Jan. 30: La Sorsa cleared release waivers and is now a free agent, the Nationals announced.
Jan. 29: The Nationals announced that they have requested unconditional release waivers on left-hander Joe La Sorsa. The lefty was already off the 40-man roster, as he was designated for assignment when the Nats signed Shinnosuke Ogasawara last week.
La Sorsa, 27 in April, has a previous career outright. The Nats passed him through waivers last offseason before eventually selecting him back to the roster in August. A player with a previous career outright has the right to reject another such assignment in favor of free agency. That’s likely why the Nats have placed him on release waivers instead of outright waivers.
The southpaw has 50 1/3 major league innings on his track record. Drafted by the Rays, he climbed to the majors with that club but was put on waivers after just two appearances. He was claimed by the Nats in June of 2023. As mentioned, he was off the roster for a portion of the 2024 season but most of his major league innings have come for the Nats. Overall, he has a 4.47 earned run average, 19.2% strikeout rate, 6.4% walk rate and 40.9% ground ball rate.
In the minors, he had really strong numbers in 2022 but has leveled off since then. He logged 73 1/3 innings on the farm in that 2022 season with a 2.33 ERA, 31.4% strikeout rate and 3.6% walk rate. Over the two most recent seasons, he’s thrown 92 2/3 minor league innings with a 2.82 ERA but with his 18% strikeout rate and 6.2% walk rate both moving in the wrong direction.
La Sorsa doesn’t throw hard, with his fastball averaging just 90.4 miles per hour in the majors last year, and has generally had subpar strikeout rates. But his small sample of big league work has had him avoid significant damage, with Statcast having his average exit velocity and hard hit rate both a bit better than average. He has a couple of options and less than a year of service time, which could add to his appeal as a depth option.
Dude looks like a Victorian era illusionist.
In case anyone is curious why he is being released instead of outrighted like most other DFAed players, it is because of a little known rules quirk called draft-excluded players. In this case the draft it is referring to is the Rule 5 draft in December. Any player selected to the big league roster after August 15th and until the reserve list deadline in November (rule 5 protection deadline) is considered a draft excluded player. This means they must be given a spring training tryout with their team and cannot be outrighted until sometime in March. Joe La Sorsa was selected on August 17th, thus he is a draft excluded player. Unlike someone like Tyler Jay who selected in June 2024.
Without elite velocity or dominant secondary pitches, he lacked the tools to stick in a big-league bullpen long-term.
Curly Joe La Sorsa was an awful Stooge.Although he was proud to be one.He was better than Joe Besser however.
Definitely worth a flier.
He has signed with Cincinnati.
At least they will have a few ex big leaguers on the farm instead of guys who were playing independent ball or guys working the night shift at UDF.