WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Josh Bell didn’t need an introductory course to navigate the Nationals’ facilities at CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches. He knows how to get to the clubhouse, the training room and the cafeteria. He’s been here before.

In fact, this is the third name the complex has had while he’s been a member of the Nationals. It was FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and then simply The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches in 2021 and 2022, respectively. It has a new sponsorship this third time around.

After coming to the Nats on Christmas Eve trade in 2020, Bell called West Palm Beach home for the next two springs. But then he was included in the Juan Soto blockbuster trade with the Padres halfway through the 2022 season and spent parts of the next 2 ½ seasons in San Diego, Cleveland, Miami and Arizona.

That winding road eventually led him back here to West Palm after signing a one-year, $6 million contract to return to the Nats in the offseason. And here he is back in the spring clubhouse he once shared with a veteran team that is now filled with a lot of new, young faces, including some for whom he was traded just 2 ½ years ago.

“It's cool. It's definitely different this go around,” Bell said in front of his new locker in the clubhouse just a few doors down from his old one. “New faces, some guys I've played against in the past, and even the guys that were here when I got traded, they were competitors for the last couple of years. So it's good getting back into the mix and it feels like a fresh start, even though it's the same clubhouse.”

JUPITER, Fla. – Kyle Finnegan will be closing for the Nationals in 2025 after all.

Finnegan and the Nats have agreed on a one-year, $6 million contract, three months after the club chose to non-tender its All-Star closer, a source familiar with the deal confirmed. It’s a modest raise from his $5.1 million salary last year, but significantly less than the $8 million to $9 million he was projected to receive via the arbitration process.

The decision to non-tender Finnegan, 33, left the Nationals without an experienced closer, and though general manager Mike Rizzo and Davey Martinez insisted they were comfortable with veteran right-hander Jorge López or young lefty Jose A. Ferrer pitching the ninth inning, the prospect of a reunion with Finnegan always loomed large.

It took until the final days of February, two weeks into spring training, for the two sides to finally find common financial ground. Finnegan, who was holding out for a better deal, never got one from either the Nationals or another major league club.

FanSided.com and ESPN.com were first to report the new contract and its terms.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – There’s no ill will. Josh Bell wished he could’ve been a National this entire time, but he has always understood why Mike Rizzo included him in the Juan Soto trade package that brought five prospects to D.C. in August 2022 and remade the franchise for the long term.

“That’s just baseball,” he said. “I would have made the same move.”

Bell felt that way at the time, he felt that way in the 2 1/2 years since as he bounced from San Diego to Cleveland to Miami to Arizona. And he still feels that way now, thrilled to be back where this little odyssey began, reunited with the Nationals after signing a $6 million deal with them this winter.

It’s a Nationals team that looks very different from the one he parted.

“You see what we got in return,” he said.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – The Nationals learned today they won their arbitration case against first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, a source familiar with the decision confirmed.

Lowe will make $10.3 million this season, the highest salary on the team’s current 2025 roster. He was seeking $11.1 million.

Acquired from the Rangers for reliever Robert Garcia in December, Lowe had two years of arbitration eligibility remaining. When he and the club were unable to agree to terms on their own before the leaguewide Jan. 9 deadline, they were required to submit competing arbitration figures. They wound up $800,000 apart.

A hearing was scheduled for Feb. 14, the last of nine arbitration hearings across Major League Baseball this winter, but the two sides were free to continue negotiating and could have settled on a number somewhere between the two competing offers and avoided the hearing altogether.

The Nationals actually had some recent history of settling, avoiding hearings with former outfielder Victor Robles in both 2022 and 2023 after initially filing for arbitration. In this case, they weren’t able to settle with Lowe and went to the hearing.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Ask Keibert Ruiz what he thought of his 2024 season, and the Nationals catcher doesn’t mince words.

“I was really disappointed with my season last year,” he said. “It wasn’t good, you know? I wasn’t happy.”

Ruiz then immediately flips the switch and turns his attention toward the upcoming season, one he can’t wait to get started.

“This is a new year. This is 2025, and I’m not going to think about the past. Just put my focus on this year.”

Before he could flip that switch, though, Ruiz had to take a hard look at last season. He had to be willing to accept his faults, not try to sugarcoat anything that went wrong and figure out how to improve in every possible way.

JUPITER, Fla. – Despite what looked like a modest offseason, in terms of spending on free agents, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo believes the moves he did make will help boost a talented young roster into a more successful record this year.

“The (salaries) of the players on the field is about the same, if not a little less, than it was last year,” Rizzo said. “But I think that we have a better team than we had last year.”

Speaking at Major League Baseball’s Spring Training Media Day for the five clubs that train on Florida’s East Coast, Rizzo acknowledged the Nationals did not increase payroll from 2024 but stressed the importance of the additions he did make to address some obvious roster needs.

The Nats acquired seven major league players this offseason, six via free agency (Michael Soroka, Trevor Williams, Josh Bell, Jorge López, Amed Rosario, Shinnosuke Ogasawara) and one via trade (Nathaniel Lowe). Those seven players are set to make slightly less than $40 million this season, with Lowe, Williams and Ogasawara all under club control for another season and likely to make a combined $24 million or so in 2026.

Those additions, plus the salary increases of returning players, put the Nationals’ projected Opening Day payroll at $94 million, according to Spotrac. (More than $25 million of that is going to Stephen Strasburg, who has retired, and Joey Gallo, who received a $2.5 million buyout.) Last year’s total payroll, per Spotrac, was nearly $104 million.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – When 30 pitchers and six catchers officially report for spring training this morning, and when 22 more position players officially report next week, the Nationals will begin preparing for a 2025 season that will differ from the previous three in one especially important manner.

For the first time since they tore down the last remnants of their championship roster and embarked on a franchise rebuild, they will be facing increased pressure to win.

That doesn’t necessarily mean a winning record is mandatory this year, though it would certainly be preferable after five straight losing seasons. But legitimate progress is required in 2025, from top young players realizing their full potential, to the front office making the right additions to supplement that core, to the coaching staff getting more out of these players, to ownership doing its part to provide the resources necessary to make it all happen.

The Nats won 71 games last season, same as the previous season. There’s a strong case to be made the most recent 71-win season still represented progress, given the bevy of young building blocks who joined the roster in 2024 for the first time. But everyone agreed back in late September that won’t be enough in 2025. It’s time to win more games.

“I think we should have better results next year, yes,” manager Davey Martinez said during his team’s final series. “One hundred percent.”

It’s finally February, and you know what that means: Baseball is on the horizon.

Nationals pitchers and catchers report to the team’s facility in West Palm Beach in a mere 10 days, officially kicking off the 2025 campaign.

“But Bobby, the Nats still have holes on their roster. They’re not ready!”

Yes, looking at the roster as currently constructed, general manager Mike Rizzo would probably want to enter the season with a few more pieces. But fear not: Opening Day is still about two months away, and the roster on the first day of camp is never the same roster that is introduced on the first day of the season.

The Nats have the next week plus a couple of days before pitchers and catchers hold their first workouts on the back fields at CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches. The first full squad workout is almost a week after that.

Why did it take 20 years for the Nationals to sign their first free agent from Asia?

“That market is a market that is built on relationships,” 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.”

The Nats finally broke through Friday when they signed Shinnosuke Ogasawara to a two-year, $3.5 million deal (plus a $700,000 posting fee to the Chunichi Dragons). The Japanese left-hander thus became the first free agent to ink a deal with this franchise directly from Asia, a long-awaited development some thought might never come to fruition.

Three Asian-born players have appeared in games for the Nationals over the last two decades, but all joined the club after playing professionally for other major league organizations.

Japan’s Tomo Ohka originally signed with the Red Sox in 2001 before getting traded to the Expos in 2004 for Ugueth Urbina and ultimately making nine starts for the Nats in 2005.

Shinnosuke Ogasawara isn’t the first Japanese player Mike Rizzo has scouted, or even attempted to sign. The Nationals have been trying to make inroads in Asia for years but, according to Rizzo, had been unsuccessful at building the kind of meaningful relationships needed to seal the deal.

How did they finally break through and get Ogasawara to agree to a two-year, $3.5 million contract, the club’s first acquisition of a free agent from Asia? Thanks to the combination of the 27-year-old left-hander’s status and availability, and the fact Rizzo and the Nats did in this case have an established relationship with his agents.

“With this particular player, we liked the skillset,” Rizzo said. “We liked (that) the age fits our timeline, that type of thing. And in this particular case, we did have a relationship with the agency. And that made us more attractive for him to choose us, rather than some other team this time.”

Ogasawara is represented by WME Sports, including agent Bryan Minniti, who just so happened to be Rizzo’s assistant general manager with the Nationals from 2010-14. Thanks to that connection, the Nats were able to get through the front door, meet with Ogasawara and pitch him on the idea of coming to Washington.

Part of that pitch was the promise of a shot at making an Opening Day rotation that suddenly looks more crowded than most expected. The Nationals have already signed veteran free agents Michael Soroka and Trevor Williams this winter, with each right-hander saying he expects to start for the team. They join holdovers MacKenzie Gore and Jake Irvin, plus promising young lefties DJ Herz and Mitchell Parker. And with 2020 first-round pick Cade Cavalli potentially ready to return from injury at some point, and 2024 Opening Day starter Josiah Gray targeting a return from elbow surgery before season’s end, club officials are likely to have some decisions to make this spring.

Though the approach has been somewhat methodical, the Nationals have addressed their most obvious needs so far this winter. They acquired a first baseman and a designated hitter, hopefully adding more power to a lineup that sorely needs it. They acquired one experienced starting pitcher and re-acquired another, giving them rotation depth with at least six (maybe seven) candidates for Opening Day jobs.

And then finally over the weekend they made the first move to address the last remaining obvious hole: the bullpen. In signing right-hander Jorge López for $3 million, they added an experienced late-inning arm to a relief corps woefully short on such things.

That shouldn’t be the end of Mike Rizzo’s to-do list, though. There should be more bullpen moves to come before pitchers and catchers report to West Palm Beach in a mere four weeks.

López is a solid addition, a soon-to-be 32-year-old with 31 career saves, an All-Star selection as recently as 2022 and a 2.89 ERA in 52 games last season with the Mets and Cubs. He fits right into the same mold as Derek Law and Dylan Floro, two experienced right-handers who signed similar deals last winter. (Law’s was officially a minor league contract, but he was a lock to make the club as long as he was healthy.)

Law, of course, returns, having just agreed to a $2.75 million salary to avoid arbitration. Floro is long gone, having been traded to the Diamondbacks in July for Andres Chaparro. In a perfect world, López would take over that role, which would carry some extra irony considering the Twins traded him to the Marlins for Floro less than two years ago.

The initial reaction for many to the Nationals and Nathaniel Lowe filing for arbitration Thursday night was one of incredulity. This is really how they’re going to treat their biggest offseason acquisition, by haggling over money and taking him to court?

It’s admittedly not a great look when a team can’t work out a contract with any player and has to rely on the arbitration process to determine that player’s salary. Even more so when that player is brand new and doesn’t already have some kind of established relationship with the club.

But let’s not get too worked up about this. It may not look great on the surface, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s actually not that uncommon. And there’s a decent chance this saga doesn’t even end with a hearing.

The Nationals had six arbitration-eligible players they needed to work out 2025 salaries with before Thursday’s deadline. They managed to settle on deals with five of the six: Luis García Jr., MacKenzie Gore, Josiah Gray, Derek Law and Riley Adams. They could not get a deal done with Lowe, the 29-year-old first baseman acquired from the Rangers last month for reliever Robert Garcia.

So the two sides had to formally file for arbitration, with Lowe seeking a salary of $11.1 million and the Nats countering with an offer of $10.3 million, according to MLB.com. A hearing will be set for early February, with a three-judge panel ultimately deciding which side wins.

It’s officially 2025 now, and that means a fresh start and raised expectations for a Nationals club that made strides in 2024 but still hasn’t climbed all the way out of the franchise rebuild they first embarked on in July 2021.

This is the year, everyone hopes, when the Nats end their streak of five consecutive losing seasons. This is the year, everyone hopes, when they return to contention for the first time since 2019. This is the year, everyone hopes, when their new core of young players realizes its full potential and leads the club to heights not experienced since the last star-studded core did it over an eight-season run of success.

And this is the year, everyone hopes, when the Nationals start adding established big leaguers via free agency and/or trade to bolster that promising young core.

Alas, that didn’t happen during the final two months of 2024. The Nats made very little news through all of November and the majority of December, but the final two weeks finally saw a flurry of activity with the acquisitions of four major league players.

It began with the signing of Michael Soroka to a one-year, $9 million contract, giving the pitching staff a former All-Star and Rookie of the Year runner-up whose career in Atlanta was sidetracked by freak injuries but may have been rejuvenated late last season in the White Sox bullpen.

We’ve reached the final week of the year, so it’s time to look back at the Nationals’ most significant stories of 2024. We continue the series today by looking at the moves the Nats did and did not make at the trade deadline …

For much of a decade, the Nationals used the trade deadline to add to their major league roster in order to compete for a World Series championship. Of course, they reached that goal in 2019. But at the cost of their farm system.

In the years since, general manager Mike Rizzo has used the deadline to rebuild the farm system by trading major league talent for minor league prospects.

It started with Max Scherzer, Trea Turner and a host of others in 2021. Juan Soto and Josh Bell netted a historic return in 2022. And then Jeimer Candelario was used to acquire two more young players, one of whom played a big role in the starting rotation this year, in 2023.

But what about 2024?

The Washington Nationals acquired first baseman Nathaniel Lowe from the Texas Rangers in exchange for left-handed pitcher Robert Garcia on Sunday. Nationals President of Baseball Operations and General Manager Mike Rizzo made the announcement.

Lowe, 29, won a Rawlings Gold Glove Award in 2023, a Louisville Slugger Silver Slugger Award in 2022, and was a member of the 2023 World Champion Texas Rangers. In 2024, he paced the Rangers and ranked in the American League in walks (6^th, 71) and on-base percentage (9^th, .361). His .361 on-base percentage ranked second among American League first basemen, while his .762 OPS ranked third. Lowe’s 12.6% walk rate ranked fourth in all of Major League Baseball.

In his fourth season in Texas in 2024, Lowe hit .265 with 16 doubles, one triple, 16 home runs, 69 RBI, 71 walks, two stolen bases and 62 runs scored in 140 games. He ranked second among American League first basemen with seven outs above average and fourth with a .995 fielding percentage. Lowe is under club control through the 2026 season.

The left-handed hitting Lowe is a career .272/.356/.433 hitter with 114 doubles, 10 triples, 89 home runs, 329 RBI, 314 walks and 334 runs scored in 686 games across six Major League seasons with Texas (2021-24) and Tampa Bay. A native of Norfolk, Virginia, Lowe was originally selected by the Rays in the 13^th round of the 2016 First-Year Player Draft out of Mississippi State University.

Juan Soto stole the biggest headline at the now-completed Winter Meetings – and for $765 million, rightfully so – but the most significant broader storyline to develop out of Dallas might well have been the shape of the pitching market.

In short, it’s expensive. Really expensive.

While only a handful of top position players have signed so far this offseason, a good number of free agent starters have found new homes. And they’ve been paid handsomely for their services.

The real eye-opener so far was Max Fried, who parlayed the Yankees’ frustration at losing Soto to the Mets into a gargantuan, eight-year, $218 million contract. That shattered most predictions for the left-hander, who undoubtedly is one of the league’s better starters but has dealt with some injuries in recent years and isn’t a prototypical power pitcher.

Fried’s deal, which runs through his age-38 season, was the biggest one given to a pitcher so far this winter. But it’s not the only one that exceeded expectations.

The Nationals nearly won Major League Baseball’s first Draft Lottery in 2022, finishing runner-up to the Pirates. They technically did win the 2023 lottery but were ineligible to hold the No. 1 pick, which wound up going instead to the Guardians.

There were no such restrictions this time around, just low odds. Which proved not to be a problem when the Nats were revealed the surprise winners of the 2024 lottery.

The grand prize: The No. 1 pick in next summer’s draft, the third time in club history they’ve held the first overall selection. The previous two players selected: Stephen Strasburg in 2009 and Bryce Harper in 2010, a couple of franchise icons.

Strasburg and Harper were drafted during some of the lowest points in the club’s two decades in D.C., immediately following 100-loss seasons. They were key figures in securing the team’s first winning record (and division title) in 2012. This No. 1 pick will join the organization three years into a roster rebuild that already has seen top prospects (Dylan Crews, James Wood, CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore) reach the majors, with an eye on returning to contention as soon as 2025.

“We’ve got a good system in place right now. Getting the first pick is just going to add to that, and add value to our organization,” general manager Mike Rizzo told MLB Network shortly after learning the news at the Winter Meetings in Dallas. “We’re extremely excited. We’re lucky. And we don’t want to ever be in this position ever again.”

Thanksgiving has come and gone, the calendar has flipped to December and every other commercial on TV right now is Christmas-themed. We’ve entered a new phase of the year, and that should include the official firing up of the Hot Stove at last.

Though there’s always some baseball news in November, it’s usually the quietest month of the offseason, certainly from an acquisition standpoint. Only a handful of prominent free agents has signed at this point, but that should change in short order as teams finally get serious about making moves of consequence.

The annual Winter Meetings open one week from today in Dallas, and that’s always good for injecting some life into the offseason. And if we look back at recent history, the flipping of the calendar to the 12th month also has spurred the Nationals to get involved.

One year ago, general manager Mike Rizzo signed three eventual major leaguers from Dec. 6-12. He inked Juan Yepez to a minor league deal on Dec. 6, with Yepez becoming a mainstay in the lineup over the final three months of the season. He signed Nick Senzel on Dec. 7, a transaction that did not work out so well in the long run. And he signed Dylan Floro on Dec. 12, a solid addition to the bullpen that was later flipped at the trade deadline for Andres Chaparro.

Go back one year prior, and Rizzo got to work a few days earlier, signing Jeimer Candelario and Stone Garrett on Nov. 29, then Trevor Williams on Dec. 9, then Erasmo Ramirez on Dec. 15.

PROSPECT REVIEW: ROBERT HASSELL III

Age on opening day 2025: 23

How acquired: Traded with MacKenzie Gore, CJ Abrams, James Wood, Jarlin Susana and Luke Voit from Padres for Juan Soto and Josh Bell in August 2022; originally drafted No. 8 overall by Padres in 2020 from Independence High School in Thompson’s Station, Tenn.

Ranking: No. 13 per MLB Pipeline, No. 14 per Baseball America

MLB ETA: 2025
* Projected by MLB Pipeline

As the dust settled from Friday night’s decision by the Nationals not to tender contracts to Kyle Finnegan and Tanner Rainey, a few follow-up thoughts came to mind.

One, they barely have any veterans on the roster anymore, with 24-year-old Luis Garcia Jr. (who debuted in August 2020) suddenly the most tenured player on the team.

Two, they have several holes to fill in their bullpen now, most importantly identifying a new closer.

Three, they’ve trimmed their financial commitments for 2025 and beyond down to an absolute minimum at this point.

Not that Finnegan had some kind of exorbitant contract, but the salary he would’ve commanded through the arbitration process this winter (likely between $8 million and $9 million) would’ve made him the highest paid player on the current roster.