Santa Claus isn’t the only one who is busy on this Christmas Eve. The Nationals made a move to add depth to the roster after checking their offseason wish list twice.

The Nats have signed first baseman Matt Mervis to a minor league deal with an invite to spring training, per a source, adding depth to a position of need. The New York Post was first to report the signing.

Mervis, 27, was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Potomac, Md. He played high school baseball at Georgetown Prep, with the Nats originally drafting him in the 39th round in the 2016 MLB Draft. But he didn’t sign with the team and instead decided to play collegiately at Duke.

He went undrafted in the five-round 2020 MLB Draft, shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and signed with the Cubs as a free agent.

After making his major league debut on May 5, 2023, he went on to play 27 games with the North Siders, hitting .167 with a .531 OPS, three home runs and 11 RBIs.

Foster Griffin went to Japan three years ago not because he envisioned it would get him back to the major leagues eventually, but because at the time it was the only place that offered him a chance to be a starting pitcher.

Having bounced back and forth between Triple-A, Kansas City and Toronto while making seven MLB appearances in relief from 2020-22, the left-hander saw an appealing opportunity with the Yomiuri Giants. And once he got the blessing from his then-pregnant wife, he made the move across the Pacific and hoped for the best.

Three highly successful years later, Griffin found himself Tuesday talking about his latest opportunity: Becoming a member of the Nationals’ 2026 rotation after signing a one-year, $5.5 million contract. It’s an opportunity he couldn’t have realistically foreseen when he first left for Japan.

“It’s tough so far to wrap my head around it, to be honest with you,” he said in a Zoom session with reporters. “You hear about some guys going to Japan and coming back and getting deals. But to be honest with you, that was never at the front of my mind when I left. I just wanted to go out there and re-establish myself as a starter. I kind of feel like I got this second chance at baseball in my career, by getting the opportunity to go to Japan.”

In their quest to add some much needed experience to an otherwise young rotation, the Nationals turned their sights to Tokyo. Not for a native Japanese pitcher, but for an American-born, former first round pick who indeed resurrected his career in unexpected fashion.

The Washington Nationals announced the remainder of their Major League coaching staff on Tuesday. The announcement was made by Nationals President of Baseball Operations Paul Toboni and Manager Blake Butera. The complete list below joins Butera’s staff, which also includes Bench Coach Michael Johns and Pitching Coach Simon Mathews, who were announced in November.

Matt Borgschulte, 35, enters his fifth season as a coach at the Major League level and his first as Washington’s hitting coach. He spent the 2025 season as the hitting coach the Minnesota Twins and three seasons (2022-24) as the co-hitting coach for the Baltimore Orioles. Under his tutelage, Twins outfielder Byron Buxton (2025) and Orioles designated hitter Anthony Santander (2024) won their first American League Silver Slugger awards, and in 2024, Baltimore hitters ranked second in Major League Baseball in home runs (235) and third in slugging percentage (.435), extra-base hits (530) and total bases (2,424). Orioles infielder Gunnar Henderson was named the American League Rookie of the Year, and both he and catcher Adley Rutschman won American League Silver Slugger awards in 2023.

With the Twins organization, Borgschulte spent time as the hitting coach for Triple-A St. Paul (2021), Single-A Fort Myers (2019) and the Gulf Coast League Twins (2018) and was the hitting coach at Minnesota’s Alternate Training Site in 2020. He joined the coaching ranks in 2017 with Single-A Palm Beach in St. Louis’ system after coaching at Southwest Missouri State from 2015-16. A native of St. Louis, Borgschulte played two collegiate seasons at Western Kentucky University before transferring to Drury University (Mo.).

Andrew Aydt, 30, comes to Washington after spending the last seven years as a coach at Driveline Baseball, most recently in the role of assistant director of hitting since January of 2024. In that role, he managed 15 coaches and more than 600 players and oversaw their entire Major League Baseball and professional player operation. During his time at Driveline, Aydt worked with a roster of more than 50 Major League players, including Corbin Carroll, Jeremy Peña, Vinnie Pasquantino and Nolan Arenado as well as top prospects like Travis Bazzana.

A native of Wildwood, Mo., Aydt played baseball and graduated from McKendree University (Ill.) in 2018 with a bachelor's degree in economics and earned a master’s of business administration in 2019. 

The Washington Nationals signed left-handed pitcher Foster Griffin to a one-year Major League contract on Monday. Nationals President of Baseball Operations Paul Toboni made the announcement.

Griffin, 30, returns to Major League Baseball after spending the last three seasons with the Yomiuri Giants of Nippon Professional Baseball. He went 18-10 with a 2.57 ERA, 9.1 strikeouts per 9.0 innings and 2.0 walks per 9.0 innings in 54 starts from 2023-25. A NPB Central League All-Star in 2025, Griffin went 6-1 with a 1.52 ERA, 87 strikeouts, 22 walks and just one home run allowed in 89.0 innings across 17 starts last season.

Griffin made his Major League debut with the Kansas City Royals in 2020, tossing 1.2 innings of scoreless relief to earn the win on July 27 vs. Detroit. He last appeared in Major League Baseball in 2022, pitching in six games between the Kansas City Royals and Toronto Blue Jays. Griffin went 6-0 with a 2.10 ERA in 38 relief appearances between Triple-A Omaha and Triple-A Buffalo in 2022.

A first-round pick (No. 28 overall) by the Kansas City Royals in the 2014 First-Year Player Draft out of The First Academy (Fla.), Griffin was the Royals Minor League Pitcher of the Year and representative in the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game in 2017. He went 49-50 with a 4.54 ERA in 194 Minor League games (154 starts) prior to joining the Yomiuri Giants in 2023.

The Nationals’ one-year contract with Foster Griffin has been finalized, and the 30-year-old left-hander’s signing is now official.

Griffin and the Nats had agreed to terms last Tuesday on a $5.5 million deal, plus incentives, but the contract wasn’t finalized until he passed a physical.

With that matter now resolved, the former first round pick of the Royals turns his sights toward his official return to major leagues after a highly successful, three-year stint pitching in Japan.

Griffin joined the Yomiuri Giants in 2023 after failing to stick in the big leagues and enjoyed immediate success. He went 6-5 with a 2.75 ERA and 1.074 WHIP in 20 starts during his first season abroad, then returned the following season to go 7-6 with a 2.93 ERA in 24 starts.

Griffin’s third season in Tokyo was his best; he went 6-1 with a 1.53 ERA and 0.966 WHIP in 17 starts, earning a selection to the NPB Central League All-Star Game. He allowed only one homer over 89 innings.

While acknowledging there’s much work to be done, and while making a point to focus on long-term over short-term success, new Nationals president of baseball operations Paul Toboni has also gone out of his way to praise the talent already in place and salivate at the possibility of immediate, significant improvement.

“I’ve told many of them, and I really believe it: I think there’s another gear to tap into with many of them,” Toboni said in his introductory press conference, a refrain he has repeated multiple times since.

Anirudh Kilambi offered a similar sentiment in his formal introduction Friday as the Nats’ new general manager, referencing some sage wisdom he received from his former boss in Philadelphia (a man who has taken four different franchises to the World Series during his career).

“One of the things Dave Dombrowski mentioned to me over the last few years, as he has onboarded to multiple organizations and done really well, is that they’re always really good people and really good players, even in organizations that haven’t had the most success recently. And that’s something I took with me as really great advice. There are going to be superstars wherever you go, and you need to be in a position to help them grow, whether that’s on the field or off.”

The Nationals, as currently constructed, need help. There’s no debating that. They need a reliable starting pitcher. They need to fill a gaping hole at first base. They need several experienced relievers.

Friday’s joint Zoom meeting with new Nationals president of baseball operations Paul Toboni and new general manager Anirudh Kilambi of course gave us insight into how the new dynamic at the top of the front office will work. And we’ll have much more on that to come.

But it also gave us the first chance to ask Toboni about a recent roster move he’s made since leaving the Winter Meetings in Orlando.

The 35-year-old executive could not comment on the reported signing of left-hander Foster Griffin to a one-year, $5.5 million deal, as that has not been made official yet. But he could discuss a trade he made with his former organization in a swapping of minor league pitchers.

On Monday, Toboni made his second trade since taking over the Nationals front office by sending left-hander Jake Bennett to the Red Sox in exchange for right-hander Luis Perales. Both pitchers have a lot of upside, but both are recently returning from Tommy John surgery. And of course, Toboni knows Perales well from his time overseeing Boston’s player development department.

“On the Perales-Bennett trade, a great opportunity to trade for a great talent in Luis,” Toboni said on the Zoom press conference Friday afternoon. “He's got swing-and-miss stuff. He's still coming back from the injury, but he should be ready to roll in spring training and ready for the start of the season. He's got a really exciting fastball, exciting secondary. And then just having been around him a good amount in Boston, he's a stud competitor. I think a number of us were just really drawn to that and kind of what he can achieve as a pitcher going forward for us. So really excited about the add.”

Because Paul Toboni had previously suggested he might wait a while to hire a general manager, Anirudh Kilambi had little reason to expect a phone call from the Nationals’ new president of baseball operations earlier this month. Besides, Kilambi was perfectly happy in his role as an assistant GM with the Phillies, leading their research and development team, helping supplement a big-market team with big-name stars and a deep-rooted desire to win a World Series now.

Toboni, though, was keeping an open mind all along on hiring a GM this winter, instead of waiting a year to fill that all-important No. 2 role in his revamped front office. And having met Kilambi a few years ago and having heard great things about him from others in baseball since, he decided to contact the Phillies two weeks ago and request an interview.

“We could’ve waited a year or evaluated for a year, but that wouldn’t have allowed for us to push forward at the rate that we would’ve wanted to in year one,” Toboni said. “And year one’s a really important year. Ani in many ways helps us with that, and obviously he’s going to help us way beyond that first year. … I was very comfortable keeping this vacant if we didn’t come onto the right fit. Ani just happens to be an exceptional fit for us.”

Barely two weeks removed from their first phone call, the Nationals officially hired Kilambi as their new GM, giving Toboni one of the sport’s brightest young data minds as his top lieutenant in a front office that bears very little resemblance to the one that had been in place since the franchise arrived in D.C. more than two decades ago.

At 35, Toboni already is the youngest president of baseball operations in the majors. At 31, Kilambi becomes the youngest GM. And that’s to say nothing of 33-year-old manager Blake Butera or the countless other under-40 executives and coaches the Nats have hired in the last two months to remake an organization mired in six consecutive losing seasons since reaching the ultimate peak in 2019.

Though on-field changes have been minimal at this point, with the promise of much more to come before pitchers and catchers report, this has already been the most consequential offseason in Nationals history off the field.

Never in the previous two-plus decades had the club hired both a head of baseball operations and a manager during the same winter. And those are far from the only new people running the show. The front office has been totally remade. So has the coaching staff. And when it’s all said and done, the entire player development operation is likely to have been overhauled as well.

On top of all that, the types of people the Nationals have been hiring for all of these positions bear little resemblance to those who previously held those jobs. Nearly every one of them is in his 30s (or even 20s, in a few cases). Nearly every one of them has a data-heavy background. A good number of them have zero prior big league experience, and some of those don’t even have prior professional experience, coming instead from college programs and private pitching and hitting labs.

While it mirrors in some ways what other organizations were already doing over the last decade, it’s probably taken the young, analytics-heavy mantra to a whole new level. Paul Toboni, 35, is the youngest president of baseball operations in the sport. Anirudh Kilambi, 31, is the youngest general manager in the sport. Blake Butera, 33, is the youngest manager in the sport. And they haven’t been surrounded by older, more-experienced cohorts. They’ve been surrounded by contemporaries.

Is this going to work? Only time will tell. Three years from now, we may look back and praise the Nationals for brilliantly identifying the next wave of great executives and coaches before any of them were on other teams’ radars. Or we may look back and ask: “What on earth were they thinking?”

Anirudh Kilambi, a highly regarded front office executive with more than 10 years of experience with the Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays, was named general manager of the Washington Nationals on Thursday. Nationals President of Baseball Operations Paul Toboni made the announcement.

Kilambi, 31, spent the previous four years (2021-25) with the Phillies as an assistant general manager. In his role, he oversaw the club’s research and information departments as well as the club’s use of data throughout all aspects of their organizational decision-making process. He was also a key influence in pro evaluation and strategy, as well as other key areas across baseball operations.

“Ani has earned a reputation around the industry as one of the brightest front office minds in the game,” Toboni said. “He’s not only a sharp and strategic leader who is a great communicator, but he is also thoughtful and humble and aligns with our values. Ani is an excellent complement to the leadership group we have in place, both in terms of his past experiences and who he is as a person.”

“I would like to thank the Lerner, Cohen and Tanenbaum families for trusting our front office to be the stewards of a new era of Nationals baseball, and Paul Toboni for giving me the opportunity to share in his vision,” Kilambi said. “Our goal is to be the highest performing organization in baseball. To do so, we aim to exemplify our core values of joy, humility, integrity and competitiveness, while displaying sharp eyes for talent and best-in-class player development. I’m excited to call Washington, D.C. my home and cannot wait to get started.”

Kilambi spent seven years (2015-21) with the Tampa Bay Rays, elevating to the role of director of decision science in 2021 before joining the Phillies in November of that year. He was Tampa Bay’s assistant director of baseball research and development for three years (2018-21), an analyst in predictive modeling in baseball research and development (2017-18) and an assistant in research and development (2016-17). Kilambi joined the organization as an intern in their baseball research and development department in 2015.

Wednesday night’s news that the Nationals are hiring Anirudh Kilambi as general manager surely caught a number of people by surprise. President of baseball operations Paul Toboni said as recently as last month he didn’t expect to add a GM to his front office yet, seemingly content with the organizational flow chart that had come together since his hiring in late-September.

But then came word of the hiring of Kilambi, a 31-year-old data guru who spent the last decade working for the Rays and Phillies and now gets his highest-profile job to date as one of the youngest GMs in major league history.

It might leave you a bit confused. Fortunately, we’re here to answer some of the questions you likely have right now. If nothing else, consider this a placeholder until we get a chance to interview both Toboni and Kilambi later this week …

Q: So, Anirudh Kilambi is actually Mike Rizzo’s replacement?
A: Only in title. And even then, it’s only in partial title. Though he typically was referred to as the Nats’ general manager, Rizzo officially was president of baseball operations and general manager. In short, he was the guy in charge of the entire front office, and he chose not to promote or hire someone to be the GM beneath him, preferring to employ several assistant GMs and several special assistants to the GM.

Q: So, what is Kilambi’s role compared to Toboni’s role?
A: Toboni is the guy in charge. He makes the final decision on free agent signings, trades, etc. Kilambi will serve as his right-hand man, with an emphasis on all matters related to analytics, data and technology. That’s his background with Tampa Bay and Philadelphia, and he was widely regarded throughout baseball as a top young mind in that area, especially the job he did helping to acquire and develop lesser-known pitchers into quality big leaguers during his seven years with the Rays.

The Nationals are hiring Anirudh Kilambi as general manager, giving president of baseball operations Paul Toboni a second-in-command executive with a strong analytics reputation within the sport after a decade working for the Rays and Phillies.

Kilambi’s hiring, expected to be made official later this week, was confirmed by a source familiar with the decision and was first reported by ESPN.

Since Toboni was hired to take over baseball operations in late-September, the question loomed whether the 35-year-old executive would hire a GM to work underneath him. Toboni proceeded to hire former Red Sox colleagues Devin Pearson and Justin Horowitz as assistant GMs and retained former interim GM Mike DeBartolo as senior vice president and assistant GM, but suggested last month he wasn’t planning to also hire a GM for now.

In the end, Toboni did bring in someone to work directly beneath him, poaching Kilambi from the Phillies, where he spent the last four seasons as an assistant GM in charge of the franchise’s research and development department.

At 31, Kilambi becomes one of the youngest GMs in baseball and follows former Giants executive Farhan Zaidi as the first top MLB executives of South Asian descent. Kilambi is a first-generation Indian American.

At long last, the Nationals have begun acquiring players. It began with the pre-Winter Meetings trade of Jose A. Ferrer to the Mariners for Harry Ford and Isaac Lyon. It continued with the selection of Griff McGarry in the Rule 5 Draft. And now over the last two days, they have traded Jake Bennett to the Red Sox for Luis Perales and signed Foster Griffin after a successful three-year stint pitching in Japan.

Blockbuster moves? Maybe not. But for the first time, we're starting to get a sense of president of baseball operations Paul Toboni's method of roster-building, while also getting a sense of how much he's likely (or allowed) to spend this winter.

There will be plenty more acquisitions to come in the days and weeks ahead. But for now, let's take a moment to discuss what has already transpired, and wonder what might still be in store before pitchers and catchers report to West Palm Beach in a mere eight weeks.

As always, submit your questions in the comments section below, then check back throughout the morning for my responses.

The first free agent signed by the Nationals’ new front office is a former first-round pick who went to Japan to resurrect his pitching career.

The Nats are in agreement with left-hander Foster Griffin on a one-year contract that guarantees $5.5 million plus incentives, a source familiar with the terms confirmed. The deal, which was first reported by FanSided.com, is contingent on the 30-year-old passing a physical.

It’s a bit of an unconventional first foray into free agency for new president of baseball operations Paul Toboni, though one that has become increasingly popular among other organizations willing to take a modest financial risk on former big leaguers who parlay success in Asia into major league offers.

Originally the 28th-overall pick of the 2014 Draft by the Royals, Griffin made his major league debut in 2020 and has made seven total big league appearances with Kansas City and Toronto, allowing six earned runs in eight innings. Released by the Blue Jays in November 2022, the 6-foot-3 southpaw then signed with the Yomiuri Giants and turned his career around.

In three seasons pitching in Japan, Griffin went 18-10 with a 2.57 ERA and 1.033 WHIP, working as a starter. The lefty peaked this summer, going 6-1 with a 1.62 ERA, 0.949 WHIP and 77 strikeouts in 78 innings, earning an NPB All-Star selection before being sidelined by a leg injury.

The Washington Nationals acquired right-handed pitcher Luis Perales from the Boston Red Sox in exchange for left-handed pitcher Jake Bennett on Monday. Nationals President of Baseball Operations Paul Toboni made the announcement.

Perales, 22, is the No. 5 prospect in Boston’s system, according to Baseball America, and its No. 7 prospect according to MLBPipeline.com. Perales went from unranked to the No. 57 prospect in baseball in 2024 – according to Baseball America – before undergoing Tommy John surgery in June of that season. He was cited by Baseball America as having the “best fastball” in Boston’s Minor League system prior to both the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Perales returned to the mound in 2025, appearing in three games (2.1 IP) between Double-A Portland and Triple-A Worchester.

Perales (per-AHL-iss) paced Boston’s system and ranked 15^th in all of Minor League Baseball (min. 30.0 IP) with 14.97 strikeouts per 9.0 innings in 2024. He went 2-2 with a 2.94 ERA (11 ER/33.2 IP) and 56 strikeouts in nine games (nine starts) in 2024 prior to the injury. Perales pitched to a 1.88 ERA (6 ER/28.2 IP) with 49 strikeouts and just 10 walks in in his final seven starts after allowing five earned runs in 5.0 innings across his first two starts of the season.

Through five professional seasons (2021-25), Perales has posted 12.56 strikeouts per 9.0 innings and 0.7 home runs per 9.0 innings. He’s surrendered just 12 home runs in 163.1 innings pitched. He is 6-11 with a 3.31 ERA, 228 strikeouts and a .217 opponents’ batting average in 47 professional games (43 starts). A native of Guacara, Venezuela, Perales signed with Boston as an international free agent on July 2, 2019.

We’ll never know if there was a realistic chance of Josh Bell returning to the Nationals for another season, whether the new front office valued him the same way the previous front office did. Regardless, it’s too late now after the big slugger chose a new home for the 2026 season.

Bell agreed to a one-year, $7 million contract with the Twins, according to multiple reports Monday, taking his big bat and popular persona to Minnesota. The 33-year-old is expected to see time both at first base and designated hitter, bolstering a lineup that saw only one player hit more than his 22 homers this season.

The Twins become Bell’s seventh different club in seven seasons, a nomadic career he never desired but has been forced to accept due to a combination of trades and short-term contracts. Originally drafted by the Pirates in 2011, he spent his first five seasons in Pittsburgh, making an All-Star team, before he was traded to the Nationals on Christmas Eve 2020 for pitchers Wil Crowe and Eddy Yean (who recently returned to the Nats on a minor league deal).

Bell quickly embraced D.C. and expressed a desire to stay here long-term. But when the organization opted to tear down the remnants of its World Series roster and rebuild with younger players, Bell wound up on the trading block. He was paired up with star outfielder Juan Soto in the August 2022 blockbuster that brought five prospects to the Nationals, with Bell’s inclusion in the deal necessary to acquire pitching prospect Jarlin Susana.

Bell spent only two months in San Diego before becoming a free agent, and he proceeded to sign a two-year, $33 million deal with Cleveland … only to be traded to Miami during that first year. He was then traded to Arizona at the 2024 deadline before again reaching free agency last winter.

Why did it take two decades before the Nationals signed their first free agent from Asia?

“That market is a market that is built on relationships,” former general manager Mike Rizzo said. “You can’t go down there and just pick and choose a guy you want to scout and try and sign him. That market, I dabbled in it when I was with Arizona a few times. And here, we’ve tried at several Asian players. And it’s just … you’re always on the outside looking in, because you don’t have the network there, the groundwork there, that you need to have to create these relationships.”

Rizzo said this in January, shortly after signing Shinnosuke Ogasawara to a two-year, $3.5 million contract. It was significant news, not so much because of the actual player who was signed, but because it marked the first Japanese free agent signed by the Nats since they arrived in town in 2005.

Rizzo, of course, is no longer GM of the franchise. And in a bit of irony, Ogasawara made his major league debut (and trailed 4-0 before recording an out) hours before Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez were fired.

The left-hander went on to make one more start, then made 21 relief appearances in August and September, ultimately completing his rookie season with a gaudy 6.98 ERA and 1.552 WHIP. Paul Toboni’s new front office wound up removing the left-hander from the 40-man roster, outrighting him to Triple-A Rochester, where he’ll likely be the highest-paid player on the roster in 2026.

The Winter Meetings have come and gone, and not much has changed for the Nationals since they traded Jose A. Ferrer to the Mariners last weekend before heading to Orlando.

We did, however, see some changes across baseball’s greater landscape, most notably the Orioles signing first base slugger Pete Alonso to a five-year, $155 million contract. That was one of the first major dominoes to fall this offseason, with many more now to follow.

New president of baseball operations Paul Toboni didn’t leave the Winter Meetings with a splashy free agent signing nor another trade completed. He used the week to lay down groundwork for the deals he’ll make between now and the start of spring training.

But with other moves from around the league, we can now speculate on possible avenues he could pursue to fill out the 2026 roster.

After Wednesday’s blockbuster news of Alonso signing with the Orioles, a train of thought led to the possibility of the first-ever trade between the Nats and O’s.

The Nationals agreed to terms on a 2026 contract with Josiah Gray on Friday, avoiding arbitration with the right-hander, who is attempting to make it back from major elbow surgery.

Gray agreed to a deal that will pay him $1.35 million, a source familiar with the terms confirmed, matching his salary from this season. The vast majority of players who are arbitration-eligible receive raises through the process, but he was unlikely to be awarded one because he did not pitch at all in the majors in 2025.

Had the two sides not been able to agree to a salary on their own, they would’ve needed to file for arbitration next month, submitting competing offers and then making their cases before a three-judge panel in February.

Gray joins catcher Riley Adams ($1 million) as players who have avoided arbitration with the Nationals so far. They are still attempting to work out deals with five other arbitration-eligible players: second baseman Luis García Jr., shortstop CJ Abrams, left-hander MacKenzie Gore and right-handers Jake Irvin and Cade Cavalli.

An All-Star in 2023 and the team’s Opening Day starter the following season, Gray hasn’t pitched in a big league game since April 4, 2024, after which he reported forearm soreness. Initially diagnosed with a flexor strain, he was back pitching in minor league rehab games two months later and appeared to be on the verge of coming off the injured list when he reported new soreness in his elbow following a June 30 start with Triple-A Rochester.

With a new president of baseball operations and a new manager, there were no shortage of Nationals-related topics to bring up at the Winter Meetings this week. Paul Toboni and Blake Butera were peppered with all sorts of questions during their three days in Orlando, and while some of those garnered the immediate headlines, a few more didn’t make the first cut.

With that in mind, let’s go back through the notebook and present Toboni and Butera’s thoughts on some other topics we didn’t get to earlier in the week …

* While we did print their answers to questions about the possibility of trading CJ Abrams, we didn’t get to the question of what position the new brain trust expects him to play if he’s not dealt this winter.

Abrams’ defensive struggles this season were well-documented. Of the 22 major league shortstops who played enough innings to qualify, he ranked 19th in Defensive Runs Saved (minus-6), 20th in Outs Above Average (minus-11) and 21st in Fangraphs’ all-encompassing defensive metric (minus-3.2).

Much of those negative numbers came during a particularly rough second half. After committing nine errors in his first 89 games, Abrams was charged with 13 over his final 53 games (including four during a five-day span in September).