Cavalli ends season healthy, ran out of time to pitch again

Cade Cavalli was in the Nationals Park bullpen this afternoon, throwing 25 pitches of all varieties at full velocity. He was all smiles afterward. He feels like he would be ready to pitch in games soon, if only the calendar had cooperated.

“We just ran out of time this season,” he said. “I hate it, because I want to be out there more than anything. I miss competing like crazy. We just ran out of time. I’m very excited. There’s a lot of fuel for the fire for 2025.”

Cavalli never did pitch in the major leagues this season, just as he never pitched last season following his March 2023 Tommy John surgery. It appeared the 2020 first-round pick was close this summer. He made three minor league rehab starts and also faced live hitters in a simulated game here in D.C. in which his fastball topped out at 98 mph.

And then he was shut down in late June and didn’t pitch competitively again. What happened?

Cavalli did deal with a bout of the flu at one point, but the larger issue involved his arm. It wasn’t injured, per se, but it wasn’t responding to the workload the way he and team doctors wanted it to, especially the day after he pitched. The term “dead arm” was used to describe the condition.

“It’s different sometimes when you have a higher-velocity guy getting back into it quicker, and sometimes the arm just hasn’t caught up to it,” he said. “The body and everything felt really good. And there were times that it was normal stuff … and then there were times it would come out and the arm just didn’t respond to the day prior.”

The Nationals shut Cavalli down, eventually sending him to West Palm Beach, Fla., to start his throwing program all over again. That process appears to have gone well. He said he’s been throwing all of his pitches with no issues, capped off by today’s bullpen session in front of big league coaches and trainers.

“It’s all feeling like it’s coming together now,” he said. “I feel healthy. I feel like the body’s moving well, and the ball’s coming out.”

It still ends up a lost season, though, for Cavalli, who recently turned 26 and still has only one big league start to his name despite more than two years of big league service time accrued while on the injured list.

“It’s really not,” manager Davey Martinez insisted. “He had Tommy John surgery. A lot of things are different for some guys. A guy like him, he already touched 98 at one point. He just wants to make sure it doesn’t happen to him again, which we all should understand. We’re going to be very careful. And when he comes to spring training 100 percent ready to go, we’ll be in great shape.”

Cavalli will head home to Oklahoma next week and take a break from baseball. He’s getting married in November. Then he’ll start going through a standard offseason throwing program, building his arm up before heading to spring training in February. He believes he’ll be full-go for Opening Day 2025. It just depends on the team’s plan for him at that point.

“I just feel like I’ve got to keep a positive outlook on it, because that’s who I am,” he said. “I’ve got to stay true to myself and understand that this is just part of the process. Not everybody has come back in 12 or 15 months. Sometimes it takes 18. I’m feeling really good in month 18. That’s what it took, but we just kind of ran out of time on the season. I understand that was out of my control. I don’t think there’s anything to dwell on that we can’t control.”