In a really sad piece of news, the Nationals announced that Josiah Gray has been placed on the 60-Day IL with a Flexor Strain. This is a crushing setback for Gray, who has missed pretty much all of the last two seasons due to Tommy John. Now, the right hander is dealing with yet another arm injury.
After being sent to Triple-A, and seemingly being healthy, the Nats dropped this bomb on us yesterday. The team’s 2023 All-Star will be back on the shelf until at least late May due to this injury. At this point, you have to worry about Gray’s future after all of these injuries.
Before this Tommy John Surgery, Gray was relatively durable in the minors and his early big league career. He made 28 starts in 2022 and 30 in 2023. However, he has only made two starts since then.
A Flexor Strain was actually what started all of this. That was Gray’s original diagnosis when he went down in April of 2024. However, he eventually had to go under the knife and missed the rest of that season and all of 2025. Now, he is facing a brutal full circle moment.
Hopefully, this Flexor Strain does not lead to another big surgery and is just a relatively minor set back. If you want to be optimistic, we saw Cade Cavalli have a bumpy Tommy John recovery and now he is starting on Opening Day. Hopefully, we can see that sort of come back from Gray.
It is a real bummer for Gray, who was clearly so happy to be back on the field. He said he felt healthy for most of this spring, despite his velocity not being at pre-surgery levels. Maybe that drop in velocity should have been more of a red flag, but the rest of his arsenal looked sharp. Gray also seemed confident that the velocity would eventually come back.
The hope is that Gray can come off the IL after the initial 60 days, but even if he does, the road back to the big leagues will be long. He was going to start the year in AAA anyway, but now he will need even more reps in the minors after the injury setback.
At this point, you have to wonder if we will ever see that 2023 version of Gray ever again. He is going to miss basically two and a half years at this point. Between the wear and tear on the arm and the rust, it will be a tough road back for the righty. Gray seems like a high character guy, so I have faith that he will put the work in.
However, this news makes that Max Scherzer/Trea Turner trade look even worse. In hindsight, that move set the Nats back at least five years. They traded two franchise cornerstones for Josiah Gray and Keibert Ruiz. Between the injuries to Gray and that unfortunate extension to Ruiz, that deal is aging like milk.
Even if the Dodgers did not win a championship with those two, they easily won that deal. Scherzer was fantastic for them down the stretch and Turner played some of the best ball of his career in LA. That trade kicked off the Nats rebuild, and immediately put things on the wrong foot.
You can pin some of that on injuries to Gray and Ruiz, but they also just were not as good as they were expected to be. Both seem like high character guys, but the production just has not been there. Maybe, the Nats should have been more honest with themselves and went for higher upside guys who may have been further from the big leagues. Instead, they tried to get big league ready players with hopes of a quick retool.
Now, the Nats have to rebuild the rebuild. This trade is one of the biggest reasons why that is happening, along with poor drafting. I am gutted for Gray, but there is some symbolism in this move. Hopefully, Josiah Gray can bounce back and become a cog in the middle of the Nats rotation again.
