Nationals Cade Cavalli Looks Big League Ready. What’s The Hold-Up?

Cade Cavalli is healthy and looking like his former self in Rochester, but even as big league rotation guys struggle, he hasn’t gotten the call

It has been a long road back to the major leagues for Nationals prospect Cade Cavalli. He made his big league debut in August of 2022 against the Athletics, pitched 4 ¹⁄₃ innings of 7-run ball, and then was shut down with an arm injury that would eventually require Tommy John surgery. This cost him his entire 2023 and 2024 seasons, and for a moment in 2025, it seemed like it had come for him again when he left a start with arm soreness, but thankfully, it turned out to be only precautionary. Now fully healthy, he’s finally looking like his former self, posting a 2.89 ERA and 9.88 K/9 in 37 ¹⁄₃ innings so far in 2025 between 3 minor league levels.

With Cavalli’s success in the minor leagues and the notable failure of Trevor Williams at the big league level, who, despite not having missed a start all season, does not have enough innings pitched to qualify for the ERA leaderboards (which he would be the worst on by a solid margin), it is fair to wonder when the change to the rotation will happen. The biggest knock on Cavalli’s performance so far has been his lack of distance into starts, not going past the 5th inning yet in a start, but Williams has the same issue, making it past the 5th inning only 4 times this season (With 2 ending after 1 out in the 6th) and never past the 6th inning. If you’re not going to get much distance from your starter, wouldn’t you prefer it to be from the younger and likely better pitcher?

There are a few theories for why the Nats refuse to make a change to their rotation and bring up Cavalli. One is that Davey Martinez and his staff truly believe that Williams is going to turn his season around and start pitching like his 2024 self, a pretty bad bet considering Williams’ stuff is not very good anymore, and hitters are not fooled by it. Williams is also supposedly a leader in the Nats’ clubhouse, a quality trait that shouldn’t be overlooked when handling his future on the club, but he can lead just the same from the bullpen as he can the rotation, and possibly even better if his teammates see him face a demotion with a positive mindset.

Another theory is that they do not think Cavalli is ready yet physically to handle pitching every 5 days at the big league level, a fair concern due to Cavalli’s injury history. However, it’s an issue that has only popped up once briefly over a month ago and not since. You would like to see Cavalli get deeper into his outings eventually, but for now, he is stacking solid performances, and the stuff looks very good.

The third and most likely reason for the delay in Cavalli’s callup is that if the Nationals wait until July 16th, they get a year of service time back for him. Players accrue service time when they are on the injured list, so the Nats missed out on 2 years’ worth of service time for Cavalli while he recovering from Tommy John, so the idea to wait a little longer to call him up in order to secure an extra year of him is tempting. However, in the short run, it is hurting the Nationals to run Trevor Williams out there every 5th day and get shelled. By not replacing Williams with Cavalli and immediately improving the roster a little, the front office is tipping its hand that they don’t think this roster is good enough to compete for the playoffs, and therefore, they are more worried about the long-term benefit of holding back Cavalli.

Another reason they are unwilling to move Williams out of the rotation is their financial commitment of 7 million this year and next year to him. While moving him into a long relief spot and slotting Brad Lord or Cade Cavalli into his rotation spot would likely immediately improve the team a little, it hasn’t happened because that would, in turn, be Mike Rizzo admitting he made a bad move by paying him. While it is frustrating to see Cavalli be held back and not replace Williams, there is some level of understanding that the extra year of control on him would be nice to have. However, not replacing Williams with a young arm who has proven he can start and do it well in Brad Lord shows that the Nats’ front office is too proud to admit they made a mistake paying him and forgetting about the sunk cost.

Cade Cavalli’s return to DC is imminent, as he is one of the top pitching prospects in the Nationals system and is finally healthy and ready to handle a big league load. He’ll likely have to continue waiting, however, as the Nationals front office manipulates his service time and lets an inferior talent in Trevor Williams take the ball every 5 days for them. As long as he can remain steadfast in his wait and continue to pitch well, he will get the opportunity to show everyone why he was the Nationals’ first-round pick in 2020 and a top 100 prospect in baseball at one point.