With the trade deadline less than three weeks away, here are five prospects the Washington Nationals could deal that can help them add to this year’s team
Now that the All-Star Game is officially in the books, the trade deadline is the next significant event for the Washington Nationals. They have less than three weeks to decide how they want to upgrade this team in order to make that championship run.
In order to make that significant upgrade, the Nats will have to trade key pieces of their farm system. While the farm system isn’t what it once was in terms of how it stacks up with the rest of baseball, they still have good depth at key positions across the diamond.
As far as the strength of that system goes, Joel Sherman of the New York Post wrote on Sunday night about how it might be tough for the Nats to make a trade for a premiere player considering the system isn’t that strong right now:
"“The systems of the Cubs, Nationals and Red Sox have been used so much to become contenders that they are down a few grades from recent years."
Before I give my five prospects to watch, I want to throw out that top prospect Victor Robles will not be one of them. With Bryce Harper’s future in a curly W uniform uncertain past 2018 and Adam Eaton coming off of an ACL injury next year, it makes it tough to see Robles gets dealt when he could be one of the key pieces in the outfield going forward.
While Robles is a top ten talent in most prospect circles that teams will want, there are other prospects to watch in the Nats farm system. Let’s start by talking about one player that got off to a cold start at Syracuse, but ended the first half on a good note: