3 best Phillies trade targets to pluck away from the Nationals
The Phillies can look for help at the trade deadline by turning to the Nationals.
Death. Taxes. The Washington Nationals selling at this year’s trade deadline. Those are three guarantees in life. It’s the third the Philadelphia Phillies care about most right now.
To avoid their 2023 death, the Phillies should send a call to the Nationals for some trade deadline help. They owe Philadelphia for introducing them to Howie Kendrick back in the summer of 2017.
Exactly who is it that the Phillies should target on the Nationals roster? It’s these three who appear to be the most available and have something to offer.
1) Phillies trade target on the Nationals: Jeimer Candelario
Unless the St. Louis Cardinals budge and actually do unload Nolan Arenado in a trade, it’s Nationals third baseman Jeimer Candelario who could be the best at his position moved this summer. If you’ve been following baseball outside of Philadelphia for a couple of years, the name may ring a bell.
Candelario spent time with the Chicago Cubs before landing with the Detroit Tigers. He’s a career .243/.324/.411 hitter yet he feels like much more than that.
Back in 2021, Candelario knocked a league-leading 42 doubles for the Tigers. He batted .271/.351/.443 for the season while hitting 16 home runs and driving in 67. Did the Tigers have their third baseman of the future?
It went downhill in 2022 when Candelario batted only .217/.272/.361. Even the lowly Tigers were ready to move on.
This year has been different. While not having his greatest year, Candelario appears much more like his best self. He went into the break slashing .261/.337/.478 with 13 home runs and 43 RBI. Oh, and about those doubles, he has 27 already.
Candelario is a plus defender who won’t win a Gold Glove but he’d improve what Alec Bohm gives the team defensively. On the Phillies roster, he’d probably fit in well as a part-time player. Think of him as an upgrade over Josh Harrison while mostly playing the two corner infield positions instead. He’s a switch-hitter with superior numbers this season versus right-handed pitchers. His .871 OPS against righties makes it clear he’d be a must in the lineup on the days where the Phillies go against a right-handed pitcher. When they don’t, his bat can be ready to come off the bench.
2) Phillies trade target on the Nationals: Hunter Harvey
If the Phillies aren’t making a big splash in the bullpen, a pitcher like Hunter Harvey seems to fit in nicely with what they could accomplish. He’s in his second season with the Nationals and putting up similar totals compared to last season through the same 39.1 innings of work.
This season has seen Harvey go 3-4 with a 3.20 ERA with 10.1 strikeouts per nine. Overall, in two years with the Nationals, Harvey is 5-5 with a 2.86 ERA. A former first-round draft pick of the Baltimore Orioles, he never panned out there and went from the San Francisco Giants to the Nationals in the 2021-2022 offseason via waivers.
Harvey is still relatively young at 28 and a controllable piece for the Phillies to add into their bullpen. He’d be an upgrade over Yunior Marte or Andrew Bellatti. Based on his 2023 numbers, he’d be better than a couple of the other guys currently in the bullpen.
Harvey does have minor league options left which is an added bonus. If things got tight or the Phillies were unimpressed, they could send him to Triple-A and not risk losing him completely through waivers.
Hardly the biggest kind of splash the Phillies should think about making in the next few weeks, Harvey is a necessary piece the Phillies might have more competition to acquire than we realize.
3) Phillies trade target on the Nationals: Trevor Williams
A completely different type of pitcher for the Phillies to pluck away from the Nationals is Trevor Williams. The numbers don’t do him justice this season. He’s 5-5 with a 4.45 ERA in 18 starts. With a $6 million salary this year and $7 million for next season, he’s clearly nothing but an innings eater out of the rotation for Washington.
We need to go back to the year prior to find where Williams has the most value to the Phillies. In 2022, Williams was a member of the New York Mets flipping between the rotation and bullpen. He made 9 starts and 21 relief appearances working mostly as their long-man. Williams ended up going 3-5 with a 3.21 ERA that season in 89.2 innings of work. The exceptionally rare accomplishment—at least in the modern baseball world—was good enough for the Nationals to consider him as a full-time starter this year.
The Phillies might not want to look at Williams this way. His salary isn’t outrageous nor is the contract length which would keep him around through 2024. It’s actually kind of perfect. Williams in the exact same role he had with the 2022 Mets is what the Phillies could use.
Unanswered questions about the fifth starter spot should have the Phillies looking for a big addition as well as a smaller one. Starting pitching depth is far from a strength of this team. Williams, inserted as a bullpen arm to go multiple innings, would be a nice touch to have and an obvious place they could turn on short notice to give them four or five innings from the first inning onward.
Starting pitchers. 3 perfect starters to target, 2 the Phillies should avoid. dark. Next