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ORLANDO, Fla. – The new Nationals front office’s first Rule 5 Draft pick is an experienced right-hander with elite stuff and high strikeout numbers, but a penchant for walking batters at an alarming rate.
Paul Toboni and Co. decided to take a shot at Griff McGarry, a University of Virginia graduate who spent the last five seasons climbing the ladder in the Phillies’ farm system but never got a shot in the majors because of his inability to consistently throw strikes.
McGarry, 26, was selected with the third pick in this afternoon’s Rule 5 Draft, behind fellow righties RJ Petit (Rockies) and Jedixson Paez (White Sox). The Nationals will give him a shot to make the Opening Day roster, then hope to keep him on the major league roster the entire season without offering him back to Philadelphia.
“The stuff stands out, the velocity,” manager Blake Butera said. “I’ve also heard, even since we just took him, some people have reached out to say what kind of kid he is, what kind of worker he is. We’re just excited to get somebody with that kind of stuff, obviously coming from a great organization. And you build in the work ethic and the character, it seems like a pretty good fit.”
The good with McGarry: His mid-to-upper 90s fastball, and multiple sharp breaking balls, all rate as elite pitches according to advanced metrics. Across 287 minor league innings since 2021, he has allowed only 182 hits while striking out 420 batters. His 13.34 strikeouts per nine innings this season ranked fourth across the entirety of Minor League Baseball, and the Phillies named him their organizational pitcher of the year.
The bad with McGarry: His command has often been significantly below average. In those same 287 professional innings, he has issued a staggering 202 walks. He actually walks more batters per nine innings (6.3) than he gives up hits to (5.7).
“His ability to miss bats and induce weak contact, that’s huge intrigue behind him,” Toboni said. “And I think if you ask Griff, he’d probably say the same. He wants to be in the zone more. We’re just going to try to simplify things for him, hopefully clarify things for him, and we’ll see where it all lands.”
A fifth-round pick in 2021 who graduated from UVA with a degree in American studies, McGarry has mostly worked as a starter in the Phillies system. He moved to the bullpen in 2024 at Triple-A Lehigh Valley but actually saw his walk rate skyrocket to 10.6 per nine innings in that role, so he returned to the rotation this season and brought that number back down to 5.3 in 21 starts (17 of which came at Double-A Reading).
The Nationals don’t know yet if they’ll treat him as a starter or reliever.
“Not ready to speak about it yet,” Toboni said. “But we’re going to do our job to hopefully put him in a position where he can succeed. We’ll figure it out.”
After going more than a decade without taking a player in the Rule 5 Draft, the Nationals have now selected someone each of the last four years. They failed to hit with pitchers Thaddeus Ward (2022) and Evan Reifert (2024) but did land a potential long-term piece in infielder Nasim Nuñez (2023), who has a chance to at least serve as the backup infielder next season and potentially get regular playing time if the new front office has either CJ Abrams or Luis García Jr. (or both) switch positions.
Teams are required to keep players selected in the draft on their major league roster an entire season or else offer them back to their original clubs.
The subsequent minor league phase of the Rule 5 Draft rarely draws much attention, but it was impossible not to notice what the Nationals did today after selecting McGarry in the major league phase. They wound up taking six minor league players, two more than any other organization. Those players do not have to be placed at any particular level of the farm system and can be moved around without being offered back.
Five of the six players selected are right-handed pitchers: Sandy Gaston (Angels), Brady Hill (Rockies), Dylan Tebrake (Mets), Eiker Huizi (Padres) and Cesar Rojas (Rays). The other, Jack Rogers (Reds), is an outfielder.
Whether any of them ever make it D.C. remains to be seen, but after losing a league-leading 34 Triple-A and Double-A players to minor league free agency this fall, the Nationals have plenty of work to do to fill out their upper-level minor league rosters. This was a start in that direction.
“I just think it’s a good opportunity,” Toboni said. “You only have so many opportunities every year to upgrade like that the minor league player pool. I think while we went into it with an aggressive mindset, it all comes down to the individual players, gauging what each of them can provide.”
While adding seven players in total, the Nationals did not lose anybody in either phase of the draft. The most notable Rule 5-eligible players they left unprotected were infielder Cayden Wallace and right-hander Tyler Stuart (who will miss most of the 2026 season following Tommy John surgery).
