Nationals Rumors

The Nationals announced that right-hander Jorge López has cleared unconditional release waivers and is now a free agent. He was already off the 40-man roster, having been designated for assignment a few days ago.

Heading back to the open market was the expected outcome once López was designated for assignment. He is playing on a $3MM salary this year. Given that figure and his poor results this year, no club would be eager to take claim him off waivers. If the Nats had sent him outright to Triple-A, he has enough service time that he could have rejected that assignment and elected free agency.

He’ll now head to the open market and look for his next opportunity. Since the Nats released him, they remain on the hook for what’s left of his salary. Any other club could sign him and only pay him the prorated league minimum salary. That amount would be subtracted from what the Nats pay.

It was reported that Washington’s decision to move on from López wasn’t strictly motivated by his performance, with manager Dave Martinez admitting that he was displeased with López getting flustered by an umpire’s strike zone.

It’s not the first time that López has drawn attention for losing his cool, as he had a well documented on-field blow-up with the Mets last year as well, throwing his glove into the stands. Though it was also reported at the time of that scene with the Mets that López has dealt with a number of notable off-field issues that may have exacerbated some mental health challenges. His son has apparently been in and out of hospitals with regularity due to several autoimmune disorders.

The Mets let him go after that spectacle but the Cubs picked him up. He posted a 2.03 earned run average with Chicago the rest of the way, which likely helped him get his deal with the Nats. However, he has a 6.57 ERA so far this year. His 46.8% ground ball rate and 6.6% walk rate are strong but he’s only striking out 16% of opponents.

The ERA is probably at least somewhat misleading, as López only has a 50.6% strand rate this year. ERA estimators like his 3.44 FIP and 3.99 SIERA suggest he has deserved better. Still, the declining strikeout rate is part of his mercurial career as a reliever. When he first moved to the bullpen with the Orioles in 2022, he punched out 27.6% of batters faced. After being traded to the Twins that summer, he stuck out just 17.6% of opponents. That mark stayed relatively low at 18.4% in 2023, jumped back up to 23% between the Mets and Cubs last year but is now down again.

Ideally, López will land somewhere that puts him in a good position mentally and helps him thrive on the field. If any Major League team thinks they can offer that, López can be signed for essentially no cost.

Photo courtesy of Charles LeClaire, Imagn Images

8:20pm: Prior to this evenings’ game, manager Davey Martinez spoke to reporters (including Spencer Nausbaum of The Washington Post) about the Nationals’ decision to part ways with Lopez. According to Martinez, the Nationals decided that it was time to start focusing more on younger, internal bullpen arms and added that he didn’t think the organization was “the right fit” for Lopez.

Nausbaum goes on to reference an incident that occurred on May 29 where Martinez had to visit the mound to calm Lopez as he argued balls and strikes with the home plate umpire before allowing the game-tying runs in a game the Nationals would eventually lose. In reference to that situation, Martinez acknowledged his frustration but did not specifically connect it to the club’s decision to cut Lopez loose.

“It was tough,” Martinez said, as relayed by Nausbaum. “I can’t sit here and lie — I wasn’t happy about that whole situation. He needs to focus. He needs to understand that, in situations like that, he needs to get to that next pitch.”

5:16pm: The Nationals are designating right-hander Jorge Lopez for assignment, according to a report from TalkNats. Right-hander Eduardo Salazar will be recalled from Triple-A Rochester to fill Lopez’s spot on the active roster. The Nationals subsequently announced the moves. The report elaborates on the decision to DFA Lopez, suggesting that it was not for performance reasons despite the righty’s tough start to the 2025 season. The specifics of the situation leading to Lopez’s DFA are not currently known.

Lopez, 32, signed with the Nationals back in January on a $3MM guarantee. A veteran of ten big league seasons Lopez was a below-average starter and swing man for the Brewers, Royals, and Orioles from his debut in 2015 through the end of the 2021 season. The right-hander appeared in 102 games, made 58 starts, and threw 350 innings at the big league level over those years, but that volume was accompanied by an ugly 6.04 ERA and a 5.15 FIP. After years of trying to break into the majors on a consistent basis as a back-end starter without much success, Lopez and the Orioles decided to give a move to full-time relief a go in 2022.

The move to the bullpen hardly could’ve gone better. Lopez was an All-Star in his age-29 season, with a 2.54 ERA and 3.42 FIP across 71 innings of work between the Orioles and the Twins that year. That strong production was backed up by solid peripherals, including a 24.2% strikeout rate and a 57.8% groundball rate. It wasn’t hard to imagine that Lopez could have a future as a late-inning bullpen arm after that performance, but he took a big step back in 2023. While bouncing between the Twins, Marlins, and Orioles, the right-hander pitched to a 5.95 ERA with a 5.76 FIP in 59 innings of work. He elected free agency shortly before the end of the 2023 campaign, but bounced back with the Mets and Cubs last year to pitch to a 2.89 ERA with a 3.94 FIP across 53 innings of work.

That was enough to convince the Nats to give Lopez a $3MM contract and a shot at the closer role, though that job ultimately went back to Kyle Finnegan once he re-signed with the club following his non-tender earlier in the offseason. Lopez has delivered an ugly 6.57 ERA in 24 1/3 innings of work so far this year for Washington, but his peripherals have actually been quite solid with a 3.44 FIP, a 46.8% grounder rate, and a career-low 6.6% walk rate. That and a unsustainable strand rate of 50.6% that’s all but guaranteed to improve are enough to easily imagine Lopez turning things around this year, and the Nationals will now have one week to either work out a trade involving Lopez or put him on waivers for any of the league’s other 29 teams to claim should they have interest.

Of course, reporting indicates that Lopez’s departure from the Nationals is not due to his performance. Details about the situations leading to his departure are not presently clear, but it’s not the first time Lopez has been cut loose from an organization due to something other than his performance; the Mets parted ways with the right-hander just last year after a controversy where he tossed his glove into the stands following a difficult outing and was believed to have said in an interview with reporters after the game that the Mets were “the worst team in probably the whole f***ing MLB.” Lopez later clarified that what he had been calling himself “the worst teammate in probably the whole f***ing MLB,” though reporting from the Mets beat later indicated that the club planned to DFA him due to his actions regardless of the confusion surrounding his exact wording.

Whether whatever caused the Nats to part ways with Lopez today will be overlooked by other clubs in the league or not remains to be seen. The Mets clearly viewed Lopez’s actions last year as unacceptable, after all, but that didn’t stop the Cubs from signing the right-hander just one week after his release from the Mets organization. Regardless, the Nationals will now turn to Salazar in their bullpen for the time being. The righty has a 9.77 ERA in 17 appearances for the club this year, though he had some success in the majors as recently as last season when he posted a 2.76 ERA between the Dodgers and Nationals.