{"id":692933,"date":"2026-05-25T16:21:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T16:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/692933\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T16:21:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T16:21:17","slug":"in-japan-silence-taught-foster-griffin-how-to-pitch-again-now-hes-lifting-the-nats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/692933\/","title":{"rendered":"In Japan, silence taught Foster Griffin how to pitch again. Now he\u2019s lifting the Nats"},"content":{"rendered":"

As he will be during the first game each week this season, Nationals beat writer Spencer Nusbaum will watch the game alongside fans starting around first pitch at 6:10 p.m. ET on Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Foster Griffin spent three years overseas trying to learn Japanese and reinvent himself as a starting pitcher in Nippon Professional Baseball. He returned to the United States on a one-year, $5.5 million contract and with voices in his head.<\/p>\n

Those details indicated that only one of those ventures was successful.<\/p>\n

As he stood in the Washington Nationals\u2019 clubhouse on a recent afternoon, he searched for a way to get his point across. He scanned the place where he once again gets to play cards, talk shop and joke around in English and pointed toward a couple of discussions taking place nearby.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know how you can kind of hear those conversations going on over there?\u201d Griffin said. \u201cYou block that out for nine months, essentially. And then when you come back, and you\u2019re in the airport \u2026 I remember looking at my wife like, \u2018I feel like I have all these voices in my head.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In Japan, it was as if the entire environment \u2014 from the hitters he had to face to the silence he had to embrace \u2014 was tailored to challenge him.<\/p>\n

Society was quiet and respectful, words Griffin\u2019s Nats teammates now use to describe him. Starters get by with crafty arsenals and thorough planning. Overseas, a pitcher can either use the solitude to solve their problems or succumb to it, crumble and call it a career.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s evident which road Foster took.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the mild-mannered lefty isn\u2019t on your radar. The modern man throws 100 mph and is a Driveline devotee. Griffin usually tops out around 92 mph and learned how to pitch with a Yomiuri Giants binder that nearly burst at the seams.<\/p>\n

Four years ago, he was an up-and-down reliever who was cut by the Kansas City Royals and Toronto Blue Jays.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, he was the man who got the Nationals back to .500, bouncing back from a pair of rough outings to toss six scoreless innings in a 2-1 win over the Atlanta Braves. He\u2019s largely been a pacifier for MLB\u2019s worst run prevention unit, posting a 3.63 ERA across a team-high 62 innings.<\/p>\n

If Griffin keeps this up, it feels more likely than not the team will flip him for prospects at the deadline. To this point, a contract extension has not been discussed, according to a league source, though there is time for that to change.<\/p>\n

Griffin would not be here without Japan, its opportunities and its obstacles. His time overseas altered his prefrontal cortex and his arsenal. Now, they talk about him like he\u2019s an expert. He calls his own pitches, walks teammates through their game plans and thinks through every pitch with respect for what it sets up later in the game.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s him and his seven pitches against the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s got an arsenal that can answer almost any question,\u201d pitching coach Simon Mathews said.<\/p>\n

In Japan, \u2018I had a binder like this\u2019<\/p>\n

In 2023, Griffin walked off the mound after his overseas debut, conducted an in-stadium interview in front of 35,000 noisy fans and a brass band at the Tokyo Dome and went straight to the binder.<\/p>\n

Even after seven scoreless innings, he realized he had a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n

When the Nationals\u2019 new executives and coaches came in, they set a series of philosophical goals. One of them was to become the best problem solvers in baseball. They sought out trainers who hadn\u2019t worked professionally and lower-level college coaches who had turned programs around with limited access to data and technology.<\/p>\n

They also sought out Griffin.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason pitchers often return from Japan with a deeper arsenal and a more nuanced approach. There\u2019s the schedule, where pitchers face the same five teams for most of the season. There are the hitters, who treat strikeouts like failure. And there are the lineups, which typically pattern out with a weaker lower third than MLB lineups, in part, because pitchers hit over there. When they\u2019re on the mound, those pitchers must pay particular attention to where they can and cannot avoid damage in the lineup.<\/p>\n

It demands a keen eye.<\/p>\n

They have to study tendencies. They have to read swings. They have to game it out, and become the pitcher their old-school family member says is going extinct. And without 95 mph in his back pocket \u2014 he had given up on that pursuit after undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2020 \u2014 Griffin needed something to solve these contact-oriented lineups.<\/p>\n

\u201cLefties would just stand on top of the plate and take me the other way, and that was starting to get me really angry,\u201d said Griffin, who had pitches that only moved away from those lefties.<\/p>\n

\"Foster<\/p>\n

\n Foster Griffin spent three seasons pitching for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan\u2019s Nippon Professional Baseball. (Philip Fong \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

So he added the sinker.<\/p>\n

Then they started spoiling pitches at the top and bottom of the zone.<\/p>\n

So he added a sweeper.<\/p>\n

Then they tightened up with two strikes.<\/p>\n

So he added a splitter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just kept getting frustrated,\u201d Griffin said with a chuckle.<\/p>\n

With most of the team\u2019s game-planning information limited to batting averages and swing percentages, he found a source outside the organization who had access to more comprehensive Trackman data. Without any experience speaking Japanese, he learned enough to get around, order food and talk baseball.<\/p>\n

Without much to turn to socially \u2014 save for two teammates, Yuji Akahoshi and Iori Yamasaki, who studied English closely in school \u2014 he became a bit of a recluse. The outside world was reduced to a murmur.<\/p>\n

He refused to complain.<\/p>\n

When he didn\u2019t pitch, the schedule permitted Griffin to head home to eat dinner with his wife and tuck his kid into bed. In the fourth or fifth inning, he\u2019d put the game on TV and watch with his notepad out. This month, Griffin stood in the Cincinnati Reds\u2019 visiting clubhouse and walked through the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy Year 3,\u201d Griffin began, as he clasped his hands together, then widened them until they were about a foot apart, \u201cI had a binder like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s like a chess game to him\u2019<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t have been so easy to pick apart Jake Irvin\u2019s first bullpen this spring. The team asked Irvin to throw 15 pitches, breaking it down into five three-pitch segments. In each segment, he was asked to get an imaginary batter out. At the end, he heard a voice behind him.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, so you like to pitch like this,\u201d Griffin asked matter-of-factly, before laying his estimate of Irvin\u2019s entire approach out.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I\u2019m adding a couple things to the arsenal,\u201d Irvin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love your sequence \u2014 try starting the ball here, and then tunnel this other pitch off of it,\u201d Griffin told Irvin.<\/p>\n

The explanation went on. Irvin listened, stunned. It was the very first time Griffin had ever seen him throw.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, we have (pitching coaches Simon Mathews, Sean Doolittle and Dustin Glant) and (catching coach Bobby Wilson) are already working on that stuff with us,\u201d Irvin said. \u201cBut to have another pitcher in your ear being like, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019ve gotten these results in game. It will be effective.\u2019 That stuff really helps with confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is where Griffin fits in culturally.<\/p>\n

When Nationals president of baseball operations Paul Toboni went on a hiring spree this winter, he looked for coaches who did not have an ego. Good ideas, he reasoned, could come from anywhere. It\u2019s partially why he hired Mathews and brought back assistant pitching coach Sean Doolittle \u2014 two coaches who are more than happy to cede the floor to Griffin, if he has advice for someone else\u2019s arsenal.<\/p>\n

In Japan, lineups are often constructed such that pitchers often have to think about what comes next \u2014 either a weak pocket at the bottom of a lineup, or a hitter whose swing in one at-bat hinted at what he was targeting in the next at-bat.<\/p>\n

Irvin is far from the last to offer kudos to Griffin.<\/p>\n

Last month in New York, Cade Cavalli flipped through a binder before his start. Griffin walked over, peered over his shoulder and started pointing to the tendencies of each hitter in the Mets\u2019 lineup. That night Cavalli struck out 10.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a chess game to him,\u201d Cavalli said. \u201cHe\u2019s always thinking ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nationals center fielder Jacob Young plays with a PitchCom in his ear, which allows him to hear what Griffin is thinking on the mound as he pitches. He said he\u2019s even learned about pitching when Griffin is on the mound; how he messes with hitters\u2019 timing with leg kicks and sequences.<\/p>\n

Griffin spends his games atop the dugout rail, watching posture and reading hitters\u2019 eyesights. He maps the game out, as if he were out there, too. He thinks about each pitch in terms of how it might set up the next pitch, if not the next 30 pitches.<\/p>\n

At times, he can almost think himself into a pretzel.<\/p>\n

In Miami, Mathews had to come out for a mound visit after Griffin allowed the first three batters to reach base. He had to remind Griffin it was OK to simplify things, to throw a cutter, his most-used pitch.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, buddy,\u201d Mathews said. \u201cRemember what that best pitch of yours is.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the final key to this start. Look only at the radar gun, Mathews said, and you\u2019ll miss what makes Griffin\u2019s pitch mix special. The cutter is dynamite. The fastballs profile well off of each other. The off-speed pitches have real juice. His command is exceptional.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s why there is a relentless optimism to the Nationals\u2019 lefty. He did not grow up as a particularly curious child, or so he says. He did not tinker much until Tommy John surgery, and really didn\u2019t lean into it until he got to Japan. But once he started, it always seemed to work.<\/p>\n

Now he can\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m at the point in my career where I\u2019m done trying to chase velocity,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cWe\u2019re at the point now where it\u2019s just kind of fun to find out what you\u2019ve got, then go out and compete.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As he will be during the first game each week this season, Nationals beat writer Spencer Nusbaum will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82,3968],"class_list":["post-692933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-washington-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}