After 3 years away, Griffin wins return to MLB with Nats

PHILADELPHIA -- Foster Griffin sat calmly in the Nationals clubhouse three hours before first pitch. He looked like he was preparing for the game just like any other player in the room: locked in and focused, but not like someone who was about to appear in his first Major League game since Sept. 22, 2022.

After playing in Japan the last three seasons, Monday night marked Griffin’s official return to the big leagues in the Nationals series opener against the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park.

“It’s great to kind of look back on,” Griffin said. “Maybe tomorrow, I’ll soak it in a little bit more. But it was a great time out there tonight, regardless.”

Griffin felt “pretty anxious,” he said, as he paced around the dugout during a long top of the first inning in which the Nationals batted around the order. An early four-run cushion helped quell the nerves.

Griffin threw 5 innings of two-run ball in the Nats' 13-2 win. He did not allow a run until he gave up a two-run homer to Rafael Marchán in the fifth. Griffin then gave up a line-drive double to Trea Turner and hit Kyle Schwarber with a sinker.

But the 30-year-old southpaw worked out of the jam. With runners on first and second in a two-out full count, Griffin got Bryce Harper to ground out on a cutter that knocked Griffin off his feet as it bounced to shortstop CJ Abrams.

“A little bit there is, I'm playing the score,” said Griffin. “We’re up 7-2 at that point. I didn't want to walk him to get to a righty on deck. I kind of also didn't want to walk him to get the crowd back into it even more than they already were. So at that point, I was kind of like, ‘All right, well I’m going to go at him with what I know I can get the zone and what I can attack him with. And if he hits it at somebody, great. If I get a weak fly ball or ground ball, great.' He hit it hard, but he hit it hard right at somebody, so we got out of it.”

Griffin concluded his night with five innings, five hits, two runs, no walks and five strikeouts on 86 pitches.

Griffin, who sometimes calls his own pitches through PitchCom, reached into his deep toolbox and delivered 29 cutters, 17 four-seamers, 13 sweepers, 12 changeups, 7 splitters, 4 sinkers and 4 curveballs. Manager Blake Butera lauded Griffin for keeping his opponents guessing.

“He’s like a tactician out there,” Butera said pregame. “And not to say it's always going to work and he’s always going to get everybody out that he faces, but just the way he thinks through how he wants to attack hitters, he’s like a silent assassin. He's a pretty quiet guy, but you see he's always paying attention to what's going on so he's never really surprised at any moment.”

Griffin signed a one-year deal with the Nationals in December after a career revival as a starter with the Yomiuri Giants of Nippon Professional Baseball. In three seasons in Japan, he went 18-10 with a 2.57 ERA across 315 2/3 innings and was named an NPB All-Star in 2025.

Griffin, a first-round Draft pick by the Royals out of high school in 2014, previously appeared in seven Major League games with Kansas City and Toronto as a reliever.

“Weirdly enough, I felt much more prepared,” Griffin said. “I don’t know if that comes with three more years of starting experience in Japan. I felt like I really learned how to be a starter, and that goes all the way back to preparing a lineup, preparing a scouting report. So I felt very confident going in with the changes that I made in Japan as well as the scouting report we put together.”