Why Jamie Arnold Is a Match Made in Heaven For the Nationals at 1:1

Why will Jamie Arnold be the 1st overall pick in the 2025 MLB Draft? The Nationals need an elite arm, and he's the perfect candidate.

WINSTON SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA - APRIL 19: Jamie Arnold #16 of the Florida State Seminoles makes a pitch against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons at David F. Couch Ballpark on April 19, 2024 in Winston Salem, North Carolina. (Photo by Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images)
WINSTON SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA - APRIL 19: Jamie Arnold #16 of the Florida State Seminoles makes a pitch against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons at David F. Couch Ballpark on April 19, 2024 in Winston Salem, North Carolina. (Photo by Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images)

During MLB’s Winter Meetings, a lot took place. With big free agent signings, to key players being traded around, the Winer Meetings were quite exciting. In this buzz, MLB conducted its third annual draft lottery. There were a lot of big winners during the process, with the biggest winner easily being the Washington Nationals, who landed the first overall pick.

During the two previous seasons, we’ve seen the draft lottery play a huge piece in some organization’s rebuilds. Most notably, the Pittsburgh Pirates landed the first pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, which they used to land the top pitcher in baseball, Paul Skenes.

Knowing the potential superstars that can come from the draft, this leaves the Nationals under a lot of pressure to make the right choice.

Immediately after the lottery finished, fans began speculating who the Nationals may end up selecting. Most fans flocked toward the likes of Ethan Holliday, a player which some prospect evaluators consider the best prep player in the country, and someone’s whose baseball roots run deep.

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Others suggested Jace LaViolette, a talented outfielder from Texas A&M, who’s regarded as the top college hitter in the 2025 MLB Draft.

However, we’d like to throw another name in the ring: Florida State left-hander, Jamie Arnold. Arnold has some of the best raw tools we’ve seen from a college arm, and there’s plenty of reason to believe he’s the best fit player for the Nationals to select first overall.

Who Is Jamie Arnold?

If there’s one word you could use to describe Arnold: it’s elite.

Arnold will enter his third season with the Florida State Seminoles in 2025, and he’s been dominant every season, with his 2024 campaign being his best.

He made 18 starts last season, where he’d go on to throw just over 100 innings. In this time, Arnold pitched to an ERA of just 2.98, alongside 159 strikeouts, and a WHIP just shy of 1.10.

Arnold achieved one of the rarest feats in baseball, throwing an immaculate inning versus UCF in 2024. Arnold was also a finalist for the Golden Spikes Award, which is handed out to College Baseball’s best player each season.

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While these numbers are very good, especially in the ACC, the most impressive part of his game is in his arsenal’s underlying metrics.

Breaking Down His Arsenal

For starters, Arnold has an incredibly deceiving arm slot, which allows his stuff to play far better than it is in actuality. The pitch that benefits the most from this arm slot? His four-seam fastball.

Arnold’s four-seamer has one of the more peculiar shapes in all of college baseball. The pitch comes in with just 9.8 inches of induced vertical break and -15.2 inches of horizontal break, as well as nearly 94 MPH on average. The pitch has touched 97 MPH, which is also impressive.

Although, for those of you familiar with pitch metrics, his 9.8 IVB may seem underwhelming.

This is a fair critique, as the best fastball pitchers in the league tend to get a lot of rise on the pitch, usually above 17 IVB. But, this flatter plane works to his advantage, with his arm angle. His VAA of -4.3 is extremely close to the same arm slot Chris Sale has used to deceive hitters throughout his MLB career, from a flatter, side-arm slot.

Also, the pitch has extreme cut action, -15.2 inches is a massive amount of cut, more than typical four-seam fastballs, which usually sit closer to -2 to -8 inches. This makes it resemble a cutter or a gyro-heavy fastball, which when paired with the unique arm slot, makes it even harder to hit.

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Arnold has been able to create this same amount of deception, with his combination of a low arm slot, and a lower IVB allows this pitch to play a lot more like a hard cutter.

Also, just like Sale, Arnold possesses a wipeout slider. Coming in at 84 MPH, his slider produces a 0.1 IVB and 11.6 HB, which just like his four-seamer, makes for a really interesting shape.

His IVB being so close to zero will result in more of a gyro-slider, allowing the pitch to have a more aggressive, downward movement. When you pair this with his 11.6 HB, you’re looking at a really good sweeper.

He throws his sweeper with a VAA of -6.4, which is pretty steep compared to most other sweepers in MLB. With this steeper VAA, this means his slider tunnels really well off of his four-seamer.

He also throws a solid changeup, which has improved significantly since working with Driveline this winter. For example, the pitch went from having a positive IVB, to now having an IVB that can get up to -12 with a HB of nearly -6.

While we have little to go off of with this pitch in live, game action, this changeup produces some heavy downward movement. This almost makes this pitch appear more like a smaller curveball or splitter movement-wise, which is far better than what we saw in 2024.

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While Arnold’s arsenal may not be the typical arsenal you see from a top pitcher in the draft, the uniqueness of it is what actually makes him so good. All things considered, Arnold has the stuff to be one of top arms in the game.

Why Does Arnold Make Sense at 1:1?

Since their World Series victory back in 2019, the Nationals have done a wonderful job at replenishing their farm full of young talent, that could be impactful in a short time.

In this time, they added Dylan Crews, Brady House, Travis Sykora, Seaver King, Yohandy Morales, Caleb Lamovita, Cade Cavalli, and more via the draft, which is a really great return on talent.

The Nationals were also able to fetch a fantastic return for Juan Soto, landing James Wood, Robert Hassell, Jarlin Susana, CJ Abrams, and MacKenzie Gore. They also fetched Alex Clemmey from Cleveland for Lane Thomas in another really solid move.

What seems to be lacking in this group, is a true power-pitcher as the ace of the rotation. Gore, Sykora, and Clemmey all have incredible potential, but they’re likely not all ace-level arms.

Enter Jamie Arnold.

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The last shot the Nationals had to land a true ace-level pitcher with this much potential, likely would’ve been in 2023, if the Pirates had opted to select someone other than Skenes. But, as we know, this was not the case.

With most of the talent the Nationals have acquired either currently in the upper minors, or with the big league team, now is the time to jump on the opportunity to get the team’s future ace.

Arnold is an arm the Nationals could not only develop, but likely fast track to The Show in one to two seasons. This would set him up perfectly to be in line with this potential playoff window.

Assuming he lands in the big leagues in this time frame, the rest of their current minor league talent would either be in the majors or in the upper minors. Not only this, but Crews, Wood, and the rest of the team’s young stars would still be in their first big-league seasons.

Debunking Other Candidates

Ethan Holliday

As I touched on in the beginning of this story, other prospect evaluators have suggested some other potential candidates for the Nationals to select with the number one overall pick.

The most common of those names has been Holliday, the prep prospect who’s widely considered the No. 1 high school position player available.

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While Holliday possesses one of the more intriguing skillsets in this year’s MLB Draft class, the fact that he’s a high school hitter makes him less likely for the Nationals to select. As we established, the Nationals’ farm system is loaded with talent, particularly offensive threats.

Adding another infielder to a group that consists of House, King, Morales, and others doesn’t make much sense. Especially when you consider Holliday’s age, and the fact that his development would likely take longer, making their window harder to maximize.

Jace LaViolette

Evaluators have also suggested LaViolette as another potential option, but I don’t see this as being very likely either.

The main reason I don’t see this as being very likely, is that similarly to Holliday, they already have plenty of outfield depth. Both Wood and Crews were once regarded as the top prospects in baseball, and now that they’re both in the big leagues.

This leaves one more open spot, where they’ll have a lot of competition. With the rise of Jacob Young, as well as Hassell making more progress in his development, this is far from a weakness for the Nationals.

LaViolette makes a little more sense than Holliday because of the fact that he’s a college hitter, and a lot closer to being big-league-ready than Holliday. But, with their plethora of legitimate outfield talent, it doesn’t make much sense to add yet another excellent player to this depth.

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Tyler Bremner

The third player who could be in the running to be selected number one overall on draft day, is RHP Tyler Bremner.

Unlike LaViolette and Holliday, Bremner actually makes sense since he’s another one of the top pitchers in the draft. He makes even more sense when you consider that he’s also a college level arm also.

But, I think the thing that ultimately sets Arnold apart from Bremner is that he’s a lot more durable and closer than Arnold to being MLB-ready, which will both be pivotal factors in Washington’s decision. They need to ensure they get an ace who’s reliable, and close to being ready for the show.

This isn’t to knock Bremner’s stuff though, as he has one of the best arsenals in the entire draft. He’s shown the ability to come close to triple-digits on his heater, with some really solid secondaries. But, once again, I think durability is the ultimate separator.

Seth Hernandez

The fourth and final player who could also have the potential to be selected number one overall, is RHP Seth Hernandez.

Hernandez is another really talented starting pitcher, as he showed the ability to reach 100 MPH on his four-seam fastball at just 17. But, similarly to Holliday, he’s a prep-level prospect, and it’s not likely that with two college arms available, they’d opt to take the high school route.

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Once again, the Nationals need a top-tier starting pitcher who’s closer to the big-league ready. While Hernandez has the tools to be one of the better arms in all of baseball, the fact he’s further away from big-league ready than both Arnold and Bremner makes him far less likely.

While all of these players are likely going to blossom into stars when they reach professional baseball, I truly believe Jamie Arnold is the best fit for the Washington Nationals.

Don’t be surprised if the Nationals select Arnold with the first pick in the 2025 MLB Draft, and he becomes their future ace.