Channeling Jimmy Bowden...

A huge offseason looms for the Washington Nationals. They are entering their fourth year in Washington (hey, so am I!) and are prepared to open the $611M HOK-designed Nationals Park in SE DC. They recently hired Stan Kasten (formerly of the Braves) and have developed a plan of building a team and farm system to compete for the long term. In compliance of that vision and financial flexibility, they dropped their payroll precipitously this past year from $63M to $38M.

Here's a look at some of the moves they should and will make this offseason:

First, they should continue to hold the long-term vision of running the club. They have no need to worry about selling seats and luxury boxes in the short term, as they will certainly have a two-three year novelty of fans attending a new park. That being said, revenues will increase and they can make bigger plays in free agency.

Let's look at their existing contracts for 2008

Nick Johnson ($16.5M over 07-09; $5.5M in 08)
Cristian Guzman ($16.8M over 05-08; $4.2M in 08)
Austin Kearns ($17.5M over 07-09; $5M in 08)
Brian Scheider ($16M over 06-09; $4.9M in 08)
Ronnie Belliard ($3.5M over 08-09; $1.6M in 08)
Dmitri Young ($10M over 08-09; $5M in 08)

Their biggest in-house free agents are Ryan Zimmerman and Chad Cordero. They should absolutely sign Zimmerman as he is the new face of the franchise. Cordero had a down year, and I'm in the camp that 'closers' are vastly overvalued. They should be firm in negotiations with him.

Just recently, the star of the 2008 Free Agent class, Torii Hunter stated that he is interested in playing with Dmitri and would give the Nationals a long look. He also specifically stated that playing in majority African-American city would be an enormous plus. The flexibility to go after player like Hunter is exactly why the Nationals showed fiscal restraint in the past year. I could see the Nats getting Hunter with a $50M/5yr deal, with a team option for the sixth. Torii and Dmitri could help recruit LF Milton Bradley, as they could certainly get him on the cheap after his mental antics and torn ACL. He could be had for $8M over 2 with extensive performance and plate appearance incentives.

On the pitching front, I think they should try to resign (or go to arbitration) with their own talent Patterson, Bergmann, Chico and Hill. On the hot stove, I could see them making a move for either Kyle Lohse or Jason Jennings. Both look to command a $30M-$40M deal over 4 years.

Here's the imagined lineup for the 2008 Nats:

CF Torii Hunter
2B Ronnie Belliard
3B Ryan Zimmerman
RF Austin Kearns
1B Dmitri Young
LF Milton Bradley (or, Justin Maxwell, who has been very impressive in AA Ball)
C Bryan Schneider
SS Cristian Guzman

SP Kyle Lohse
SP Shawn Hill
SP John Patterson
SP Jason Bergmann
SP Matt Chico

RP Saul Rivera
RP Chris Schroder
RP Jon Rauch
RP Luis Ayala

By the way, a fantastic resource for MLB contracts:

http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/