{"id":677023,"date":"2026-04-16T16:09:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T16:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/677023\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T16:09:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T16:09:18","slug":"mets-trade-richard-lovelady-to-nationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/677023\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets Trade Richard Lovelady To Nationals"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Nationals announced Thursday that they\u2019ve acquired left-hander Richard Lovelady<\/a> from the Mets in exchange for cash. Fellow southpaw Ken Waldichuk<\/a>, who was recently recommended for Tommy John surgery, moves to the 60-day IL to open a spot on the 40-man roster. The Mets designated Lovelady for assignment<\/a> over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Lovelady was with the Nats in spring training but wound up going back to the Mets for a fourth stint in the past year when New York scooped him off waivers a couple weeks before Opening Day. He wound up making the Mets\u2019 roster and has since pitched 7 1\/3 innings of relief, holding opponents to three earned runs (3.68 ERA) on eight hits and four walks with six punchouts.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old Lovelady has now pitched in parts of seven big league seasons. He\u2019s shown glimpses of promise \u2014 most notably, his 2021 performance with Kansas City \u2014 but has yet to carve out a consistent role in a big league bullpen. The southpaw has a 5.25 ERA in 118 1\/3 major league frames with a big 51.9% grounder rate and strikeout and walk rates only a hair worse than average (20.9% and 8.9%, respectively). In parts of seven Triple-A seasons, he has a 2.61 ERA, a 26.9% strikeout rate and a 7% walk rate.<\/p>\n

Lack of consistency notwithstanding, Lovelady continues to intrigue major league clubs. Though he hasn\u2019t had a lot of staying power, he\u2019s spent the better part of the past four years shuffling on and off 40-man rosters around the league. That\u2019s underscored by the fact that he has well over three years of big league service time \u2014 with a viable path to crossing the four-year mark at some point in 2026 \u2014 despite his modest innings count in the majors.<\/p>\n

The Nats will be Lovelady\u2019s seventh team in the majors. In addition to the previously mentioned Mets and Royals, he\u2019s also pitched for the A\u2019s, Rays, Cubs and Blue Jays. He\u2019s out of minor league options, so he\u2019ll be added right to the major league roster when he reports to the team. Washington currently has three lefties in the \u2018pen: Cionel P\u00e9rez<\/a>, PJ Poulin<\/a> and the recently recalled Mitchell Parker<\/a>. P\u00e9rez, like Lovelady, is out of minor league options. Both P\u00e9rez (8.22 ERA in 7 2\/3 innings) and Poulin (4.50 ERA, more walks than strikeouts in eight innings) have struggled this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nationals announced Thursday that they\u2019ve acquired left-hander Richard Lovelady from the Mets in exchange for cash. Fellow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,7145,24906],"class_list":["post-677023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-ken-waldichuk","tag-richard-lovelady"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116415257878391989","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677023","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=677023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}