Nationals president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo announced today in a press release that right-hander Cade Cavalli has a grade 3 UCL sprain and will require Tommy John surgery, meaning Cavalli will miss the entire 2023 season.
Cavalli, 24, figured to be a member of the Nationals starting rotation this year after making his big league debut in a single start last August before being sidelined with shoulder inflammation. While he struggled mightily in that start (seven earned runs in just 4 1/3 innings), Cavalli was among not only Washington’s top prospects, but among the best prospects in the game, with most services considering him a top 60 prospect in the sport. Instead of joining fellow youngsters Josiah Gray and MacKenzie Gore as they make their cases as rotation arms of the future for the rebuilding Nationals, Cavalli will spend the entire 2023 season rehabbing and likely not return to the mound until sometime during the 2024 season.
Cavalli rocketed through the minor leagues in his first professional season in 2021, dominating in High-A to the tune of a 1.77 ERA for 40 2/3 innings before moving up to Double-A, where he continued to excel with a 2.79 ERA in 58 innings before hitting a wall following a promotion to Triple-A. At the Triple-A level in 2022, Cavalli was torched to the tune of a 7.30 ERA in 24 2/3 innings. Though a .397 BABIP indicated some bad luck, his 4.54 FIP still indicating pronounced struggles relative to his dominance of lower levels of the minors.
In 2022, Cavalli returned to Triple-A and looked more like himself, hurling 97 innings with a 3.71 ERA and 3.25 FIP. Those numbers came with a 25.9% strikeout rate, 9.7% walk rate, and just three home runs allowed. Cavalli grew more impressive as the season wore on, with a sterling 1.47 ERA across seven minor league starts in July and August ahead of his big league call-up at the end of the month.
With Cavalli shelved for 2023, the Nationals seem likely to rely on either non-roster invitee Chad Kuhl to round out their Opening Day rotation. Kuhl, 30, has been a below average starter for his career, posting a 4.74 ERA (91 ERA+) in 576 2/3 innings of work with the Pirates and Rockies. That being said, he provides a steady veteran presence at the back of a rotation that’s rather young outside of Patrick Corbin. If the Nationals wish to have other arms still in camp compete with Kuhl for the fifth rotation spot, there are a couple of options remaining. Wily Peralta could be stretched out in the final weeks of Spring Training, as he has ample starting experience despite being used in short relief this spring, and Paolo Espino made 19 starts for the Nationals last year, pitching to a 4.84 ERA in 113 1/3 innings.
Should Kuhl begin the year in the rotation, that leaves youngster Joan Adon, who was recently cut from big league camp by the Nationals, as the likely top depth option. Adon made 14 starts for the Nationals last year, though he pitched to a disastrous 7.10 ERA (55 ERA+) in his 64 2/3 innings of work. Another option would be right-hander Cory Abbott, who was cut along with Adon but pitched 48 innings for the Nationals last year in a swing role that saw him start nine games.
Manager Davey Martinez has indicated he’s comfortable with the club’s existing rotation depth, even without Cavalli. That said, in the event the Nationals wish to look for additional rotation depth following Cavalli’s injury, the pickings are fairly slim on the free agent market at this point, with the likes of Chris Archer, Michael Pineda, and former National Anibal Sanchez among the remaining options.
Another fireballer goes down with TJ surgery. What a surprise…
Mets pitching woes are now spreading to their opposing teams. I watched him pitch as he injured himself vs. the Mets. He was looking great and then the trip to the mound to remove him.
NL Central shall inherit the earth.
@Clepto_
The NL Central is the best division in baseball. Got amazing and exciting teams like the Cards, Cubbies, Bucs, Redstockings & Brew Crew. I can totally see one of them winning the 2023 championship.
*spit take* the NLC isn’t even a top three when removing the NLE!
Detroit in 3!! Go pound sand.
@Dotnet22
‘
God WBC style and just have 1-game playoffs. Enough with giving teams more than 1 chance to win it all.
What a gut punch. Speedy recovery Cade.
I blame how these kids get brought up and used in the minors
I blame them trying to throw everything at max effort while tweaking their mechanics for more spin rate. There’s a limit to what the body’s meant to be able to do.
I blame Michael Drake and his coffee cakes.
Nats pitching is cursed.
As they say, “there is no such thing as a pitching prospect.”
its over, carrer done.
Well, that’s a bit overblown.
Nationals get to enjoy paying Corbin and Strasburg combined another $200M while your next wave of pitching falls to the dreaded Tommy John surgery. Who is your new hope? Gore? Gray? Good luck with them!!!
At some point the intelligent front office types are going to have to weigh more heavily the impact of peak performance and max effort approaches to the game of baseball. The huge investment in analytics has led to the attempt to fully optimize each and every variable.
Hence, all pitchers are supposed to achieve peak velocity and spin rates on every offering, and the human body is not designed for that, with the very rare exceptions. Not many around here remember what it was like to watch some of the old school pitchers as they worked their way through a lineup, and somehow managed to also throw 250 to even 300 innings in a season. They would command the fastball, but only reach back for the max effort one during crucial moments…same with the breaking stuff.
We are simply refining the approach to the game beyond physical limits. If I could design a front office approach, they would go after and develop pitchers that can work this way, and then invest in more of the peak effort bullpen arms for the last two or three innings. Give me an Aaron Nola that glides his way through the game and is going to give you 200 plus innings per year, and use that as a model for your starting pitchers. He is not an elite ace, but he is still a top fifteen or so pitcher almost every year.
The same goes for training the hitters. Giancarlo Stanton is an awesome athlete that can hit the ball 900 feet, and looks like a model for a fitness commercial…but he can’t stay on the field. There is some balance that needs to be struck between the old school approach of “you play baseball to get in shape for baseball”, and you overtrain like crazy to extract that last bit of bat speed, arm speed, foot speed and fast twitch to compete at the highest level.
The saberdroids of the world seem to forget that the most important ability out there can be availability…
Hate to hear this about any team’s young talent…good luck with the rehab and recovery process Cade.
Yes – the bar has been raised everywhere…agreed – also implied in my original post. However the point still applies; once they all get to that elite level, there are still plenty of pitchers that get by very, very well with less than elite velo and spin rate. It is called “pitching”.
The emphasis today is on the elite tools, and we can’t turn back that clock. But we CAN rethink some of this. You can always get great hitters out with intelligent pitching, and not purely stuff.
One of the things that was notable for me is when I realized that so many young catchers today no longer really know how to call a game, read a hitter or read the pitcher nearly as well as we were taught back in the day. They are tools, and are fed the information. “This pitcher…this hitter…this situation…we call for this pitch”. Heck, Stark just noted that with the change to the rules, catchers today need to learn how to use pitchouts…they were never taught!
Pitching does not need to be ALL about stuff…in fact, great stuff has never been enough. The overemphasis on this is highly problematic, and we are going through a generation of pitchers that are high performance race cars that are always in the shop.
@carver well said prefect examples of this are hill, wanio and greenkie at this point there “stuff” doesn’t scare anyone but there ability to throw any pitch any time is what frustrates batters. also you don’t need to throw 100 with a 98 slider you can be just as effective with 94 and off speed 10 mph slower secondary pitches.
@saratoga72
Well, my son, who was in AA U-11 last year and will be again this year was playing some fall ball in September/October in 2022 against the U-13 teams and he racked up the Ks without having dominant stuff. Kid knows how to pitch (not throw), as I’ve taught him to not just chuck the ball but to think about where he should be throwing it in certain situations. I no longer tell him what to do, he uses his brain to think about the situation.
Bummer! I was looking forward to seeing how he performed this year. Hopefully his recovery will go well.
and the wbc claims another /s
Should have never called him up at all
The mandatory Tommy John Surgery. All the pitchers are doing it. It’s all the rage!
Sadly i think everyone knew this was coming right after he winced on the mound. The “max effort” trend in Baseball is just one of the many new frustrating trends in the game that needs to go away.
Rizzo should be shooting old friend Anibal Sanchez a text right about now
I had a feeling when I saw him come out of that game.
I actually said “damn” at the time.
May Cavalli’s ucl surgery be successful and he returns to form in time.
As an aside, may his grade 3 sprain satisfy the UCL gods they allow Andrew Painter and his grade 1 sprain to heal with rest and treatment…like they allowed Aaron Nola all those years ago…..
The Nats must have sold their soul in 2019, and they’ve paid for it ever since.
The Nats’ rebuild is already further along than the Tigers’.