Adam Eaton is a good player, a high-OBP guy with doubles power who plays his tail off all the time, but he might not fit what the Nationals really need. He’s not a center fielder, although he has played it and, I’m sure, would volunteer to go play it again. His defense in right field has been consistently outstanding -- by advanced metrics, Statcast data and scouting evaluations -- but in a season in center in 2015 he was awful, and that dropped his value to the White Sox by about two wins. The Nationals appear ready to plug him in there, but I think Bryce Harper might be the better option in center, with Eaton providing more defensive value in right anyway.

I think this would be a huge overpay for Eaton the player, but the Nats are also acquiring the contract he’s already signed to: three more guaranteed years and two option years for $38.4 million total if both options are exercised. If he’s even a four-win player, which he has surpassed in his two full seasons as a right fielder, that screams "bargain" for the Nats' budget and does a lot to justify the high price they paid in prospects.

The White Sox got a huge return in pitching: two big league starters and one big league reliever, all guys who should pitch for the major league club in 2017. Lucas Giolito is a former first-rounder and former No. 1 overall prospect whose fastball has been clocked as high as 98 mph. He complements that with an out-pitch curveball and a solid to average changeup, although he didn’t show that kind of stuff in a brief major league trial last year.

What went wrong? The Nationals tried to change his delivery earlier in the season, because sometimes teams just do dumb things. That affected Giolito’s mechanics and command even later into the season. While his velocity was fine -- he hit 96 mph several times, and his median velocity was right around 94 -- he didn’t get ahead in enough counts to get to his curveball and generated only a 6 percent swing-and-miss rate, way below what his stuff should generate. Now that he’s in a new organization, one with a great track record of developing pitchers, Giolito should be able to reset his mechanics and get back to the results he had before 2016. The stuff and athleticism are all still there.

Reynaldo Lopez has a huge arm, sitting at 96-99 mph with his fastball as a starter and hitting 100 mph on occasion with relatively little effort. However, he has an arm-heavy delivery, and his fastball doesn’t have great plane or spin to it. I think that in the long run he'll have to be a reliever, where he’ll probably sit in the 98-100 mph range and complement it with a curveball that is hard but not terribly tight; it should be more effective as a pitch a hitter might see once from him in a game.

Lastly, Dane Dunning was one of the Nats’ supplemental-round picks this past June, a three-pitch starter who worked in relief for the University of Florida because their pitching staff was so loaded. I think he could move fairly quickly through the system. If he starts the 2017 season at High-A, he could end up in the majors by September.