Andres Machado

The Nationals announced that right-hander Andrés Machado has cleared outright waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Rochester. He was designated for assignment last week when the club signed outfielder Corey Dickerson.

Machado, 30 in April, tossed 59 1/3 innings for the Nats last year with a 3.34 ERA. Despite those solid results, there were reasons for the Nats to be bearish. Machado’s 17.6% strikeout rate and 10% walk rate were both worse than league average, with a .267 batting average on balls in play helping him keep runs off the board. The opposite was true in the minors, as a .375 BABIP led to a 5.82 ERA in 17 Triple-A innings.

Beyond the work on the mound, Machado is also now out of options. The Nats optioned him seven times over the past couple of seasons, clearly valuing his ability to move on and off the roster as needed. That was no longer going to be possible this year, giving him a little less hold on a spot at the fringe of the roster.

Machado will now stick in the organization and serve as depth but without occupying a roster spot. Players with more than three years of MLB service time can reject an outright assignment and elect free agency, but Machado is still shy of the two-year mark.

The Nationals have officially announced their deal with outfielder Corey Dickerson. To make room for him on the 40-man roster, reliever Andrés Machado was designated for assignment.

Machado, 30 in April, has spent the past two years with the Nats as a depth reliever, getting frequently optioned and recalled as needed. He’s thrown 95 innings over those two seasons with a solid 3.41 ERA. His 9.9% walk rate and 43.6% ground ball rate in that time were both roughly average, but his 18.3% strikeout rate was a few ticks below par.

Machado’s opponents have registered a .264 batting average on balls in play against him, which is on the low side. For example, the league average in 2022 was .289, a 25-point difference. A pitcher can sometimes earn a lower BABIP than average by minimizing hard contact, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Machado. Statcast only places him in the 23rd percentile among qualified pitchers in terms of average exit velocity, 15th in hard hit rate and 27th in barrel rate.

It’s possible that good luck was helping Machado keep earned runs off the board. Whether that’s true or not, he’s now out of options, giving the club less versatility in using him on the roster. They will now have a week to trade him or pass him through waivers. If another team were to acquire him, he has between one and two years of service time and has yet to reach arbitration. Though he hasn’t racked up huge strikeout numbers in the big leagues, he did average over 95 mph on his fastball in 2022. He also struck out 26.6% of Triple-A batters faced in the past two years.