Bullpen churn in late July usually means one thing: a contender scraping the waiver wire for arms before the trade deadline. The Nationals aren't a contender this year, but they're still doing the scraping. Washington signed left-hander Matt Krook to a major league deal, putting him back on the active roster to soak up low-leverage innings while the big-league staff sorts out injuries.
MLB Trade Rumors broke the news that Washington had brought Krook back on a major league contract.
The move is really a roster shuffle dressed up as a signing. Krook takes the spot of reliever PJ Poulin, who landed on the 15-day injured list (retroactive to July 16) with a left flexor strain. Washington also shipped Richard Lovelady to the 60-day IL just to clear the 40-man spot needed to fit Krook back on. It's the kind of paperwork that keeps a thin bullpen functional in mid-summer, not a splash.
What makes this weirder than your average DFA-to-signing move is the timeline. The Nationals already had Krook, designated him for assignment on July 12, watched him clear waivers, and then saw him decline an outright assignment to Triple-A Rochester in favor of testing free agency. Five days later, with apparently nowhere better to go, he's right back in Washington's bullpen.
Krook, 31, is a well-traveled arm at this point, this reportedly marking his seventh organization since the Giants popped him in the fourth round of the 2016 draft. He's barely pitched in the majors, with just 14 2/3 career innings since debuting in 2023, but he's been a steady Triple-A workhorse, throwing at least 29 innings every year from 2021 through this season with an ERA under 4.00 in all but one of those years. That kind of durability is exactly why teams keep dialing him up for mop-up duty.
None of this moves the needle for a Nationals team playing out the string in a lost season, but it matters at the margins. Every extra live arm in the bullpen buys the front office flexibility heading into the deadline, whether that's protecting arms they want to trade or just getting through games without burning out the relievers who actually matter. Krook's job is to eat innings nobody wants and stay ready in case Washington needs him again — which, at this rate, feels like a matter of when, not if.