WASHINGTON – Connelly Early has been a major leaguer for just 10 months, but he’s packed a wild spectrum of emotions into that period.
It started with his big league debut in August 2025 in West Sacramento, his family trekking cross country from Virginia to Yolo County to take it in. Two months later, he started a do-or-die playoff game for the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.
Come spring, he survived a monthlong battle and won the fifth starter job for the Red Sox, standing on the baseline for Opening Day in Cincinnati, the club he rooted for as a child. Three months later, he was in orthopedist Keith Meister’s Dallas exam room, wondering whether he’d blown out his prized left elbow.
Finally, Saturday, July 25, his phone rang shortly before 11 p.m., as he was getting ready for bed. Forget how high the Red Sox were on Early, and the years of club control they’d enjoy: Club president Craig Breslow informed Early he’d been traded to the Washington Nationals for slugger Curtis Mead in the first major transaction before the trade deadline.
Monday, he put on jersey No. 19, climbed a bullpen mound at Nationals Park and began a new journey, one that began with Meister confirming it was just inflammation, not ligament damage, around his elbow.
He hopes to commence a rehab assignment next week and, later in August, partake in what few imagined at the start of the season: Help the Nationals in their drive for a playoff spot.
In a trade deadline rarity, Early did not lose much in the standings: Boston’s 15-game winning streak pushed it into what’s now a 2½-game lead for the final wild card spot in the American League. The Nationals, toting the most potent offense in the majors, are tied with the Pittsburgh Pirates just one game out of the National League’s final wild card spot, currently held by Arizona.
So, not much harmed. Yet the gentle dip in the standings is quantifiable; the emotional heft of getting traded from a team that drafted him in the fifth round out of the University of Virginia in 2023 was more challenging to process.
“I feel like baseball brings so much more than the game,” Connelly said Monday. “It brings so many relationships, builds bonds that you can’t really get anywhere else.
“So obviously that’s tough, but I’m excited to be here and build that with these guys around me.”
He leaves behind close ties with fellow lefty starter Payton Tolle, a relationship with pitching coach Andrew Bailey and interim manager Chad Tracy, who also managed him at Class AAA Worcester.
But there’s still a connection in D.C.: First-year Nationals baseball operations chief Paul Toboni came from Boston, where as vice president of amateur scouting he drafted Early. And even traveled to West Sacramento to witness his debut.
This time, Toboni was giving up a prized asset – Mead has 17 homers, an .852 OPS and is expected to destroy left-handed pitching at Fenway Park – to snag Early.
And so shortly after Breslow got off the phone, Toboni was blowing him up.
“Obviously a little bit emotional, coming up with (Boston),” Early said. “But I know T-Bone pretty well and he called me after that, and just super excited to get here and have a couple familiar faces.”
Indeed, Early grew up in the Richmond area, a little more than two hours from Nationals Park, and he has relatives in nearby Ashburn. He’d been to a handful of Nationals games as a kid, but, in one of those inexplicable-little-kid moments, took a shine to Joey Votto and Aroldis Chapman and thus rooted for the Reds growing up.
A decade later, Early was sharing the Red Sox clubhouse with Chapman, now the all-time leader in strikeouts for a reliever.
“You don’t get to see all the behind-the-scenes stuff,” Early said of Chapman. “You just see 100 mph on the board. You wonder how he gets to that point, and then you watch him go about his work and you know why.”
Early is just beginning his journey. He struck out 29 in 19⅓ innings of his debut year, then, with Boston’s rotation facing injury, drew a difficult assignment: Game 3, AL wild-card series against the Yankees and rookie Cam Schlittler.
Early did not survive that buzzsaw – he gave up three earned runs in 3⅔ innings while Schlittler famously struck out 12 over eight shutout innings. Yet he was road-tested by the time spring came around, and posted a 3.44 ERA and 93 strikeouts in 91⅔ innings of 17 starts this year before his elbow barked. Oddly enough, the injury came after he threw four innings of three-hit, shutout ball against Washington at Fenway Park.
Now, the Nationals hope he’s their rotation fixture. The trade nicely balanced both clubs’ needs, although a winner or loser may eventually emerge.
Early plans to remain unbothered. It is an ethos that’s already served him well over this wild year of a major league indoctrination.
“I just go out there and compete every single time. I love playing baseball,” Early said. “There’s a lot of people who think about results. I’m just out there enjoying it.
“In this job, everybody’s put under a microscope. So the more you can make it fun, the better it’s going to be.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: First big deal of MLB trade deadline capped wild year for Connelly Early
