The Nationals are going to promote right-hander Brad Lord to their Opening Day roster, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. The righty is not yet on the 40-man, so a corresponding move will be required. That could be an easy call since DJ Herz has been recommended for Tommy John surgery. It’s not fully confirmed that Herz will go under the knife but he will likely miss a decent chunk of time even if he avoids the surgeon’s table.
Lord, 25, isn’t a typical prospect. As Passan mentions in his report and as detailed by Spencer Nusbaum of The Washington Post last month, Lord has had to grind. While some top draft picks get multi-million-dollar signing bonuses, Lord was an 18th-round selection in 2022 and signed for $125K. He spent this past winter working at a Home Depot in Bradenton, lifting bags of mulch and Christmas trees, around his offseason training.
That makes it all the more impressive that he’s been able to improve his stock in recent years. In 2023, he tossed 104 2/3 innings at the Single-A and High-A levels, working both as a starter and reliever. He posted a 4.04 earned run average, 18.5% strikeout rate, 6.5% walk rate and huge 61.6% ground ball rate.
Last year, he climbed from High-A to Double-A and Triple-A, logging 129 2/3 innings across a combined 29 starts at those three levels with a 2.43 ERA. His grounder rate dropped to 42% but he upped his punchouts to a 25.3% clip. Baseball America ranked him the #29 prospect in the system going into 2025.
Here in camp, his 6.08 ERA doesn’t look so nice, but that’s in a tiny sample of 13 1/3 innings. He was very unfortunate in that time, with an unlucky .348 batting average on balls in play and 50% strand rate. He only struck out 13.8% of batters but got the grounders back up to 55.6%.
He seems likely to start the season working a long relief role for the Nats. They project to have a rotation of MacKenzie Gore, Trevor Williams, Jake Irvin, Mitchell Parker and Michael Soroka. By having Lord serve the longman role, it will allow the club to keep other potential starters like Shinnosuke Ogasawara and Jackson Rutledge stretched out in Triple-A.
Photo courtesy of Jim Rassol, Imagn Images