At the beginning of the offseason, the Athletics lost a total of 24 minor leaguers to free agency, and one of those players has just signed on with the Washington Nationals.
The player in question is right-hander Tyler Baum, who has agreed to a minor-league deal with the Nationals and has been assigned to Triple-A Rochester. Baum was originally a second-round selection of the A’s back in 2019 out of North Carolina. In 2021 he was ranked as the A’s No. 16 prospect by MLB Pipeline, but he has ben unranked since.
He struggled mightily in 2021-22, posting ERAs of 12.08 and 17.00 in 39 2/3 combined innings, but has been a better relief arm the past three seasons. Because of those two years, however, he holds a career 6.62 ERA in the minors and has yet to make his big-league debut.
Baum has reached Triple-A in each of the past two seasons, racking up 10 2/3 innings in each campaign. In 2024 he held a 9.28 ERA (9.55 FIP) with a 12.7% strikeout rate and a 20% walk rate. This past season he finished with a 10.97 ERA (9.97 FIP), but his strikeout rate was jumped to 20% and his walk rate dipped to 16.7%.
The 27-year-old primarily operates off his four-seamer and cutter, with the heater sitting between 95-98 and the cutter averaging 85-86 miles per hour. In his final two games of the season, Baum threw a total of 22 cutters. Of those 22, six were swung at. Of those six, four resulted in whiffs, which is pretty good.
And that seems to encapsulate what the Nationals are getting with Baum. He has intriguing stuff that can miss bats and is a former second-round selection of the A’s, but his excellent cutter seems to be the only pitch that’s truly working for him.
He can throw the four-seamer hard, but it isn’t a swing-and-miss offering, and his changeup was thrown just twice in those final two games, both times to a left-hander.
What’s great for Baum is that former A’s left-hander Sean Doolittle has done a tremendous job with Washington’s pitchers in recent years, and if he spends a little time with Baum in the spring, perhaps there will be some wisdom bestowed upon him that he can take into the 2026 campaign.
The optimistic view here for Nats fans has to be that this will be Baum’s first experience outside of the A’s organization, and perhaps hearing something from some different coaches will have an impact on his career trajectory.
