Foster Griffin was never supposed to be the guy anyone was talking about in late July. He spent the last 3 seasons pitching in Japan, signed a modest one-year, $5.5 million deal with Washington back in December, and quietly became the first free-agent signing of new Nationals president of baseball operations Paul Toboni. Now he's 10-2 with a 2.77 ERA through 19 starts, just made his first All-Star team, and is suddenly the most interesting name on the Nationals' roster heading into the Aug. 3 trade deadline.
That's the backdrop for MLB Trade Rumors reporting that the Nationals are considering keeping Griffin instead of flipping him for prospects. It's a small line, but it's a real signal — teams don't usually leak "we might hang onto our best trade chip" unless there's genuine internal debate happening.
MLB Trade Rumors broke the news that Washington may hold onto Griffin rather than deal him.
The math on why anyone would want Griffin isn't complicated. He's cheap, he's effective, and he's on an expiring deal — the exact profile contending teams hunt for every summer. Reports have linked him to buyers like the Cleveland Guardians, and oddsmakers have pegged roughly a coin-flip's chance he gets moved before the deadline. For a Nationals team that's spent years selling off anything with value, that kind of return would normally be an easy call.
But Washington isn't operating from the same spot it has the last few seasons. The front office has talked openly about figuring out whether this is a buy year or a sell year, and Griffin's emergence is exactly the kind of development that muddies that decision. Trade him and you get a prospect haul for a rebuild that's dragged on. Keep him and you're betting that a 30-year-old journeyman who just found his best form is part of the next competitive Nationals team, not just a name on a scoreboard for other GMs.
There's also a version of this where Washington keeps him past the deadline and still loses him — his contract runs out after this season, and he becomes a free agent again this winter regardless. That's part of what makes the reported hesitation notable: it's not really about locking Griffin up long-term, it's about whether Toboni's front office wants to squeeze one more playoff-adjacent stretch out of him before letting him walk.
Either way, Griffin's turned himself into the most-watched Nationals storyline of the summer, which is its own kind of win for a guy who was pitching an ocean away 8 months ago. Whatever Washington decides, expect it to come down to the wire — deadlines like this rarely get resolved early, and the Nats have given no indication they're in a hurry.