While this was originally intended to be an article covering the four worst contracts the Washington Nationals will have on their payroll for 2025 to coincide with Tuesday’s about their four best, the club does not have any contracts for active players in 2025 that can be considered bad, as the majority are on league minimum deals.

Instead, we will take a look at the four worst contracts in the history of the franchise, only covering their time as the Nationals, not while they were the Montreal Expos.

It is a very pitching-heavy list, but at one time or another, each of these players was fan favorites, so get your torches and pitchforks ready.

Washington signed Gio Gonzalez to a five-year, $42 million deal ahead of the 2012 campaign after the lefty spent the first four years of his career with the Oakland Athletics.

With the Nationals, Gonzalez pitched to a 3.62 ERA across 1,253 1/3 innings in 213 starts with 1,215 strikeouts and a 112 ERA+.

While those numbers are certainly serviceable, they are boosted by spectacular bookending full seasons to his tenure.

In the time between his first and last full campaigns with the team, Gonzalez pitched to a 3.82 ERA across 707 1/3 innings in 122 starts with 694 strikeouts and a 103 ERA+.

If there is any good to come from Gonzalez’s tenure in Washington, he posted every fifth day, making 31 or more starts in five of his six full seasons with the club.

Gonzalez was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers in 2018 as part of a waiver trade after posting a 4.57 ERA across 145 2/3 innings in 27 starts with the Nationals with 126 strikeouts and a 93 ERA+.

The lefty would spend two more years in the Majors, 2019 with the Brewers, and 2020 with the Chicago White Sox, before retiring in 2021.

Five-Years, $42 Million

Ryan Zimmerman was a member of the 2005 Nationals team, the first year of the franchise’s history, and would spend the entirety of his 17 years in Major League Baseball with the club.

Zimmerman would quickly become a fan favorite, batting .286/.352/.477 with 179 home runs, 672 RBI, and a 120 OPS+ from 2005 through 2013, but that’s where the trouble begins.

Washington signed Zimmerman to a six-year, $100 million extension ahead of the 2014 campaign with an $18 million option for 2020.

This extension covered his age-29 through age-35 seasons (including the option), which is generally when baseball players begin to decline.

Decline he did, as over the life of the contract, the veteran batted only .263/.323/.470 with 91 home runs, 343 RBI, and a 106 OPS+ across 2,186 plate appearances in 552 games.

Injuries kept Zimmerman off the field for the majority of the contract, playing in 100 or more games only twice in that span, and missing a total of 420 games, nearly as many as he played.

It was a sad stretch in the twilight of the career of a franchise legend, though he would be a part of the 2019 team that won the World Series over the dynastic Houston Astros.

The club would decline the option for 2020 and sign the veteran to a $2 million deal, but Zimmerman opted out of playing in the COVID-shortened season and finished his career in 2021 on a $1 million deal with the Nationals.

Six-Years, $100 Million

With the picture for the article being Patrick Corbin, he was originally slated to be the final contract talked about, but he at least took the field every fifth day, no matter how bad he was when doing so.

Washington signed Corbin to a six-year, $140 million deal in the 2018-2019 offseason after the lefty spent the first seven years of his career with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

With the Diamondbacks, Corbin would pitch to a 3.91 ERA across 945 2/3 innings in 172 games (154 starts), with 897 strikeouts and a 109 ERA+.

In the first year of his deal with the Nationals, 2019, the lefty would play a pivotal role in the team making it to, and winning the World Series, pitching to a 3.25 ERA across 202 innings in 33 starts with 238 strikeouts and a 138 ERA+.

It would be all downhill from there.

In the last five years of his contract, Corbin pitched to a 5.62 ERA across 744 2/3 innings in 137 starts with 594 strikeouts and a 73 ERA+.

He was widely regarded across the League as the worst pitcher in the sport, but the team kept running him out there every fifth day, and he kept being able to be run out there.

While it was not good production, Corbin was able to eat 150 or more innings every year as the team grinded through their rebuild, and now that they are seemingly on the upswing, he is no longer on the payroll.

Six-Years, $140 Million

Stephen Strasburg’s contract ahead of the 2020 season is a cautionary tale of recency bias if there ever was one.

Washington drafted Strasburg with the number one overall pick of the 2009 MLB draft, and the highly-touted prospect made his Major League debut on June 8, 2010.

Strasburg would have a strong run through 2010, making 12 starts and pitching to a 2.91 ERA, before his season would come to an end early and the star would need Tommy John surgery.

The young flame thrower returned in September of 2011, making five starts and pitching to a 1.50 ERA in the process, and the future would return to looking bright.

From 2012 through 2019, Strasburg would have an above-average career, pitching to a 3.21 ERA in that time across 222 starts with a 128 ERA+, and while nagging injuries would keep him out of games quite frequently, he did make 30 or more starts in three seasons over that stretch, and never less than 22.

Strasburg would reach new heights in 2019, pitching to a 3.32 ERA across 209 innings in 33 starts with 251 strikeouts and a 135 ERA+ while playing a pivotal role in the Nationals’ World Series run, including being named World Series MVP.

Washington would reward the superstar with a seven-year, $245 million contract, but the following season, the bottom would fall out.

The plethora of serious injuries began, holding Strasburg to only eight starts across 2020 through 2022, with the last Major League start of his career coming on June 9, 2022.

How can you not be romantic about baseball?

The superstar would try and return in 2023, but could not, and officially retired on April 6, 2024.

While Strasburg will, and should, be remembered for helping lead this franchise to their first-ever World Series title, there is no denying the fact that the contract they gave him as a reward is the worst in franchise history.

Seven-Years, $245 Million

The Washington Nationals showed the world in 2024 that their rebuild this time may not be as lengthy as their previous rebuilds.

While they do still have a long way to go to be competitive in the toughest division in baseball, the National League East, their young core has started to make their Major League debuts and prove that the hype surrounding them was justified.

It is only a matter of time before the Nationals are back on the island of relevancy, and these four contracts on their 2025 payroll are massive boons to their success.

All figures accurate as of December 2

Dylan Crews was the No. 2 overall pick of the 2023 MLB draft and quickly rose through the minor leagues before making his Major League debut on Aug. 26.

While his Major League numbers may not look that promising on the surface, it was a small sample size, and when you dive deeper, things begin to look much better.

First, Crews batted .219/.288/.353 with three home runs, eight RBI, 12 stolen bases, and an 82 OPS+ across 132 plate appearances in 31 games.

However, over the last week of the season, Crews batted a much better .286/.400/.429 with no home runs or RBI, three stolen bases, and a 144 OPS+.

The rookie had an xBA of .253 for his time in the Majors and an xSLG of .418, so there was a good bit of bad luck playing into his results.

Crews is under team control for at least five more years, and after seemingly finding his footing at the Major League level to end 2024, it could be off to the races in 2025.

Pre-Arb, League Minimum

Derek Law is a journeyman relief pitcher, who has been much too good throughout his career to not have a forever home with a contending team.

That was no different in 2024, as the reliever was a free agent until Washington signed him to a one-year, $1.5 million deal on February 21.

Law would go on to pitch to a 2.60 ERA across 90 innings in 75 games with 76 strikeouts and a 155 ERA+.

The 34-year-old is arbitration eligible for one more year and will spend more than one season with a team for only the third time since his Major League debut in 2016.

Arbitration Projection of $3 million

MacKenzie Gore is an interesting piece in the middle of the Nationals rotation.

He joined the club as part of the trade that sent Juan Soto to the San Diego Padres in 2022 and made his team debut in 2023.

He has improved his production and his innings count in each of his three seasons in the Majors, with an 84 ERA+ across 70 innings in 2022, a 96 ERA+ across 136 1/3 innings in 2023, and a 103 ERA+ across 166 1/3 innings in 2024.

His success this year came from an extra mile-per-hour added onto his fastball, seemingly from using it less throughout the campaign.

In 2022 and 2023, Gore used his fastball 61 percent and 59 percent respectively, but dropped down to 55 percent in 2024, mixing his pitches more, and throwing that pitch harder, leading to more whiffs.

If Gore can continue his string of yearly improvements, perhaps even dropping the fastball usage to 50 percent, he will be an even bigger piece of the team’s rotation.

Arbitration Projection of $3.1 Million

Left fielder James Wood was another part of the Soto trade in 2022, but he did not make his Major League debut until this year.

Patience proved to be a virtue, however, as the young star produced a promising 122 OPS+ across 336 plate appearances in 79 games.

When Wood connects with the ball, he does not miss, carrying an elite exit velocity (92.8 MPH) and hard-hit rate (52 percent) while pairing those skills with an elite chase rate (21 percent) and walk rate (11.6 percent).

Wood needs to get under the ball more and try and drive it into the gap if he wants to take that next step forward in his game, as he carried a 2.4 launch angle, showing that he got on top of the ball and drove it into the ground more often than not.

With how hard he can hit baseballs if he can improve that launch angle, he will quickly become one of the preeminent power threats in the game today, all at the low low price of league minimum.

Pre-Arb, League Minimum

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, our reporters go through President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son — and the part that’s particularly rankling fellow Democrats. Plus, senior politics editor Mark Murray looks at three big polling trends that defined 2024.

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Some Democrats bristle at Biden’s pardon justification

By Carol E. Lee, Sarah Fitzpatrick, Gary Grumbach and Dareh Gregorian

It’s not just that President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter. It’s how he did it that’s upsetting some fellow Democrats.

The president issued a “full and unconditional pardon” for any offenses Hunter Biden has “committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024,” according to a White House statement issued Sunday night.

The pardon comes after Biden repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his son’s sentence. And in his statement, Biden said he was granting the pardon because his son had been “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.”

That, as Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona told NBC News’ “Meet the Press Now” on Monday, plays against years of core Democratic Party policy positioning — and into the way President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have described his investigations and prosecutions.

“I’m pretty angry because it’s going to be incredibly important that political leaders of both parties stand up for the independence of the Department of Justice, stand up to these attacks suggesting that the Department of Justice has become politicized and needs to be dismantled or the FBI needs to be dismantled,” Stanton said. (See more from Stanton below.)

Trump, in response to Biden’s action, raised the issue of the defendants and people convicted of violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when he was pushing to overturn the 2020 election results. 

“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Special counsel David Weiss’s office on Monday appeared to push back on Biden’s claim that its prosecutions of Hunter Biden were politically motivated, calling such allegations “baseless.” In a court filing challenging Hunter Biden’s request to have his California tax and fraud indictment dismissed in light of his father’s pardon, Weiss noted that a number of judges had already rejected the younger Biden’s claims of vindictive prosecution.

While a handful of members of Congress have spoken out about the pardon so far, one notable group has been silent — those Democrats seen as early possibilities to run for president in 2028. Watch this space going forward.

Three big takeaways from the 2024 polls

By Mark Murray

Beyond signaling that the 2024 presidential election was competitive and uncertain, the polls nailed the political atmospherics that shaped the contest — and could continue to shape politics going forward. Here are some of the biggest lessons we learned.

Most broadly, the polls accurately described an electorate that mostly saw the nation headed in the wrong direction, with an incumbent president, Joe Biden, whose approval rating was stuck in the low 40s — a historical danger zone for the party controlling the White House.

As it turns out, the NBC News Exit Poll found 73% of voters saying they were angry or dissatisfied with the country’s direction, and only 40% approved of Biden’s job performance.

Additionally, the polls foretold many of the key demographic trends that ended up defining the 2024 election, including Trump’s gains with Latino voters.

The NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC Latino poll was among the surveys showing those Trump gains well before the election. Many polls also caught on early to Biden’s and Democrats’ relative struggles with young voters, particularly some men, compared with other recent elections.

But the polls, including the NBC News survey, erred in overstating the size of the gender gap when it came to Harris’ support among female voters and Trump’s backing among men.

According to the exit poll, Harris won female voters by 8 points, and Trump won men by 13 points — a 21-point gender gap that was consistent with recent presidential elections. That was smaller than the 30-point-plus gender gap that the NBC News poll had been showing.

The big thing to keep in mind with the gender gap: For a look at how and where it’s widening, combine it with education and race instead. Harris won white women with college degrees by 16 points, and Trump won white men without college degrees by 40 points — a whopping 56-point gap in the margin between those two different groups.

Read more here →

That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

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