Sunday morning brought news that one of the final key players left in free agency had signed. The Washington Nationals have reportedly signed starter Zack Littell to a one-year contract with a mutual option for 2027.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the offseason, Littell was projected to earn a two-year contract worth roughly $24 million. So why the big change? And why didn\u2019t the San Diego Padres bother to bid against the Nationals for his services?<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
A journeying swingman<\/p>\n
Throughout his career, Littell was mostly a reliever. He performed to varying degrees of success, but it was mostly inconsistent from season to season.<\/p>\n
His best years came in 2019 and 2021 with the Minnesota Twins where he posted a 2.68 ERA and 2.92 ERA, respectively. But each of those seasons were bookended by a 6.20 ERA in 2018, 9.95 in 2020, and 5.08 in 2022.<\/p>\n
Because of his struggles, Littell wasn\u2019t converted to a starter until after being picked up by the Tampa Bay Rays in 2023. He started 14 games for the club and put up a solid 3.93 ERA. The Rays held onto him in 2024 before trading him at the 2025 deadline to the Cincinnati Reds.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Across 32 starts in \u201825 between Tampa Bay and Cincinnati, Littell authored a 3.81 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP, shining as a middle-of-the-rotation starter before entering free agency.<\/p>\n
Why the hesitancy to sign?<\/p>\n
After such a high valuation from the majority of contract projections on Littell, it\u2019s possible that his agents were waiting out the market for a better offer that never came.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear yet what the Nationals are paying Littell but that number will likely become public once the team announces the signing.\u00a0The report of his signing remains unconfirmed.<\/p>\n
Given that, it\u2019s surprising the Padres didn\u2019t swoop in to sign him. Earlier this offseason, San Diego was rumored to be checking in on Littell (though those discussions obviously did not come to fruition). Seemingly, the price wasn\u2019t right to outbid Washington.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
It will hopefully make more sense once the dollar figure of Littell\u2019s contract is announced. But for a team still in need of reliable pitching, it\u2019s surprising general manager A.J. Preller wasn\u2019t in on the 30-year-old\u2019s services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunday morning brought news that one of the final key players left in free agency had signed. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[9004,53,19317,74,76,75,2611,12295,48889,19316,48886],"class_list":["post-212842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-washington-nationals","tag-zack-littell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}