Nationals discover old message from player acquired in trade

The Washington Nationals decided to trade from a position of strength to address a spot of weakness, as they dealt slugger Luis Garcia Jr. away to the New York Yankees for a quartet of pitchers led by prospect Jack Cebert, who is now ranked 14th in the Nationals’ system, according to MLB.com’s rankings.

There was apparently a string that’s been linking Cebert, who was drafted in the 15th round of the 2025 MLB Draft, to the Nationals. As Washington discovered in the process of tagging the 24-year-old in an Instagram post announcing his arrival, Cebert had previously sent a direct message to their account urging them to trade for someone whom he believes will be going places.

imagine OUR surprise when we open our DMs with jack to see he's been locked in since middle school pic.twitter.com/ybcnctR9ep

— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) August 3, 2026

Cebert turned 24 years of age back on the first of April, so this means that on September 2, 2015, the date he sent the message to the Nationals’ Instagram account, he was only 13 years of age. This just proves that he had been following the sport closely for so long, although it’s not quite clear who Cebert was imploring the Nationals to trade for, as the post he linked appears to have been deleted already.

Perhaps Cebert has been a huge fan of the Nationals as well, although he grew up in Florida, spent his formative teenage years in Clearwater and Tampa, and pitched three seasons for the University of South Florida before transferring to Texas Tech for his final year of college. So there doesn’t appear to be an obvious geographical link between Cebert and the Nationals.

Whatever the case may be, the Nationals are now surely going to be answering Cebert’s direct messages. Washington left him on delivered for nearly 11 years, but now that the organization will be heavily invested in his development, he’s going to become a featured notification for the social media team moving forward, that’s for certain.

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