{"id":544616,"date":"2026-01-29T21:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T21:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/544616\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T21:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T21:02:11","slug":"nationals-claim-richard-lovelady-designate-mickey-gasper-for-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/544616\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationals Claim Richard Lovelady, Designate Mickey Gasper For Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Nationals announced that they have claimed left-hander Richard Lovelady<\/a> off waivers from the Mets. New York designated him for assignment a week ago when they acquired Vidal Bruj\u00e1n<\/a>. To open a spot for Lovelady today, the Nats have designated utility player Mickey Gasper<\/a> for assignment.<\/p>\n

Lovelady, 30, hasn\u2019t found much major league success yet but has received a number of chances due to better numbers in the minors. He has 111 big league innings spread over multiple seasons and in various different jerseys. In that time, he posted a 5.35 earned run average, 21.1% strikeout rate, 8.7% walk rate and 50.9% ground ball rate.<\/p>\n

Since he\u2019s out of options, he bounced around the league via numerous transactions last year. He went from the Blue Jays to the Twins and then the Mets, the latter club bouncing him on and off the roster multiple times. He only made ten big league appearances around the transactions with an 8.49 ERA. But in Triple-A, he logged 38 innings with a 1.66 ERA, 26.3% strikeout rate, 8.6% walk rate and 52.6% ground ball rate.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t have a roster spot at the end of the season but the Mets quickly re-signed him in October to a split deal which would pay him $1MM in the majors and $350K in the minors. It might seem odd to sign a player and then put him on waivers a few months later but that was likely by design.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, Lovelady is out of options, meaning he can\u2019t be sent to the minors without first clearing waivers. If he were to clear, he would have the right to elect free agency, since he has at least three years of big league service time. But with his service time below five years, that means Lovelady would have to walk away from the money on his deal in exercising that right. The Mets likely signed him to that deal hoping that it would both disincentivize other clubs from claiming him and also motivate Lovelady to accept an assignment to Triple-A.<\/p>\n

The Nationals have foiled that plan by swooping in with a claim. That\u2019s understandable since their bullpen is one of the worst in the majors, if not the very worst. Washington relievers had a collective 5.59 ERA in 2025, highest in the big leagues. The Rockies were second-worst at 5.18.<\/p>\n

Washington traded Jose A. Ferrer<\/a> to the Mariners this winter, which thinned out the relief corps generally and also left them fairly light in terms of lefties. Before this claim, PJ Poulin<\/a> was the only southpaw reliever on the roster, unless the Nats plan to move some of their starters to the pen. Poulin has only 28 big league games under his belt.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible the Nats try to pass Lovelady through waivers in the future and other moves could change the roster picture, but for now he has landed in a spot where he has a pretty good chance to earn an Opening Day job. If he still has a roster spot at season\u2019s end, he can be controlled for another two seasons via arbitration.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nationals announced that they have claimed left-hander Richard Lovelady off waivers from the Mets. New York designated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,3212,4,24906],"class_list":{"0":"post-544616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mickey-gasper","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-richard-lovelady"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115980412285747217","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}