The Nationals announced Wednesday that right-hander Joan Adon passed through waivers unclaimed after he was designated for assignment last week. He’ll remain with the organization and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Rochester. Washington designated Adon to clear roster space for free agent signee Amed Rosario.
The 26-year-old Adon has logged big league time with the Nats in each of the past four seasons. He’s totaled 132 1/3 innings but sports a 6.66 earned run average in that time. He’s fanned 19% of his opponents, issued walks at an 11.3% clip and kept the ball on the ground at a 45.3% rate. Both those strikeout and walk rates are worse than league-average, but Adon’s grounder rate is a few percentage points above par and he averages about 95 mph on his heater.
Adon has been durable in the upper minors, typically working as a starter, but he’s also gotten some bullpen work in recent seasons as his big league results have been lackluster. Given that he sits nearly 95 mph as a starter when he’s facing lineups multiple times, it’s fair to wonder how high that velocity might trend upward if he were to move to short relief stints.
Adon was out of minor league options, so the Nationals would’ve had to either break camp with him on the Opening Day roster or jettison him from the 40-man by way of trade or DFA at some point during spring training. Now that he’s cleared waivers, he’ll head to big league camp this spring as a non-roster invitee. If he doesn’t pitch his way back into the big league plans, he’ll start the year in Rochester and bide his time while waiting for another opportunity.
Washington’s rotation mix is deeper after signing Michael Soroka and re-signing Trevor Williams. That pair will join MacKenzie Gore, Mitchell Parker, Jake Irvin and DJ Herz — all four of whom delivered some encouraging performances in 2024 (albeit with some late fades as that group surpassed previous career-high workloads). With that group of six starters in the fold and top prospect Cade Cavalli hoping for a healthy 2025 campaign, Adon has been pushed a ways down the depth chart. A full-time look in the ’pen could be interesting, but it’s not yet clear how the Nats will utilize him moving forward.