Stalwart to All-Star? Armed with slider, Irvin eyes ascent

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Jake Irvin led the Nationals in starts and innings pitched in his first full Major League season. This year, he is poised to be a leader of the rotation.

“He definitely embraces it,” said manager Dave Martinez. “I think potentially he could be a future All-Star, he really can.”

Irvin made his Spring Training debut in the Nationals’ Grapefruit League opener at CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches on Saturday in the 6-3 win against the Astros. The right-hander needed just eight pitches (he located five for strikes) to complete his one inning. Irvin threw an additional 19 pitches in the bullpen.

“Everything felt good,” said Irvin, who turned 28 this week. “... I attacked guys with strikes. That’s the name of the game down here right now – building up confidence, throwing strikes.”

Irvin gained All-Star consideration last season when he went 7-8 with a 3.49 ERA before the break, including a 2.31 ERA in June. In the second half, the innings and workload built up. Irvin had pitched 121 frames in 2023 as a rookie; the following year, he ramped up to 187 2/3 innings. He was 3-6 with a 5.90 ERA after the All-Star break in ‘24.

“The beginning of the year last year, he really honed in on everything we asked him to do,” Martinez said. “He did throughout the year until probably about the last month or so when he did get a little bit tired.

“But he trained a little bit differently this year to get a little bit stronger. I really know what I'm going to get out of him every time. He’s going to go out there and he may not have his best stuff every outing, but he goes and he knows how to compete.”

This winter, Irvin worked on his slider. He threw it only nine times last season (0.3 percent), compared to his fastball (37.9 percent), curveball (31.3 percent), sinker (20.5 percent), cutter (6.5 percent) and changeup (3.5 percent).

“I struggled a lot with getting in-zone swing-and-miss last year,” Irvin said of his 15.6 percent rate. “[The slider] is something that'll balance out the really slower curveball and then the harder fastball. My cutter and changeup are both a little bit harder, too. So I wanted something that's in that middle ground there.”

Irvin has the green light to throw his slider in games, but tinkering with it will be limited to the practice fields, where he can do so with the Nats’ staff.

“Out there [in games], he's got his heartbeat, he's competing,” Martinez said. “So we can control the volume, control everything he does on the backfield.”

Irvin has found a balance between developing his pitches and competing on the mound. He is eyeing six more starts in Spring Training to put it all together.

“The biggest thing is to just throw them competitively,” he said. “Don’t think too much about it and what we’ve been working on, but throw it competitively. If we need to make an adjustment, then we’ll do it in that five days in between starts.”