Washington Nationals Mock Signings: Rounding out the final roster

Matt Wieters, C

An important note before you all dive into the comments section, this simulation finished on November 16th, so it was over well before the Washington Nationals signed Kurt Suzuki. Therefore, we decided to bring back Matt Wieters on a cheap one-year deal.

For what it’s worth, Suzuki went for just a one-year $2 million deal in this sim, so he was also an option. However, with all options much of a muchness as this point, we thought we should keep familiarity on the team and pitchers already on the staff in Wieters.

Now, this is far from ideal given the woes that the team had for much of last season. It was definitely an area we were hoping to improve on, and we put several offers out there for catching upgrades. But, we also stumbled upon an interesting stat that we then shared on Twitter:

Yes, despite the narrative of the team being feeble in terms of catcher production, they led the league in wOBA after the trade deadline. Bizarre. Wieters and his then-backup Spencer Kieboom seemed to figure things out at the plate and were actually solid in that regard.

In that span, Wieters slashed a promising .273/.358/.430, and while that won’t win him any MVPs, catching production around the league as a whole is down. As a cheap flier, he would be worth the continuity and then taking another whirl at the catching market next year while potentially getting a rebound from Wieters.