CJ Abrams is one of the better players in the league at the moment. He is a 25-year-old everyday shortstop with 28 home runs and 22 stolen bases. His 22.9% strikeout rate and 8.4% walk rate are both average-ish figures. His .287/.359/.544 batting line leads to a 144 wRC+, indicating he has been 44% better than league average at the plate. Though his defense is subpar, FanGraphs has still credited him with 3.6 wins above replacement on the year. That makes him one of the 20 most valuable position players this season.
A player of this type is usually cemented as a franchise cornerstone but that’s not the case with Abrams, for a few reasons. For one thing, the team around him is in transition. The Nats haven’t had a winning season since their World Series victory in 2019. They kicked off a rebuild a few years ago and it was going slowly enough that president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo got fired last summer. Paul Toboni took over that job a few months later, departing his previous gig as assistant general manager in Boston.
The Nats came into 2026 clearly still in rebuild mode. They traded away MacKenzie Gore in the offseason, even though he was controlled for another two seasons. There were also lots of rumors surrounding Abrams, though he is controlled for one more season than Gore. Abrams ended up staying put through the offseason. The rumors picked up again this summer but the Nats were flirting with contention and didn’t move him.
Though the team’s solid 2026 season has been a nice story, the front office has acted as though this isn’t the year. Key contributors like Curtis Mead, Luis García Jr. and Foster Griffin were traded away at the deadline. The team is still not totally buried but they are five games out of a playoff spot and would have to leapfrog four teams to get in at this point. The Playoff Odds at FanGraphs give them just a 1.8% chance of making it in. The PECOTA Standings at Baseball Prospectus have them at 2.2%.
With the focus clearly still on the future, decisions will need to be made on Abrams. Is he a building block or is he on the trade block?
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