It's been a tale of two cities for the Washington Nationals in the early goings of the 2026 season. On one side, a hitting core running the fourth-best wRC+ in baseball and fourth-most home runs across the major leagues. On the other side, a pitching staff that, besides the team's Opening Day starter, looks asleep at the wheel and one that has left no lead, however big, safe. Entering play Tuesday, the Nationals' starter ERA of 6.14 was by far the worst in baseball.
Even in a year meant to get a new front office and coaching staff on its feet with a crop of players that desperately needed it, it shouldn't stop the team from doing what it can to produce now, even if that just means that whoever produces gets shipped off in August. Free agency doesn't stop once the season starts, though, and there are still some moderately intriguing names in the starting pitching market.
Enter Lucas Giolito. Giolito is the face at the forefront of the post-Opening Day free agent market, and a theoretical signing would reunite the 2012 first-rounder with the team that drafted him 16th overall. At the tail end of February, The Athletic senior reporter Ken Rosenthal mentioned that Giolito, along with eventual Nationals signee Zack Littell, was seeking upwards of $10 million on a one-year contract. Fans haven't gotten any further insight into Giolito's market from an expert since then. It's possible the Nationals, like several other teams, balked at an eight-figure price tag for the 31-year-old.
Littell's deal with the Nats, coming two weeks after that report, was valued at $7 million, split into a $3 million salary in 2026 and a mutual option for 2027 with a $4 million buyout. A mutual option hasn't been exercised in MLB since 2014, so that for all intents and purposes is just a way to spread out the $7 million guarantee. The deal also reportedly included $2.5 million in possible performance-based incentives.
Giolito recorded a 3.41 ERA in 145 innings last year, but underlying numbers suggested much more pedestrian ability. After missing all of 2024 with injury, his typically high strikeout rate, which had hovered around or above 10 per 9 innings from 2019 to 2023, cratered to 7.5. Pitch modeling wasn't fond either: Eno Sarris and Max Bay's Stuff+ model assessed him a 93, his worst since the model started tracking him in 2020. His K-BB% also dipped to a career-lowest 10.6%.
Littell, on the other hand, might have gotten his contract off of perceived workload capability. A career reliever, the Rays converted Littell into a starter in 2023 to solid results. He wasn't lighting up the world, but across the next three seasons he went from 90 to 156 to 182 innings and featured a walk rate of just 4.0%, the third-best in that span as a starter.
Giolito's got a lower floor, but a little more upside. The angle the front office took over the offseason is understandable--focus on developing the guys that are in the minors, and sign guys that will give you enough innings to survive 162 games. That hasn't worked so far, though, especially in the case of the already disastrous Miles Mikolas signing. It's tough to expect Mikolas to be the 200-inning workhorse he was in 2022 and 2023; diminished effectiveness has meant that he's getting through fewer innings and giving up more runs on the same number of pitches. It's very possible that Giolito, though having only crossed the 180-inning mark once in his career, could actually give the Nationals more support.