DJ Herz had a 4.16 ERA in 19 starts in his first MLB season in 2024, and this spring, he’s competing for the fifth and final spot in a Nats rotation featuring MacKenzie Gore, Jake Irvin, and Trevor Williams at the top and Michael Soroka, at least for the time being, also penciled in.
Herz, fellow second-year man Mitchell Parker, and others are in that competition, and ahead of his first spring start Wednesday, the lefty joined Grant Paulsen to give an update on camp so far.
“Everything is looking good down here. Guys are working hard, and it's real competitive right now,” Herz said. “When you're competing for a spot, every day you wanna give it your best and go your hardest, so it keeps everything fresh. It makes you want to get better. I love the fact that we're all competing and everybody's trying to get better, so it just forces you to get better. I don’t like being complacent and comfortable, so I like being in a position where I have to keep proving myself.”
Herz does have those 19 starts in his back pocket, which came as he came up to stabilize a rotation besieged by injuries, and he knows what he needs to do to continue that development.
“When I'm in the zone, things work really well, and it puts a lot of pressure on the hitters because I know my stuff in zone plays really well, so we just need to live in zone, mainly just with the fastball,” Herz said. “That was kind of the goal going into the offseason, was working on fastball command and making sure we can go for a strike whenever we need it. The biggest thing I learned was just minimize those innings that can kind of blow up on you., but that’s just more experience as you go along and get more comfortable in the big leagues. Things tend to pick up a little bit quicker and can happen a lot faster, and walks can turn into runs really quickly, so just learning to slow down. I have ‘breathe’ written on my glove – I like to work fast, but sometimes it’s too fast, so I have to slow down, breathe, and find ways to get as much possible time when things are picking up quick.”
Herz really came into his own after the All-Star break, which, again, was partially comfort.
“It was a combination of a lot of things, getting more comfortable with the guys in the locker room and getting over that initial not wanting to do too much in your first starts and just letting it come to you,” Herz said. “There’s a good amount of times where things don't go your way, and learning how to deal with travel and realizing a lot of weird stuff happens.”
But outside of fastball command, what else did Herz work on this offseason to try to improve?
“I feel like we definitely cleaned up some mechanics, kind of just simplified a lot of stuff in the stretch,” Herz said. “We feel really money right now where everything's stacked, it's controlled, it's in the zone, and the inconsistency that we saw throughout the season is in the windup. It was more of simplifying that, and we made a little change with the leg lift, where now kind of made a little bit of a change to try to emulate the stretch. I worked on that in Triple-A after a rough stretch, and now I’ve had this whole offseason to be able to work on that, which got me to the zone more. So, it's kind of perfecting that kind of cue, which I'm really excited to see in the games.”
He’s also been working on throwing his changeup more to lefties, which he only did 20 times against lefty batters last season.
“I definitely like facing righties a lot more than lefties, which sounds crazy, but it gives me a chance to use the changeup a lot more. This year, we're working on throwing a lot more changes to left-handed batters because it's gonna play both ways, because it looks like a fastball until it doesn't till the very last second,” Herz said. “It’s gonna work on both sides, so it’s just being more comfortable and wanting to use it.”
Take a listen to Herz’s entire visit, as he also discussed initial impressions on Shinnosuke Ogasawara and more!