We’re two weeks into the season … and the Nats are already running out of pitching.
With the latest moves, here’s the status of our 40-man SPs:
- MLB Rotation: Gore, Williams, Irvin, Parker*, Lord
- SPs on DL: Grey, Herz, Cavalli, Soroka
- 40-man SPs in minors: Ogasawara, Lara,
At the end of last year, we were in a similar situation to some extent … except that we were still calling Rutledge, Adon, and Henry “starters.” Now, we’re not calling any of those guys starters anymore, and we’re now one injury away from a disaster occurring. Two of the four guys on the DL are down for months in various stages of TJ surgery (Grey, Herz), a third is just only now starting throwing some innings and seems weeks away (Cavalli) and a fourth has a biceps issue and isn’t expected back until “May” (Soroka). “May” could mean 5/1 or 5/31.
Neither Ogasawara or Lara is MLB ready: Ogasawara got shelled in spring training and has a 4.80 ERA in 3 starts in AAA. Lara has a 9.26 ERA and is getting rocked right now in AAA and may need more AA time. Neither looks like an option if we have another starter go down, and we probably call up Alvarez as option A before looking at returning Rutledge to the rotation as optionB. Maybe you look at someone like Plinkington (long-time ML starter) or Adon (even if we know how that goes) .. but neither are on 40-man at present.
At least we have some starting pitching options here … the bullpen is in dire straits.
Its April 15th and we’re basically out of relievers.
- MLB bullpen: Finnegan, Lopez, Sims, Ferrer, Poche, Salazar, Rutledge, Henry
- RPs on DL: Law, Brzycky, Ribalta, Thompson
- 40-RPs in minors; None (!)
That’s right; we don’t have a single 40-man reliever in the minors right now. Thanks to early April injuries to Law and Ribalta, the team has already called up its minor league reliever depth in Rutledge and Henry. Next guy who goes down? We’re adding someone to the 40-man and rolling the dice. Nobody in AAA has more than 3-4 innings, so attempting to guess who would make sense to callup is folly, but the two names that might make the most sense initially are Carlos Romero and Jack Sinclair, both setup/closer types that have shown success in either AA or AAA. There’s also three 2025 MLFAs in AAA in Plinkington, Weidel, and Helvey, two of which who have MLB time, so those two make sense to callup as well (they probably also have opt-outs built in).
I can’t remember a season where this many arms hit the DL so soon. I can remember Aprils with bullpens so bad that Rizzo cleaned house, but nothing like this. Should be interesting to see what happens next. With a full 40-man roster, every move has to have a corresponding move … and its not like we have a ton of deadweight on the 40-man right now. With seven guys on the 10/15 day DL, that’s just seven remaining 40-man players:
- SPs: Ogasawara, Lara,
- C: Millas
- INFs: Baker, Lipscomb
- OFs: Yepez, Hassell
There’s not a name on that remaining list that is an obvious DFA. There’s not really an obvious name on the DL right now to whack either. So that means a pretty deep cut DFA or a 60-day stash for every move.
Tough to focus on winning ball games when you don’t know who’s pitching the 7th.
You know, while I was disappointed that the Nats didn’t sign higher-quality starters, and was really unhappy that they didn’t upgrade their bullpen, I thought they at least had good depth with their arms down through the system. Apparently in this day and age, though, there’s no such thing.
In a related note, I pause to lament that Liam Doyle threw 111 pitches on Friday night. Forget renegotiating your NIL money (like a certain Vol QB tried to do); how about just insisting on a hard pitch-count ceiling? Yes, it’s bred into athletes to do everything you can to help your team win. But this is a kid who literally is risking $9 million by doing so.
Arnold threw 98 pitches last week, which is still in the danger zone as far as I’m concerned. Look at how the Nats babied Susana last season at roughly the same age those guys are now. His high for the season was 88 pitches. He topped 80 pitches eight times, but they never let him hit 90. And I’m totally on board with that approach.
I do think the pitching depth issue reinforces the likelihood that the Nats will be looking hard at Doyle and Arnold at 1/1. As mentioned by some in the recent post, I think Holliday will still be a part of that conversation, but no college hitter seems to be rising to that level. Several of us have pointed out that Doyle’s build is a lot more in line with that of a Rizzo draftee than Arnold’s is. But if either one of them blows out an elbow in the meantime, it becomes a moot point.
KW
15 Apr 25 at 5:08 pm
And then Callis and Mayo at MLB.com, both knowledgeable guys, left Doyle completely out of their top 10:
https://www.mlb.com/news/podcast-visualizing-top-10-picks-of-the-2025-mlb-draft
Is Law that much of an outlier having Doyle up at the top?
Callis/Mayo are really big on Seth Hernandez. A high school pitcher at #1? Mayo says 50% that the Nats take him. Wow.(https://link.chtbl.com/mlbpipeline). A high school righty has never gone 1/1. They seem to think that it’s Hernandez vs. Holliday, that they’ve got more ceiling than any of the college guys (BPAs). They have Arnold at #3.
KW
15 Apr 25 at 7:24 pm
And Law has an updated list today:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6278346/2025/04/15/2025-top-50-mlb-draft-rankings-keith-law/
He has Hernandez at . . . #21. Wow, what a disagreement.
1. Holliday
2. Doyle
3. Arnold
4. Arquette
5. Marek Houston, SS, Wake Forest
6. Kilen
Callis & Mayo agree on 1/3/4/5, but Doyle isn’t on their radar at all, and neither is Kilen.
Houston likely won’t be the Nats’ pick, but it is wild to contemplate that they could consider drafting a Wake shortstop two years in a row.
KW
15 Apr 25 at 7:36 pm
As for the current Nats and the call-ups, I’m glad that Lord is getting a look in the rotation, and I’m eager to see what Henry can do. If he’s back to what he fully was before injury, he was practically unhittable at AA.
KW
15 Apr 25 at 7:42 pm
Thanks for putting this together Todd. I’d commented on this over at NatsProspects, but this puts it all nicely in one spot.
In the Spring, I’d commented that the Nats had “too many” SPs, and I didn’t see how they could accommodate them all. Well, that excess has been address by shifting a bunch of them to relief. Henry, Lord, Rutledge, Adon, Pilkington, just off the top of my head.
And even with this roster pinch, I’d argue we STILL have a surplus of SPs. With Lord back to his rightful place in a rotation, our rotation is fine (arguably good) for the moment. And in Rochester, it’s pretty stable with Ogasawara, Lara, Alvarez, Solesky, and Choi (there’s even Pilkington and Adon available from the bullpen in case any of the current rotation goes down)
However, that segues to the next point. The almost disregard of the bullpen in DC, Rochester and Harrisburg was/is rather worrying.
Last season, we signed no less than 11 relievers in the offseason to create some much lacking depth to our bullpen in DC and waiting in the wings in Rochester (Law, Floro, Matt Barnes, Jacob Barnes, Luis Perdomo, Adonis Medina, Ty Tice, Robert Gsellman, Richard Bleier, Steven Nogosek and TJ Zeuch). This was further complemented by the late 2023 additions of guys like La Sorsa, Robert and Rico Garcia, and probably a couple others I’m missing.
This offseason, we added 6 players (Sims, Poche, Jorge Lopez, Reifert, Clay Helvey and Patrick Weigel), maybe you can add Pilkington to the mix, since he’s usually used as a SP, but has been used presently as a RP, while at the same time making space for these guys by releasing/DFAing our other bullpen depth (Willingham, La Sorsa and Ward), meaning only a few of these moves were a net gain. Plus, Reifert is already gone, meaning we had worryingly shallow bullpen depth in March, which due to injuries/poor performance, means we’re in a potentially dangerous situation now, where Martinez has to trot our Poche and Sims every night, despite them deserving a DFA, because there’s literally no one else available.
It was a risky strategy just from a numbers game. Rizzo should be well aware that in a generally quite solid 2024 season from the bullpen, we still used 18 separate players in relief (22 in 2023, 26 in 2022). When you’re this bad and without reliable relievers, you need to expect a huge churn, and we started the season without those numbers, and 3 weeks into the season are already seeing the consequences of that.
But from a rebuilding strategy, it was also extremely ill conceived. Rizzo, to his credit, has done a pretty good job of constructing the bullpen from a rebuilding team’s perspective in the past season or two. Adding a dozen or so AAAA relievers, churning through them, then trading the standouts has proven a highly successful strategy in 2023-2024. As we’ve discussed quite a bit here, the RP market is weirdly valuable, and we’ve flipped upcycled AAAA RPs in Harvey, Floro, and Garcia into genuine talent (Wallace, Lomavita, Chaparro and Lowe). Yes, there was some flip potential in Sims, Lopez or Poche. But it’s a numbers game with low-quality RPs. Relievers are volatile. Everyone knows this. Of the 11 guys we signed last year, only Floro was able to be traded, and only Law stuck around as a useful player for the future. 7 of the others never even made it to the majors for the Nats. You can’t put all your eggs into one basket with RPs, and we’re seeing really quickly the dangers of that approach with Sims sporting a 12.79 ERA, Poche 16.62 ERA and Lopez 6.43 ERA.
On the bright side, Brzykcy just had a fantastic rehab outing last night in Fredericksburg, so he should be back in the mix imminently. But I hope Rizzo is checking in on guys like David Robertson, Brooks Raley and Matt Barnes, who remains free agents. They cannot possibly be worse than Poche has been. Unfortunately, Sims has been just as bad, but he has 3 million reasons keeping him on the roster.
Also, as I noted at NatsProspects, Cavalli is an easy add to the 60 IL to free up an additional roster spot. With Law still MIA, he’s also approaching a safe add to 60 IL territory, which should ease some roster pressure.
Will
16 Apr 25 at 5:39 am
I guess I’m the only one who thinks Lord is a reliever. I do think he can be an effective bridge to the late inning guys. and his motion also seems like he could withstand a decent workload.
with only one plus pitch I just can’t see him going through a major league lineup multiple times.
FredMD
16 Apr 25 at 8:04 am
@fredMD: On a healthy, talented staff, Lord is a reliever, even if he’s been a starter his whole pro career. Agree there for sure. But, it is nice to get a real world experiment in action, to test your theory.
Todd Boss
16 Apr 25 at 9:43 am
Also, in the “no surprise” category … Herz doing TJ. See you in June 2026. Maybe.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/04/dj-herz-to-undergo-tommy-john-surgery.html
Todd Boss
16 Apr 25 at 9:43 am
There’s a reason why they saying “every reliever is a failed starter”. And at this point, Lord hasn’t failed anything yet, rather he’s been wildly successful, so there’s no reason to convert him to relief. I’d also dismiss most scouting reports that say Lord only has one plus pitch (or really all scouting reports for that matter that came before this year), as he clearly unlocked something in 2024 that he didn’t have in 2022-2023, as evidenced by his sizable uptick in strikeouts against far superior hitters in 2024, and then he went and one-upped that progress and showed up to Spring Training with another 3 MPH to his fastball. He’s been averaging 95.4 MPH with both his slider and 4 seam fastball in the majors so far, after it averaging 92.2 and 92.7 in AAA last year. Hence my skepticism of scouting reports based on Lord’s past performance.
Lord is clearly a late bloomer with some significant unrealized potential (perhaps yet another feather in the cap of whomever is overhauling our pitching development plan?). In fact, he might be one of the most interesting pitching prospects in our system at the moment. Because he invented himself as a “guile over stuff” guy when he maxed out at 91-92. But he’s since tapped into some legit “stuff” with this velocity increase, which could lead to an interesting “guile + stuff” that you don’t often find in pitchers. It’s certainly an extremely difficult challenge they’ve put before him. A year ago today, he was still in A+ ball! But relegating him to relief is premature, especially when there’s no shortage of SPs in this system that are overdue for such a transition (basically the entirety of Rochester’s rotation, besides Lara).
Will
16 Apr 25 at 10:11 am
I’m not so sure we should be surprised about the shortage.
Our current rotation is pretty stretched – Lord’s a thin bet as SP5 and we don’t have a clear response to another SP injury – but that’s because Herz, Soroka and Stuart are down, and Oga and Lara don’t really look ready.
And the same thing is kind of true about the pen. I mean, the pen wasn’t going to be good even with heath, but they’ve had injuries too. Law, Brzykcy and Ribalta are down.
Hopefully some of those guys are back soon. Brzykcy is already in rehab. Soroka sounds kind of close. We’ll see. But no pitching staff can lose so many arms two weeks into the season without strain.
SMS
16 Apr 25 at 11:53 am
https://curlyw.mlblogs.com/washington-nationals-recall-trey-lipscomb-9547321efbef
And then there were 6. As in, we only have 6 healthy bodies on the 40-man that we can call up right now, 4 of which who have never played in the MLB.
Todd Boss
16 Apr 25 at 3:41 pm
https://www.milb.com/rochester/roster/transactions/washington-nationals
… and then there were 5. Osaragawa to AAA DL. Phew.
Todd Boss
17 Apr 25 at 11:23 am
And Lara called up as the 27th man for the double header today. He may have been the only healthy arm left on the 40-man.
KW
20 Apr 25 at 2:25 pm
Kiley McDaniel, you’re confusing me bro:
https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/44714992/college-baseball-ace-rankings-best-pitchers-liam-doyle-2025
In this story, he has Doyle ranked as the top college pitcher in the country, with Arnold at #4 (and Bremner way down at #20).
But in his latest draft prospect preview (Insider subscription), he has Arnold as the top player on the board and Doyle at #12:
https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/44669785/mlb-draft-2025-rankings-update-top-midseason-ncaa-college-high-school-baseball
He also now has two HS shortstops (Willits and Carlson) ahead of Holliday, who he has at #4. He’s not quite as high on Hernandez as the MLB.com guys, has him at #7.
So . . . what a mess. One takeaway from the first article seems to be that there should be several good college arms — perhaps about as good as the top ones — available in the 2d round.
KW
20 Apr 25 at 2:32 pm