Before the Nationals broke for the All-Star break, they made a small adjustment to their starting rotation that left a lingering question mark heading into the second half. And before their second-half opener against the Padres, interim manager Miguel Cairo provided an answer.
Brad Lord will be stretched out as a starter again to fill the fifth spot in the rotation, taking the opening left by Shinnosuke Ogasawara who was optioned to Triple-A Rochester following his second big league start Saturday against the Brewers.
“It feels good. I'm just grateful for the opportunity to start again,” Lord said in the Nationals' dugout ahead of this six-game homestand. “I'm looking forward to building up and just seeing what I can do.”
The 25-year-old right-hander is in line to start Tuesday against the Reds, following Jake Irivin who will start Monday’s series opener against Cincinnati.
“It's going to be Lord. So Lord, we're going to stretch (him out),” Cairo said. “We're going to start Lord on the fifth day. It's gonna be a progression, how many pitches, how many innings. But we're gonna stretch him out.”
Lord said he wasn’t sure his limits heading into his first start, but he thinks it’ll be somewhere around 45-50 pitches.
“Just see him pitch,” Cairo said of how he’ll know when Lord is fully stretched out. “So we're going to make sure (pitching coach Jim) Hickey and (pitching strategist Sean) Doolittle, they're going to have a plan we're going to follow. ... You see how he pitches. He pitches quick, he throws strikes. So hopefully it's a quick transition, but it's a protocol that he's got to follow, and we're going to follow it.”
An 18th-round pick out of the University of South Florida in 2022, Lord was one of the Nats’ fastest-rising prospects last year. He then spent three months in the offseason working at Home Depot before gearing up for the baseball season. And following a strong spring training, he made his first Opening Day roster as a reliever after spending most of his professional career as a starter.
Lord has had a strong rookie season to date, albeit while going back and forth between the rotation and bullpen. Overall, he is 2-5 with a 3.46 ERA and 1.246 WHIP in 35 appearances. Over his six starts, he is 1-4 with a 4.44 ERA and 1.367 WHIP. As a reliever, he’s 1-1 with a 2.79 ERA and 1.164 WHIP in 29 games.
But in his six starts, he allowed more than three earned runs only once on April 14 across 4 ⅓ innings against the Pirates in Pittsburgh.
How does his approach change when he moves back to a starter’s role?
“I'm gonna kind of go back to what I was doing when I made a few starts earlier in the year,” he said. “Still the same mindset of get guys out as quick as you can and see how deep you can go.”
Since Lord has already done this transition this season, he’s more prepared to make the proper adjustments.
“I definitely think it'll be easier this time around,” he said. “I've already done it once, so just kind of take what I learned from that into this.”
What did he learn from that first time around?
“It was really just like workload management,” he said. “I have to increase some of the volume of throws to get myself built back up.”
Cade Cavalli could have also been a consideration to fill the fifth rotation spot. The former first-round pick making his way back from March 2023 Tommy John surgery ended his first half on a high note at Rochester, striking out seven over five innings on Sunday.
But in the end, the Nationals chose to stretch out Lord, surprising even the righty himself.
“Oh yeah, I was definitely surprised,” Lord said. “I was still very thankful for them choosing me to go back into a starting role. It's a big honor. And I'm just excited.”