The Washington Nationals are headed in a new direction in more ways than one. After introducing their new President of Baseball Operations in Paul Toboni earlier this month, he has already gotten to work in filling out the way he wants the rest of his front office to look.
He already announced that his new right hand man, Devin Pearson, will be following him over from the Boston Red Sox as well, and another member of their organization, Andrew Wright, will also be joining the reunion in the Nation's Capital.
Arguably the biggest obstacle the new front office will need to tackle and address moving forward is player development, which was called out as being subpar by ace lefty MacKenzie Gore before the end of the season. Anyone who watched or paid attention to the Nationals this past season at any level could tell that the team had talent, but lacked proper infrastructure to be able to adequately support high-end development.
One of the biggest examples of the team not being able to get the most out of their young players is actually in the form of one of their top prospects. Seaver King was taken with the 10th overall pick out of Wake Forest back in 2024, and coming into his stint this year in the Arizona Fall League, he had definitely been a bit disappointing thus far in his professional career.
While development takes longer for some prospects than others, the fact that the pick was a little bit questionable in the moment as the Nationals passed on players already in the big leagues such as Cam Smith of the Houston Astros or Trey Yesavage from the Toronto Blue Jays, there was a lot of hindsight drafting going on from fans while looking at the team's selection of King.
King was playing Division II baseball until his final year in college with Wake Forest, so the learning curve figured to be a little bit more stark than most would have preferred, but King outright struggled at times. His glove and speed on the bases has been solid, but his hit tool and inability to cut down on strikeouts and raise his walk rate seemed as if it would limit his overall ceiling as a prospect. It should be noted that he spent this entire season between High-A Wilmington and AA Harrisburg, neither of which are exactly hitter-friendly environments.
However, since the Arizona Fall League began, King has been dominant, as he is batting .419 with a 1.260 OPS in 7 games while also driving in 15 runs. His emergence has been a beacon of bright light heading into the 2026 season, where there might be a very legitimate opportunity for him to earn his way to the big leagues and push CJ Abrams over to second base, where he figures to profile better long-term.
Of course, the organization hopes that Eli Willits will eventually become the guy at shortstop, but with him being just 17-years-old and having such a long way to go in his development, being able to turn King into a solid big leaguer would be a massive win for Toboni's new front office.
While the sample size is certainly small so far, the fact that King is finally showing some dominant signs at the professional level is an encouraging development, and hopefully he can keep up his hot start. As of now, he is showing me enough that I have confidence in sticking by my take that King will be the starting shortstop for the Nationals by the end of the 2026 season.
Do you think Seaver King is finally breaking out? As always, please let me know on X, @DCBerk.