Pretty much. When I say its mandatory, it doesn't mean I'm cool with peeling off some teams 27th ranked prospect. I'm not. If you can't drive a quality deal that generates a reasonable prospect return, then "hold" and bet on the player (assuming you believe in him) and getting a better prospect later, during the winter or next summer's deadline, but if we get a quality deal built around prospect(s)? Absolutely take it. This team aint good till at least '25, and as such, keeping around guys that will be gonezo when they finally approach .500 strikes me as self-defeating. It's literally what the idiot Wizards did the past four years when I was screaming non-stop against a blank stare after Wall fell out of the shower (signaling the end of the Wall-Beal era literally 4.5 freaking years ago but apparently the only ones that didn't understand that we're the people who were being paid big money to ABSOLUTELY NO THAT).
Why do we want to do what the Wizards just spent the past nearly five years doing? Spending all those years turning real assets into literally nothing of long term value whatsoever and delaying the ability to short cut a rebuild by nearly a half decade? Insanity. Baseball's a different sport with different systems of course, but rebuilding is still rebuilding. Thankfully the Nats got the big crucial parts right (sending out the best parts for the biggest return they could find), but getting the small parts right is also important and Lane is definitely one of those small but valuable pieces just like turning Lester into him was one.
The Nats did that when they traded Max and Trea for Ruiz and Gray. Then traded Hudson for Mason Thompson, and traded Gomes and Harrison for Drew Millas, and, last season, traded Soto and Bell for all those San Diego prospects. They have traded the stars.
Sure, consider a trade for Thomas, but it must return a sure-fire better player, and not a prospect with "potential". Otherwise, the Nats are just churning players, rather than improving.
Next season looks like .500 to me. The rotation looks like it will be pretty good, and will become better when Cavalli returns. Rutledge looks good, but needs some finishing at AAA. Bennett looks good and will improve. The Nats have some "good enough" relief pitchers, although, of course, they need a few more.
The weakness will be at 3B, at power, and in the OF. The team needs a couple of free agents: someone almost as good as Candelario and much better than Dickerson. They don't improve by replacing Thomas with a prospect who is just a hope. Otherwise, they should be trading Abrams and Ruiz for a few more prospects.
No, MLB is not the same as basketball. Baseball uses a larger roster, plus the 40-man, and it depends on a large pool of minor-leaguers. Whatever the Wizards did cannot be compared to building a baseball team.
And a reminder: the MLB draft is intended to "encourage" teams to spend on free agents. The issue back then was that teams had ignored good free agents who were a few years either side of 30. It made it even stranger that no teams wanted to bid for Machado and for Harper at $300 million. The Collective Bargaining Agreement seems to punish large-market teams that want to tank year after year to improve themselves.
