, by all accounts, expected to remain a prominent player on the team in 2024.

NASHVILLE – The Nationals found themselves in a tricky situation as they arrived at the Gaylord Opryland Resort for this year’s Winter Meetings.

After a 16-win improvement from last year, the team is looking to take another significant step toward competing in 2024. In order to do that, they need to fill some holes on their roster, especially in the power department.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us this year, and I think we’re going to take our aggressive approach when it suits us and wait for the market when it suits us,” said general manager Mike Rizzo on Monday. “I think we’re going to be busy here. We’ve already been semi-busy since we got here, and I think it’s going to be a busy time.”

But with one of the best farm systems in baseball, they know they also have some top prospects coming to the major leagues soon.

How, then, do Rizzo and Co. improve the current roster at first base/designated hitter, third base and the outfield at a low cost that won’t be an issue once one or more of the aforementioned top prospects are deemed ready for the big leagues?

NASHVILLE – The Nationals don’t have to add a starting pitcher this winter. They could easily enter the 2024 season with Josiah Gray, MacKenzie Gore, Jake Irvin, Patrick Corbin and Trevor Williams in their rotation, with Cade Cavalli set to return from Tommy John surgery in June and several other prospects at Triple-A Rochester ready to be called upon if needed.

Mike Rizzo isn’t hiding the fact, though, that he’d like to acquire another starter. It may not be priority No. 1 on his offseason shopping list, but it’s definitely on the list.

“Everyone needs starting pitching in the whole sport,” the general manager said Monday. “We’re no different. You can never have enough of it, and we’re in search of it.”

Free agent starters, of course, don’t come cheap. The best ones cost more than $100 million. The average ones can cost in excess of $50 million. Even the worst of them can still come with a price tag of $10 million per year, based on what struggling veterans Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson recently received from the Cardinals.

So if the Nationals do delve into the market this winter, they likely won’t be acquiring anything more than a back-of-the-rotation arm, someone who will be asked to eat innings and take some pressure and workload off the organization’s younger pitchers.

NASHVILLE – The Nationals’ winter wish list – first base, third base, left field, starting pitcher – reads a whole lot like it did one year ago, when Mike Rizzo filled those needs with one-year deals for Dominic Smith, Jeimer Candelario and Corey Dickerson, plus a two-year deal for Trevor Williams.

So, is it fair to assume the same type of approach this winter, or might the Nats take a different tack this time around?

“We’ve got several holes to fill,” the general manager said tonight in his first media session of the Winter Meetings. “We’ve got our work cut out for us this year, and I think we’re going to take our aggressive approach when it suits us and wait for the market when it suits us. I think we’re going to be busy here.”

“Busy,” of course, doesn’t necessarily mean the Nationals will leave town with any new players signed. It may refer only to meetings they take with agents, which could eventually lead to the signing of new players.

Rizzo doesn’t deny, though, what he’s looking for.

NASHVILLE – When it came time to evaluate his coaching staff at the end of the season, Davey Martinez knew it was time to make some changes. Even if it meant parting ways with some longtime confidants.

Tim Bogar was one of Martinez’s first hires after he was named Nationals manager in 2018, initially serving as first base coach before moving to bench coach. Pat Roessler joined the staff in 2020 as assistant hitting coach. Gary DiSarcina and Eric Young Jr. were added in 2022.

All are now gone, replaced by two in-house promotions and two outside additions in the biggest coaching staff shakeup Martinez has made in six years on the job.

“Obviously, it was a tough decision,” Martinez said today, his first public remarks since the moves were made in October. “Very close to all those guys. I’m going to miss them. But I thought it was an opportunity, being where we’re headed, to bring some fresh guys in, and some guys that are very well capable of coaching young players.”

The two in-house promotions: Ricky Gutierrez (who spent this season in the newly created position of run prevention coordinator) is now third base coach, while Gerardo Parra (who won the 2019 World Series as a player and then took on a front-office role in 2022) was named first base coach.

NASHVILLE – Members of the Nationals organization arrived at the Gaylord Opryland Resort throughout the course of Sunday afternoon and evening, every one of them eager to see what transpires during this version of the Winter Meetings while simultaneously acknowledging the most frustrating part of the situation: It’s not quite time yet for the Nats to go all-in.

More than four years removed now from their World Series title, the Nationals are itching to return to their prior status as an annual contender. But while they’ve made significant progress since embarking on their franchise rebuild midway through the 2021 season, they’re not done yet. And that probably means another frustrating winter of patching a few roster holes without making any real long-term commitments to free agents.

The Nats, to be sure, have talked to a number of free agent targets. And they will sign a few of them sometime this winter. But they are not expecting to be major players at these meetings, which will see other clubs go for broke in pursuit of Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto and others.

After improving from 55 wins in 2022 to 71 wins this season, the Nationals know they must take one more critical step before jumping back into the deep end of the free agent pool. Sure, they could make a big move now, like they did back in December 2010 when they signed Jayson Werth for $126 million despite losing 93 games that season. But they appear to be more inclined to wait one more year before going that route this time around.

Why? Because while their won-loss progression the last two seasons may mirror 2009-10, the organization is in a distinctly different position these days.

NASHVILLE – A decade after managing his final game for the Nationals and nearly four decades after leading the Mets to their most recent World Series title, Davey Johnson once again didn’t get the congratulatory call he has long waited to receive.

Johnson was not elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame tonight for the fifth time in the last 15 years, failing to come close to the necessary 12 votes he needed from the 16-member Contemporary Eras Committee.

That group, comprised of Hall of Famers, longtime baseball executives and veteran media members, instead elected only Jim Leyland off an eight-person ballot that included former managers, umpires and executives up for consideration.

Leyland, who won a World Series title with the Marlins and won multiple division titles with the Pirates and Tigers, was named on 15 of the 16 ballots. Longtime manager Lou Piniella received 11 votes (one shy) and former National League president Bill White received 10 votes. Johnson and the four other candidates (manager Cito Gaston, executive Hank Peters, umpires Ed Montague and Joe West) on the ballot each received fewer than five votes, according to the Hall of Fame.

For the 80-year-old Johnson, this may have been a final opportunity to have his highly successful – but often underappreciated – career recognized with the ultimate honor.

Nashville has been part of the Winter Meetings’ regular rotation for some time now, having hosted the event seven times since 1983, not to mention three times in a nine-year span from 2007-15. So the cavernous Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center will be familiar territory for just about everyone who gathers there later today for the start of this year’s Winter Meetings.

That includes Mike Rizzo, who attends his fourth Nashville Winter Meetings as a member of the Nationals front office, his third as general manager. The situation this time, though, is different from those previous ones.

In December 2012 and 2015, the Nats were full-blown contenders, desperate to find a way to get over their postseason humps. So Rizzo was front-and-center each time, signing Dan Haren in 2012 and a trio of relievers (Shawn Kelley, Oliver Pérez and Yusmeiro Petit) in 2015.

Nationals managers also were the center of attention at each of those meetings, with Davey Johnson in 2012 declaring the goal was “World Series or bust” and recently hired Dusty Baker drawing a huge crowd for his media session in 2015.

What will this week have in store? Well, probably nothing like any of that. Unless Rizzo or Davey Martinez has a surprise up his sleeve.

It is no secret that on those top 30 prospects lists, the Orioles have many more hitters than pitchers. But a recent article in Baseball America was interesting and enlightening about the O’s pitching on the farm. In several spots, Baltimore's farm pitchers scored well.

It was Baseball America’s Farm System Statcast Pitching Rankings, co-authored by Geoff Pontes and Dylan White. It is a deep dive into minor league pitchers, aggregating full-season pitchers data, metrics and stats for hurlers between ages 17 and 26.

The BA goal was “to more accurately understand which organizations have the highest quality of overall pitching talent.” And they were attempting to “view the developing pitching talent in each organization, not the team’s ability to stock quality MiLB free agents into Triple-A bullpens.”

In an all encompassing stat called “Stuff+” per BA it “is a blended metric of each organization’s STF+ (based on their internal model), per pitch Run Value, xwOBA, and pitch quality metrics such as in-zone whiff% and chase %. The resultant number was then scaled on a wRC+ scale where 100 is average and a standard deviation is 10 points.”

The Orioles organization ranked tied for third with the New York Yankees with a score of 114, behind only the Los Angeles Dodgers at 116 and Tampa Bay Rays at 119.  

While not officially prospects anymore, my last two review posts are going to be on two young players who contributed a good amount of time to the Nationals’ major league club in 2023 but didn’t get player reviews of their own.

PLAYER REVIEW: JOAN ADON

Age on opening day 2024: 25

How acquired: Signed as international free agent, July 2016

MLB debut: Oct. 3, 2021

The Nationals’ traditional end-of-spring exhibition game in D.C. is going to look different in 2024.

Instead of facing another major league club like they typically have over the years, the Nats will face a team of their own prospects, giving those players a chance to take the field at Nationals Park for the first time and fans who can’t make it to West Palm Beach a chance to see them in person for the first time.

Dubbed “On Deck: Nationals Futures Game,” the exhibition is scheduled for 12:05 p.m. on March 26, two days after the team wraps up Grapefruit League play in Florida and two days before it opens the 2024 season on the road in Cincinnati.

“We’re incredibly thankful for the continued support of our fans in D.C., and we can’t wait for them to get a look at some of the players who will make up our next championship-caliber roster,” general manager Mike Rizzo said. “Players like James Wood, Dylan Crews, Brady House and Robert Hassell have certainly received a lot of attention, and I know that once our fans have the chance to see a full lineup of the young guys in our system, there will be even more reason to be optimistic about where we’re headed.”

The team has traditionally scheduled an exhibition game at Nationals Park to bridge the gap between the end of spring training and Opening Day, knowing players need to get some at-bats and throw innings during the three-day break. Those exhibitions have almost always been scheduled against another major league club, usually an American League team that will open the season somewhere in the Northeast, like the Yankees, Red Sox or Tigers.

The clock is ticking louder for the start of baseball’s annual Winter Meetings, which were held virtually in December 2020 due to the pandemic and canceled in 2021 because of the lockout. The in-person sessions returned last year in San Diego.

Long flight but a short walk from the media workroom to the lobby and back.  

The Orioles reached agreement on a one-year deal with starter Kyle Gibson on the weekend before those meetings, with his signing made official after we arrived. Executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias provided more details, confirming the $10 million cost.  

The next few days played out in typical Orioles fashion.

They signed right-hander Ofreidy Gómez to a minor league deal on Dec. 5 and outfielder Nomar Mazara and infielder Josh Lester the following day, and selected pitcher Andrew Politi from the Red Sox in the Rule 5 draft. Internet searches were conducted, stats consumed like hors d’oeuvres.

It's been a rather quiet offseason so far for the Nationals, who have yet to acquire a major league player. They did drop several players from last year's roster to clear up space for some prospects who needed to be protected. And they made some significant changes to both their coaching staff and their front office.

But there's still a lot to be done this winter. Perhaps things are about to pick up with the Winter Meetings beginning Sunday evening in Nashville. (For my sake, I sure hope things pick up there, or else it's going to be an awfully boring week at the Opryland Resort.)

In the meantime, let's discuss what the Nats have done, and what they might do. Submit your questions in the comments section below, then check back for my replies over the course of the morning. ...

A week’s vacation for your trusty beat writer usually guarantees something for the Nationals: News.

Countless times over the years have I gone off the grid only to find out the Nats made some kind of major transaction in my absence. So, count me genuinely shocked when I got back to town after an extended Thanksgiving break with nary a peep coming out of South Capitol Street. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad Bobby Blanco’s holiday weekend wasn’t ruined by breaking news. But I fully expected to come back with reason to share my thoughts on multiple items of interest.

Instead … well, there really isn’t anything new on the Nationals to discuss. The Winter Meetings begin Sunday in Nashville, so there will be actual news soon enough. But not yet.

Perhaps the most interesting development of the last week from the Nats’ perspective was the flurry of moves made by other clubs. Especially when it came to free agent starting pitchers.

There have already been a number of moves in that oh-so-important department, and you better believe the Nationals were paying attention and calculating how it might impact their own pursuit of pitching help this winter.

The Orioles are finalizing the structure of their 2024 coaching staff as they approach the Winter Meetings. Business that doesn’t influence their active roster.

According to an industry source, the Orioles are prepared to hire Drew French as their pitching coach.

French, 39, spent the past three seasons as the Braves’ bullpen coach. He’ll take over for Chris Holt, who maintains his duties as director of pitching.

Holt and executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias are familiar with French from his five seasons as pitching coach in the Astros’ organization from 2016-20. French was one of two pitching coaches at the alternate training site in 2020 before joining Houston toward the end of the regular season and playoffs to work with the club’s taxi squad.

French began his tenure in the Astros’ system as pitching coach at short-season Tri-City. He served in the same role with the 2017 Midwest League champion Quad Cities River Bandits and 2018 Carolina League champion Buies Creed Astros.

Major League Baseball tonight announced that Orioles right-handed pitcher FÉLIX BAUTISTA has won the 2023 Mariano Rivera American League Reliever of the Year Award. He was a unanimous choice by the voting panel, which was comprised of six all-time great relievers. Bautista becomes the second Orioles player to win the award, joining left-hander ZACK BRITTON in 2016.

Bautista, 28, went 8-2 with a 1.48 ERA (10 ER/61.0 IP) and a 0.92 WHIP in his 56 appearances for the AL East Champion Orioles, who finished with the AL’s best record (101-61) for the first time since 1997. The Dominican Republic native converted 33 of his 39 save opportunities, including five of more than 1.0 inning. He led MLB relievers with 110 strikeouts, the third-most by an O’s reliever in team history (since 1954), and struck out multiple batters in 38 of his 56 outings, the most multi-strikeout games in MLB this season. Bautista recorded the fastest strikeout pitch by an Orioles pitcher in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008) on June 28 vs. Cincinnati, striking out Spencer Steer at 103.3 miles per hour.

 “The Mountain” was named to his first career All-Star team and earned AL Reliever of the Month honors for April, June, and July. He was also named the Baseball Digest/eBay MLB Relief Pitcher of the Year. He was placed on the Injured List in late August before undergoing ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction (Tommy John) in October.

Bautista finished ahead of AL runners-up Emmanuel Clase (CLE) and Jordan Romano (TOR). Bautista and Trevor Hoffman National League Reliever of the Year Award winner Devin Williams (MIL) will each receive a special trophy that models the likeness of Rivera and Hoffman, respectively, pitching during their Hall of Fame careers. The Rivera and Hoffman Awards replaced MLB’s “Delivery Man of the Year Award,” which was presented to one winner in all of Major League Baseball from 2005-2013. These awards continue a longstanding baseball tradition of honoring the game’s top relief pitchers.

PROSPECT REVIEW: ANDRY LARA

Age on opening day 2024: 21

How acquired: Signed as international free agent, July 2019

Ranking: No. 23 per MLB Pipeline, No. 18 per Baseball America

MLB ETA: 2025
* Projected by MLB Pipeline

We learned a few days ago that right-hander Kyle Gibson would not be back with the Orioles for the 2024 season. He signed a one-year free agent deal with the St. Louis Cardinals for $12 million and the team holds a club option for the 2025 season.

For Gibson, this represents a homecoming of sorts. He lives near St. Louis and went to college at the University of Missouri. Reports said the Cardinals had been trying to add him for years. They’ve got him now but today we should take a moment to appreciate his numerous contributions to the Orioles last season.

He went 15-9 with a 4.73 ERA over 33 starts and the Orioles went 20-13 in those 33 games. Gibson tied for third in the AL in wins, trailing only Chris Bassitt and Zack Eflin, who had 16 each. He was one of eight pitchers in the majors with 15 or more wins and the first Oriole to do that since Chris Tillman won 16 in 2016.

The Orioles signed Gibson to a one-year deal for $10 million last Dec. 5 and he went on to tie for third in the league in wins, finish sixth in the AL throwing 192 innings, he tied for first in starts and tied for 10^th in the AL with 17 quality starts.

Gibson became the first O’s pitcher in club history to start and win each of his three first appearances with the team. And he started a season 4-0 for the second time in his career, joining a 6-0 start with Texas in 2021. He became the fifth Oriole starting pitcher since 2004 to begin a year 4-0, joining John Means (4-0 in 2021), Bud Norris (4-0 in 2013), Wei-Yin Chen (4-0 in 2012), and Erik Bedard (4-0 in 2006).

Two days past Thanksgiving is too early to begin worrying whether the leftovers are edible. To check for discoloring, change in texture, hints that a trip to the emergency room is in your future.

It isn’t too late to keep looking back on the 2023 Orioles season.

Among the surprises and oddities, I’ve already mentioned how Austin Voth wasn’t impactful, Dillon Tate wasn’t able to pitch, Mike Baumann wasn’t big only in size, Yennier Cano was an All-Star, Danny Coulombe was cool under pressure, Adam Frazier had a power surge and outage, Ryan O’Hearn hit in the middle of the order, Cedric Mullins posted curious splits, and Joey Krehbiel wasn’t around much.

Here are three more:

Logan Gillaspie made the Opening Day roster.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers and fans of this blog today and I hope everyone has a great time with family and friends. Hope everything on your plate is hot and delicious.

But the topic here is always baseball and the Orioles and O’s fans have a lot to be thankful for this year.

How about a playoff team, 101 wins and an AL East championship. The 2023 season was an amazing ride, one that started with the Tampa Bay Rays lapping the field and winning all the time. But they struggled badly in July and the Orioles gained about six games or so in the standings pretty quickly to pass them.

The club took the Rays’ best shots and stayed on top. Even when Tampa Bay came to town in mid September and took the first two games of a four-game series. That moved the Rays into a first-place tie with the Orioles. But on a Saturday night at Camden Yards, with first-place riding, right-hander Grayson Rodriguez pitched eight scoreless in an 8-0 win. The next day the O’s won a wild one in 11 innings to clinch a playoff berth and touch off a wild celebration.

They went 9-5 down the stretch after the Rays tied them atop the division and they answered the Rays’ first two wins in that series in Baltimore with four straight wins – two over Tampa Bay and two at Houston. It was their greatest chance to crack under the pressure on the year and they did not. Four straight wins against playoff clubs.