It's tender (or non-tender) decision day for the Nationals

It's the final day of November, which means it's another deadline day in baseball's offseason, this one for tendering contracts. By 8 p.m. EST, all clubs must inform players who are eligible for arbitration (those with more than three and fewer than six years of big league service time, plus the top 22 percent of those with two years-plus service time) whether they will be offered a 2019 contract.

Teams and players don't have to agree to any particular salary figures yet; there's still plenty of time for that. Clubs merely need to let these players know if they will be brought back on one-year deals, or if they're being let go (aka: non-tendered).

The Nationals currently have seven players who are arbitration-eligible: Anthony Rendon, Tanner Roark, Trea Turner, Michael A. Taylor, Kyle Barraclough, Joe Ross and Sammy Solís. It's the last of those names whose fate appears to be hanging in the balance today.

Solís is the only member of the group who appears to be in danger of being non-tendered, with the Nationals left to decide whether the erratic reliever is worth bringing back for another season, one in which he's projected to earn a salary of roughly $900,000.

This was a particularly frustrating season for Solís, who had flashed his potential plenty of times in the past but had also been beset by inconsistency and injury. The irony is that the 30-year-old left-hander actually avoided the disabled list for the first time in his big league career, even with some heavy usage in the first half of the season.

Solís' problem this year was strictly a performance one. He posted a 6.41 ERA and 1.551 WHIP in 56 appearances. Most notably, he struggled mightily against left-handed batters, who amassed a whopping .998 OPS in 88 plate appearances (as opposed to the .719 OPS right-handed batters produced in 89 plate appearances against him).

The Nationals tried everything with Solís, and twice they even optioned him to Triple-A - he was the rare player with a fourth option year due to the time he lost with injuries early in his professional career - in the hopes he'd straighten himself out. It never happened.

Now that Solís is out of options, the Nationals have to keep him on their big league roster or else send him through waivers. So the question becomes whether they want to take the $900,000 (or so) risk that he'll finally figure it out and establish himself as a yearlong part of their bullpen.

There's ample reason to decide he's not worth the risk, which would prompt the Nationals to non-tender him, cutting ties altogether and making him a free agent. But there's also another scenario in which they could delay the ultimate decision and only run the risk of spending a fraction of that money.

If the Nationals tender Solís a contract and the two sides eventually settle on a salary (we'll stick with the $900,000 figure here for these purposes) they could bring him to spring training and then see how he performs for most of camp before making a final call. Teams are allowed to release arbitration-eligible player 15 days before their season opener and be on the hook for only one-sixth of his salary.

So perhaps the Nats will decide to give Solís one more shot to prove he has made necessary adjustments next spring, then on March 13 make the call either to keep him and pay his full salary or release him and pay only $150,000. That, essentially, is the decision the front office must make by the end of the day.

The rest of today's decisions are fairly straightforward. Rendon obviously is a keeper, entering his final season before free agency and projected to make about $17.6 million. Turner is a first-time arbitration player, having achieved "Super-2" status by only one day of service time; he's projected to make $5.3 million.

Roark also enters his contract year, with the right-hander trying to bounce back from a disappointing 2018 season. Though his projected salary of $9.8 million sounds a bit high for a pitcher coming off a bad year, it's still more than appropriate for a 32-year-old with a 64-54 record and 3.59 ERA in 182 career games (141 starts).

Taylor, whose playing time reduced to next-to-nothing down the stretch this season, faces an uncertain future with the Nationals but is still worth his projected $3.2 million salary (either to the Nats or to a potential trade partner).

Barraclough (projected $1.9 million salary) and Ross ($1.5 million) are both eligible for arbitration for the first time and figure prominently in the Nationals' 2019 plans.