DETROIT -- The last 17 months culminated in one moment at 6:46 p.m. ET on Monday evening. DJ Herz emerged from the steps of the visitors' dugout at Comerica Park. In a matter of seconds, he was on the mound of a Major League ballpark, where he had not pitched since Sept. 25, 2024.
Herz shook the rosin bag, gripped the baseball and dug his cleats into the dirt as catcher Keibert Ruiz crouched behind the plate for the first warmup pitch. Herz had been waiting for this since an MRI at the end of Spring Training 2025 revealed a partial UCL tear.
“Before I even got to the mound, [when I was] going to the bullpen to get ready, I took a long look at home plate from second [base],” Herz said. “I turned around, saw the whole stadium, and I was like, ‘This is sick to be back.’ It was very surreal.”
Herz last pitched for the Nationals on March 13, 2025, during Spring Training. He underwent Tommy John surgery that April.
Herz threw off the mound for the first time on March 13 of this year, and he progressed to a rehab assignment on June 5. He sustained a left flexor muscle strain in mid-June, though, and was shut down until early August. Upon return, Herz advanced from Single-A Fredericksburg to Triple-A Rochester and built up to 65 pitches. He checked the necessary boxes to get the start on Monday in the Nationals’ 9-2 loss to the Tigers.
“I know he's been away for a while now, and he’s excited to get back here, and we all are excited for him as well,” Nationals manager Blake Butera said. “The long road that he's been on to get back to this point, I’m glad that he could do it here with us.”
Herz, a 2019 eighth-round Draft pick, was acquired from the Cubs in the 2023 Jeimer Candelario trade. Years before their paths met on the Nationals, they crossed in a Minor League game when Butera was working in the Rays’ system.
“I remember him, a North Carolina high school kid,” Butera said. “I was like, ‘Man, this kid's really good. I'd love to get him with us.’ Little did I know that it'd be a couple teams later for both of us.”
Herz was with the Nationals in Spring Training, and he remained at their complex in West Palm Beach, Fla., until he was cleared for a rehab assignment. When he wasn’t pitching, he would do his work at Nationals Park with the team. During the comeback process, Butera came to appreciate the lefty’s drive.
“The prep that he does, the attention to detail in the weight room, watching him run sprints in St. Louis when it's 100 degrees outside -- he's just doing all the things that maybe necessarily aren't fun, and some guys that might be a little bit younger maybe would want to skip,” Butera said. “But he puts the work in, he takes care of himself, and he's accountable to everything he's supposed to be doing.”
With that context, Herz’s most notable outing of his rehab assignment is fitting: It wasn’t his best. Rather, it was his worst.
On Sept. 1, Herz allowed six runs off seven hits in 2 1/3 innings. Between starts, he worked on his arm speed to be more deceptive. Addressing it immediately prevented it from becoming a bigger issue. Five days later against the same team, he delivered 4 1/3 innings of one-run ball with four strikeouts.
“The one bad one, we needed to get it out of the way in Syracuse,” Herz said. “I just needed to do it for, like, a wake-up, and also kind of get out of that rehab mode. … You don't want to get too comfortable and be in cruise mode.”
Herz didn’t sleep much on Sunday night. He compared the adrenaline of his return to his Major League debut. The anticipation of the past 17 months carried his first pitch of the game well over Ruiz’s head. Herz walked leadoff hitter Gleybar Torres on four pitches.
“It felt like a long time coming,” Herz said. “I had to get the nerves out on the first pitch.”
After facing seven batters in the first inning, Herz retired the side in the second and third. The final result was four innings, five hits, four runs, two walks and four strikeouts. He threw 39 of his 63 pitches for strikes.
“The biggest thing is in the first inning there,” Butera said. “You're just getting back out there after a long time, and when things start to go sideways like that, the ability he had to stop momentum and get going again, that was huge.”
Herz’s return was less about the results on Monday and more about what it means for his future. Even this late in September, Butera hopes that getting back on the mound will give Herz confidence leading into next season.
“You definitely have to flip that switch [out of rehab mode],” Herz said. “... Getting that first one under the belt again, there were a lot of good moments that I feel were DJ Herz, and then there are some moments that we need to get a little bit better at. We’ll figure it out.”