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Nationals’ Prospect Jarlin Susana Undergoes Lat Surgery

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Nationals pitching prospect Jarlin Susana underwent lat surgery last week, the team informed reporters (including Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com). It concludes an injury-plagued season for the 21-year-old righty, who was limited to 14 starts and 56 1/3 innings in the minors.

Susana missed two and a half months between May and July nursing a UCL sprain in his elbow. He returned to make eight starts between High-A and Double-A before suffering the lat (shoulder) injury that ended his season. Susana pitched to a 3.51 ERA with a massive 39% strikeout rate. The 6’6″ righty was acquired from San Diego as the furthest off piece of the Juan Soto return at the 2022 deadline. Susana has developed into one of the game’s top pitching prospects, routinely pushing his fastball into triple digits with a wipeout slider.

There’s no question about the quality of the stuff. Susana’s arm health and the development of his command will be the biggest factors in whether he sticks as a starting pitcher long term. He walked 14% of his opponents this season, issuing multiple free passes in 12 of his 14 appearances. Susana never went beyond five innings but recorded double digit strikeouts on three occasions, including consecutive starts against Detroit’s Double-A affiliate on August 19 and 24.

The Nationals don’t need to add Susana to the 40-man roster until the 2026-27 offseason. The injury will certainly impact his offseason and could affect his availability for Spring Training. It’s likely that he’ll begin next year back with Double-A Harrisburg once he’s healthy.

Nationals Have Interviewed Guardians’ AGM Matt Forman

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Guardians executive vice president and assistant general manager Matt Forman has interviewed for the Nationals’ GM vacancy, reports Andrew Golden of The Washington Post. It’s not clear when the interview occurred or whether Forman has advanced beyond the initial stage.

Cubs GM Carter Hawkins reportedly interviewed for the position two weeks back. The Nats also reached out to Dodgers executive vice president Josh Byrnes and Diamondbacks AGM Amiel Sawdaye. Over the weekend, Tim Healey of The Boston Globe reported that Red Sox’s assistant GM Paul Toboni was also on Washington’s radar. Whether any of those executives formally interviewed is not known. Barry Svrluga of The Washington Post suggested last week that the Nats hoped to have a new front office leader in place by the end of the season.

Forman, a Northwestern product, entered professional baseball with Cleveland in 2013. Forman started as an amateur scouting intern and had worked his way to assistant general manager within four years. A former staffer at Baseball America, Forman received another promotion in January 2022 when the Guardians added the executive VP role to his title. That essentially places him third on Cleveland’s front office hierarchy behind baseball operations president Chris Antonetti and general manager Mike Chernoff. Sky Andrecheck, Eric Binder and James Harris also hold an AGM title with the Guards.

The Nationals fired former GM Mike Rizzo and manager Dave Martinez in July. Mike DeBartolo has led the front office on an interim basis for the past two months and could also get consideration for the full-time position.

Craig Breslow, Red Sox Plan To Hire GM This Offseason

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With the 2025 season nearing its conclusion, teams around the league are beginning to turn their attention towards staffing changes during the offseason. The Orioles are known to be looking for a second-in-command for president of baseball operations Mike Elias, while the Nationals are looking for the successor to Mike Rizzo and have already begun contacting possible candidates. It seems the Red Sox will also be joining the fray looking for front office talent, as Rob Bradford of Audacy Sports writes that chief baseball officer Craig Breslow will “prioritize” finding a GM to serve as his second-in-command in the Red Sox front office this year after going the first two years of his tenure in Boston without one.

It’s hardly a surprise that Breslow would be looking for a number two. Breslow conducted an audit of the Red Sox front office early in his tenure with the organization, a decision which postponed his search for a second-in-command as it would necessarily involve evaluating the work of in-house candidates. That audit concluded last year, however, and the Red Sox still entered the 2025 campaign without hiring a GM. The Red Sox did hire Taylor Smith away from the Rays for an assistant GM role last winter, but that made Smith one of several assistant GMs already in the organization. At the time of Smith’s hire, there was some speculation that perhaps Smith was being brought into the fold to take over the responsibilities of assistant GM Paul Toboni, who was at the time viewed as the top internal candidate for the GM role.

No such promotion ultimately came to pass for Toboni, however, and now that Breslow is gearing up to hire a GM this winter it’s unclear if he (or any other internal Red Sox personnel, for that matter) will be considered as candidates for the job or not. At the time, Toboni was viewed as a candidate for a handful of vacancies around the game and promoting him could have served as a way to keep him in the organization. He ultimately remained in the organization with his same title, but now could once again be a hot commodity on the market for other clubs looking to add to their front offices.

Mark Feinsand of MLB.com writes that Toboni is a candidate for the Nationals’ vacant GM job, where he would replace former head of baseball operations Mike Rizzo. While the Red Sox would be able to offer Toboni that same title, it would come with significantly more responsibility in Washington given that the GM of the Nationals is the club’s top baseball operations position. Of course, it must be noted that it’s unclear whether Toboni has been asked to interview for the position or if he’s even been contacted at this point. Even so, the fact that Toboni is even under consideration to lead an organization’s baseball operations department, in conjunction with his name coming up in various other GM searches around the league in previous years, suggests that he’s well-regarded within the industry and could once again be a candidate for various opportunities around the game.

It should be noted that Breslow’s pool of talent from which he can draw from in his GM search will naturally be smaller given that the candidate he hires will not be given the top job in baseball operations. While the Nats have been connected to names such as Cubs GM Carter Hawkins, other organizations will typically block their executives from jumping ship for a lateral move. That means anyone who is currently the #2 of an organization with a president of baseball operations, such as Hawkins, would be unlikely to even be permitted to interview for the job as Breslow’s right-hand man.

Still, there are plenty of executives around the game in assistant GM roles and other lower-level positions who Breslow would be able to consider without much issue if he would like to hire from outside the Red Sox organization. Dodgers senior VP Josh Byrnes and Diamondbacks assistant GM Amiel Sawdaye are two other names reportedly connected to the Nationals’ GM search, and while they haven’t been connected to Boston’s GM job at this point they’re both examples of executives who currently hold positions that would not necessarily preclude them from being interviewed for the role.

Nationals Interview Cubs’ GM Carter Hawkins In Front Office Search

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8:36pm: The Nats have also contacted Diamondbacks assistant GM Amiel Sawdaye and Dodgers senior vice president Josh Byrnes, report Ken Rosenthal, Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic. Sawdaye has worked as one of Mike Hazen’s top executives in Arizona for nearly a decade. Byrnes, a former head of baseball operations in San Diego and Arizona, has been part of Andrew Friedman’s team in Los Angeles since 2014. Byrnes and Sawdaye have both been in consideration in various front office searches over the past few years.

8:28pm: The Nationals interviewed Cubs general manger Carter Hawkins in their search for a baseball operations leader, reports Bob Nightengale of USA Today. Washington dismissed longtime front office head Mike Rizzo alongside manager Dave Martinez in July.

Assistant general manager Mike DeBartolo has taken over operations on an interim basis for the past three months. That included the pivotal decision to select Eli Willits with the #1 pick in the draft and overseeing their relatively quiet trade deadline. DeBartolo has been a member of the organization for over a decade and worked as one of Rizzo’s top lieutenants for the past six seasons. Barry Svrluga of The Washington Post suggested this evening that DeBartolo is likely to get some consideration for the full-time position.

The final call should only be a few weeks away. Svrluga indicates the Nationals hope to have a decision made by the end of the season. It’s sensible they wouldn’t want an interim GM going into the offseason. Nightengale writes that Hawkins interviewed last week and calls him a “finalist” for the position. That suggests ownership has already begun to narrow the field.

Hawkins, 41, has been Chicago’s general manager since the beginning of the 2021-22 offseason. As is increasingly common, that makes him the #2 decision-maker. Title inflation around the league means that few teams now have a “general manager” atop their front office hierarchy. That’s usually held by a president of baseball operations (Jed Hoyer, in the Cubs’ case) with the GM standing as the second in command.

That’s why the Cubs would permit Hawkins to interview with the Nationals. If he were to get the job, it would represent a promotion and presumably come with his own president of baseball operations title. Before going to Chicago, Hawkins spent over a decade working his way up the Cleveland front office. He worked as an assistant GM there for five seasons.

Davey Johnson Passes Away

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Longtime Major League manager and infielder Davey Johnson passed away on Friday at age 82.  A four-time All-Star during his 13-year playing career, Johnson went on to manage five different teams over 17 seasons as a manager, capturing a World Series with the Mets in 1986.

Breaking into the majors with the Orioles in 1965, he emerged as Baltimore’s everyday second baseman the following year, and finished third in AL Rookie of the Year voting.  Johnson also won his first World Series ring that same season, adding a second with the Orioles in 1970.  Such superstar teammates as Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, and Jim Palmer drew most of the headlines during this golden age of Orioles baseball, but Johnson provided excellent glovework (three Gold Gloves) and above-average offense while locking down the keystone.

Johnson delivered one more All-Star season with the Braves in 1973, hitting 43 home runs in what stood as the single-season record for a second baseman until Marcus Semien went yard 45 times with the 2021 Blue Jays.  Johnson’s production then declined in 1974, and he spent the 1975-76 playing in Japan with the Yomiuri Giants.  It was something of a tumultuous two-year run that saw Johnson fight through some injuries to ultimately help the Giants reach the 1976 Japan Series, and Johnson then returned to the majors for his final two MLB seasons with the Phillies and Cubs in 1977-78.

Regarded as a future manager even early in his career, Johnson indeed turned to minor league managing almost immediately after retiring as a player, and started managing in the Mets’ farm system beginning in 1981.  This led to a promotion as the Mets’ big league skipper in 1984, and Johnson immediately led New York to a string of five straight seasons with at least 90 wins.  This excellent run included a pair of NL East titles in 1986 and 1988, highlighted by the 108-win team in 1986 that remains the most recent Mets club to capture a World Series title.

Things eventually soured between Johnson and Mets GM Frank Cashen, leading to Johnson’s firing in 1990.  This essentially set the tone for the rest of Johnson’s managerial career — he would lead a team to success, yet would be dismissed relatively quickly due to clashes with ownership or upper management.  Johnson’s next four stints as a skipper saw him never stay with a team for longer than three seasons, even though Johnson had a sub-.500 record in just one of his eight final full seasons as a manager.

For instance, Johnson’s feud with infamous former Reds owner Marge Schott saw Johnson dismissed after the 1995  season, even though he led Cincinnati to the NL Central title and a NLDS victory over the Dodgers that remains the Reds’ most recent postseason series win.  Johnson then returned to his old stomping grounds and led the Orioles to postseason appearances in both 1996 and 1997, but even winning AL Manager of the Year honors in 1997 didn’t smooth over a dispute between Johnson and O’s owner Peter Angelos.

Johnson managed the Dodgers to a 163-161 record in 1999-2000, marking the only time Johnson didn’t lead a team to at least one postseason berth as a manager.  He spent much of the next decade managing in international baseball, while also working for the Nationals in a consulting role (beginning in 2006) that paved the way for his final managerial job in 2011, when Johnson took over as interim skipper following Jim Riggleman’s resignation.  Johnson was made the full-time skipper following that initial year in Washington, and won NL Manager of the Year honors for leading the Nats to their first NL East crown in 2012.  Johnson was 70 years old during his final season in Washington, however, and the Lerner family didn’t view him as a long-term manager, so Johnson retired after an 86-win season in 2013.

Known for his brash personality, Johnson’s outspoken ways may have hurt him in terms of keeping steady employment, yet it certainly aided his ability to manage a clubhouse.  Johnson was viewed as being somewhat ahead of his time in terms of running a team, being one of the first skippers to use some analytics to help in formulating his game plans.  A mathematics major during his college days, Johnson’s reputation for using analytics to gain an edge on the field earned him the ironic nickname of “Dum-Dum” from his Orioles teammates.

Johnson’s career managerial record was 1372-1071 over parts of 17 seasons.  His resume as a player includes 136 homers and a .261/.340/.404 slash line over 1435 games and 5465 plate appearances during his 13 MLB seasons, good for a 112 wRC+.  Though Johnson has fallen short of Hall of Fame induction on multiple veterans’ committee ballots, his overall body of work in baseball would certainly seem worthy of Cooperstown, and it can be argued that Johnson could deserve a HOF nod based on his managerial work alone.

We at MLB Trade Rumors express our condolences to Johnson’s family, friends, and peers.

Nationals Outright Darren Baker

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The Nationals announced Friday that infielder/outfielder Darren Baker, whom they had designated for assignment earlier in the week, went unclaimed on waivers and was assigned outright to Triple-A Rochester. He’ll remain with the organization but will no longer occupy a spot on the 40-man roster.

The 26-year-old Baker made his major league debut with Washington last September and went 7-for-14 with two doubles and five singles. The son of Hall of Famer and former Nats manager Dusty Baker, Darren has spent the bulk of the past three seasons in Rochester, hitting for solid batting averages that have helped fuel a solid on-base percentage. He has bottom-of-the-scale power, however, resulting in an ultimate .274/.345/.336 batting line in just shy of 1300 plate appearances. Baker runs well and has collected 83 steals in 99 attempts in his 309 games at the Triple-A level.

Baker has spent the majority of his professional career playing second base but has more than 900 innings in left field as well. He hasn’t been outrighted previously in his career and doesn’t have three years of big league service, so he doesn’t have the option to reject this assignment in favor of free agency. He’ll stick around as a depth option and hope to play his way back into another look at the big league level.

Nationals Claim Sauryn Lao, Designate Darren Baker For Assignment

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The Nationals announced Wednesday that they’ve claimed right-handed reliever Sauryn Lao off waivers from the Mariners. He’s been optioned to Triple-A Rochester. Infielder/outfielder Darren Baker was designated for assignment in a corresponding roster move.

The 26-year-old Lao made his major league debut with Seattle this summer but has only pitched 3 1/3 innings in the bigs. He’s allowed three runs with a 4-to-1 K/BB ratio in that tiny sample of work but has otherwise spent the season in Triple-A Tacoma, where he’s pitched quite well. In 69 innings of relief with the Mariners’ top affiliate, Lao logged a 3.13 ERA with a hearty 25.9% strikeout rate against a 6.7% walk rate.

Originally signed by the Dodgers as an amateur, Lao is a former third baseman who’s still relatively new to pitching. He moved to the mound full-time in 2023 and has shown a quick aptitude for relief work. He’s posted a sub-4.00 ERA in each of his three minor league seasons since transitioning to the mound, and he hasn’t shown the type of command troubles that are common for former position players. To the contrary — he’s faced 748 hitters in his three minor league seasons and only walked 51 of them (6.8%).

Lao isn’t a flamethrower but sits at a roughly average 93.5 mph on his four-seamer. He pairs that pitch with a sinker that also sits 93 mph as well as a slider and changeup both in the mid-to-upper 80s. Since he was just selected to a 40-man roster for the first time this year, Lao is in his first minor league option season and will be optionable for two more years. If he can carve out a role for himself in D.C., the Nats can control him all the way through the 2031 season.

Baker, 26, is the son of Hall of Famer and former Nationals skipper Dusty Baker. He made his big league debut as a September call-up with Washington last year, going 7-for-14 with a pair of doubles. He’s spent the past three seasons in Triple-A with the Nats, regularly hitting for average but contributing virtually no power. Baker has only walked at a slightly above-average clip as well, leaving him with an overall .274/.345/.336 batting line in nearly 1300 Triple-A plate appearances. Baker runs well, evidenced by an 83-for-99 showing in stolen base attempts across 309 Triple-A contests.

Defensively, he’s spent the majority of his career at second base, with more than 2500 innings at the position. He’s also logged a bit more than 1000 innings in the outfield — 968 of them coming in left and 58 in center field. Washington selected him in the 10th round of the 2021 draft.

Now that Baker has been designated for assignment, he’ll head to outright waivers. He hasn’t cleared previously and doesn’t have the service time to reject a minor league assignment, so if he goes unclaimed he’ll stick with the Nats as a depth option.

Nationals Sign Jorge Alfaro

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2:00pm: The Nationals have announced the signing. Alfaro jumps right onto the big league roster, and Stubbs has been optioned to Triple-A Rochester to create a 26-man roster spot. Millas was transferred to the 60-day IL to clear a 40-man roster spot. Unsurprisingly, that indicates that the fractured finger Millas suffered last week will end his season.

12:45pm: The Nationals have agreed to a major league deal with veteran catcher Jorge Alfaro, reports Andrew Golden of the Washington Post. The CAA client had been playing with the Brewers’ Triple-A affiliate but opted out of his minor league contract yesterday to become a free agent.

The 32-year-old Alfaro hasn’t appeared in the majors since 2023. He appeared in 82 games and tallied 326 plate appearances with the Brewers’ Nashville affiliate in 2025, hitting .244/.285/.430 with 15 home runs and a dozen steals. Alfaro walked in only 3.4% of his plate appearances with Milwaukee’s Triple-A club and also fanned at an alarming 36.5% clip.

Despite those troubling rate stats, Alfaro will get the opportunity to return to the big leagues with the Nats. Washington has lost both Keibert Ruiz (concussion) and Drew Millas (fractured finger) to the injured list in recent weeks. Riley Adams and CJ Stubbs are currently handling catching duty in D.C.

In parts of eight major league seasons, Alfaro is a .253/.302/.393 hitter (86 wRC+) through 1710 trips to the plate. He’s drawn negative framing and blocking grades in that time but has controlled the running game well, as evidenced by a career 27.5% caught-stealing rate.

Alfaro has spent most of his big league time with the Marlins, who acquired him alongside Sixto Sanchez in the trade sending J.T. Realmuto to the division-rival Phillies. Miami hoped that in Alfaro — a consensus top-100 prospect at the time of the swap — they’d secured a long-term answer behind the plate. He was indeed a regular in Miami for three seasons, but Alfaro’s bat never lived up to his prospect billing, and he’s since bounced around the league on a series of minor league contracts.

There’s little enough time left in the current season that Alfaro, who has 5.133 years of major league service, can’t reach six years before the calendar runs out. As such, he’ll technically remain controllable into 2026 via arbitration, although barring an unexpectedly productive September, it seems likelier that he’ll be outrighted at season’s end and again become a minor league free agent.

Nationals To Promote Andrew Alvarez For MLB Debut

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The Nationals are promoting left-hander Andrew Alvarez to the majors for his MLB debut tomorrow, interim manager Miguel Cairo told reporters (including MASN’s Mark Zuckerman) this afternoon. Alvarez is not yet on the 40-man roster and will need to have his contract selected before his scheduled start against the Marlins tomorrow. Alvarez’s promotion was first reported by TheNatsReport last night.

Alvarez, 26, was a 12th-round pick by the Nationals back in 2021. He’s been climbing the minor league ladder in the years since then and first reached the Triple-A level partway through the 2024 season. He made 16 starts at the level in the second half last year, but struggled a bit with a 4.58 ERA in 78 2/3 innings of work. He struck out just 17.7% of his opponents against a 9.6% walk rate, but in his second season at Triple-A this year his numbers have improved. In 25 starts at the level this year, Alvarez has pitched to a 4.10 ERA in 123 innings. His walk rate has mostly held steady at 9.8%, but his strikeout rate has jumped up to a much more respectable 21.5%.

Even with this year’s improvements, Alvarez is not looked at as much more than a back-of-the-rotation starter at the big league level. Alvarez is not ranked in the organization’s top 30 prospects by either MLB Pipeline or Baseball America, further emphasizing his somewhat limited upside. That shouldn’t be taken to mean he can’t be a useful piece at the big league level, however. He’s generated a solid 50.9% ground ball rate at Triple-A this year, and if he can continue to keep the ball on the ground without much regression in his K-BB% ratio, it’s easy to imagine him being a valuable up-and-down swing man or perhaps a number five starter for the Nationals going forward.

Looking ahead to 2026, the Nationals have a number of interesting arms capable of starting. MacKenzie Gore figures to lead the club’s staff next season, and Brad Lord is having an exciting rookie season that should earn him a rotation spot next year. Mitchell Parker and Jake Irvin pitched well last year but have looked more like back-of-the-rotation arms this year, while Josiah Gray and DJ Herz could also impact the rotation next year depending on how they look after returning from Tommy John surgery. Cade Cavalli could also impact the club given his former top prospect status, though his five starts in the majors this year haven’t exactly impressed.

With so many young pitchers jockeying for position in the club’s rotation mix headed into next year, Alvarez could have a real opportunity down the stretch this season to put himself into that conversation headed into Spring Training 2026 if he manages to impress throughout this September call-up. His first test will come tomorrow against a young Marlins club that has impressed this year, though injuries to players like Griffin Conine and Kyle Stowers have taken some of the teeth out of the club’s lineup.

Nationals Place MacKenzie Gore On 15-Day Injured List

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12:13PM: Gore downplayed the seriousness of his injury when speaking with MASNsports.com’s Mark Zuckerman and other reporters, saying that he feels he can pitch again this season.  An MRI showed “nothing crazy” in Gore’s shoulder, according to the lefty.

11:49AM: The Nationals announced that left-hander MacKenzie Gore has been placed on the 15-day injured list (retroactive to August 27) due to inflammation in his throwing shoulder.  Right-hander Mason Thompson was called up from Triple-A to take Gore’s spot on the active roster.

Given the timing of the IL placement, it is fair to wonder if the Nationals will just shut Gore down for the remainder of 2025, since Washington has nothing to play for in the final weeks of a lost season.  This would be the third time in Gore’s four MLB seasons that an injury has kept him from finishing a season, as his 2022 rookie season was cut short by elbow inflammation and the Nats chose to shut Gore down in September 2023 due to blisters on his left hand.

More will be known about Gore’s situation when Nats interim manager Miguel Cairo meets with reporters later, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that Gore has been trying to pitch through discomfort for a while, given how his production has cratered since the All-Star break.  The southpaw has a 7.54 ERA over his last eight starts and 37 innings, which came on the heels of a 3.02 ERA in his first 110 1/3 innings.

That first-half performance earned Gore his first career All-Star nod, and seemingly cemented him as a building block within what seems like a somewhat stalled rebuild in Washington.  Despite interest from multiple teams at the trade deadline, the Nats refused to move Gore, viewing him as a cornerstone player who is controlled through the 2027 season.

Today’s injury news might lessen any regrets teams had about not acquiring Gore, even if his two years of arbitration control give him value beyond just the 2025 campaign.  If this is indeed it for Gore this season, he’ll finish with a 4.15 ERA over 147 1/3 innings, with a very strong 27.7% strikeout rate but a subpar 8.7% walk rate.

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