About two months into his tenure as Nationals president of baseball operations, Paul Toboni made his first trade. <\/p>\n
The Nationals acquired a Top 100 Prospect who has a chance to win a share of the club\u2019s catching job.<\/p>\n
Harry Ford, who made his major league debut with the Mariners as a 22-year-old in 2025, will compete with Keibert Ruiz and Riley Adams for a big league role with Washington, according to Toboni. <\/p>\n
Ford and minor league righthander Isaac Lyon joined the Nationals in a deal for lefthanded reliever Jose Ferrer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like we were sitting there looking to trade Jose,\u201d Toboni said. \u201cAt the same time, when we were presented with this opportunity, it was like \u2018OK, this is something we should pretty strongly consider.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
In Seattle, Ford was blocked by American League MVP runner-up Cal Raleigh. With Washington, he\u2019ll have the opportunity to one day be the starting catcher. Ford hit .283\/.408\/.460 with a career-high 16 home runs for Triple-A Tacoma last year, then went 1-for-6 with an RBI in eight major league games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love that I\u2019m going to get a chance to fight for a spot on the team,\u201d Ford said. \u201cI know the other catchers, so I\u2019m really glad and excited to get to work with them as well. But I am thankful for the chance to be, I guess, a little more in the conversation than in Seattle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ford, the 12th pick in the 2021 draft, stole 35 bases in Double-A in 2024 but just seven last season. He\u2019s familiar with the Nationals\u2019 core of young players, many of whom he grew up seeing on the elite travel circuit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited to get on a team with them, be on a young team and just start from scratch,\u201d Ford said. \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to building something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ford met the Nationals\u2019 media on Zoom from Oxford, England, where he was visiting family. He hit .308 with two home runs for Great Britain in the 2023 World Baseball Classic and is on their roster again this spring.<\/p>\n
CAPITAL GAINS<\/p>\n
\u2014 The Nationals added five prospects, including 2025 first-round pick Gavin Fien, when they traded lefthander MacKenzie Gore to the Rangers. Fien, the 12th pick last year, is projected to play third base at Low-A Fredericksburg alongside shortstop and No. 1 overall pick Eli Willits. The rest of the return for Gore was righthander Alejandro Rosario, second baseman Devin Fitz-Gerald, first baseman Abimelec Ortiz and outfielder Yeremy Cabrera. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe see high-end talent in this return, but we also see intriguing depth,\u201d Toboni said.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Matthew LeCroy will return for a sixth season as manager at Triple-A Rochester and Delino DeShields for a fourth season at Double-A Harrisburg. Ted Tom, an assistant coach at Central Florida for the past eight years, is the new manager at High-A Wilmington. Chris O\u2019Neill, most recently a hitting coach\/recruiting coordinator at Virginia Commonwealth and an assistant coach\/assistant recruiting coordinator at George Washington, will manage Fredericksburg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About two months into his tenure as Nationals president of baseball operations, Paul Toboni made his first trade.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,216509,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-457723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-organization-reports","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}