The point that the malcontent fans bring up constantly - that the Nats never pay the big bucks - is of course stupid. From 2011 to right now, they've paid big contracts. As bad as it is at the moment with Corbin and Strasburg jamming things up, the Nats have dodged a lot of bullets.
Desmond turned down over $100 million, left and had a couple of good seasons, but that contract would have been a stinker. Letting Zimmermann leave was a lucky break. Rendon, probably too. Harper is a tough one, as he has played well in Philly, but most of the other major free agents who left was for the better. I don't think they were ever serious about signing Alfonso Soriano back in the day - the issue there was not trading him and instead letting him walk and getting a draft pick. That pick turned out to be Zimmermann, so that worked out really well for a 1-year rental.
I personally think that the Ryan Zimmerman deal was a bust, even though it was relatively cheap, because the Nats had a player for half a decade who really couldn't throw a baseball.
The Zimmerman deal was undeniably not good, and yet, I will never complain that they paid the only guy who had been here for all of it. Zim had done enough for this team that the idea that he wouldn't have been on the World Series ride would have been unthinkable to a lot of us that were there from the beginning.
