Wood Work

 

I've been writing this blog, and following baseball, for over a decade. I've seen a lot of bad teams that, for all intents and purposes, could be lost to history without anyone noticing. Aside from the last two seasons of all-time ineptitude, I've seen versions of the Pirates, Orioles, Marlins, Rays and Astros that completely refused to be anywhere close to good, and trudged along out of their own necessity. 

But something to be aware of is that it's very hard for a bad team to still have nobody I collect on it. The 2000s Orioles still had Brian Roberts. The early 2010s Astros still had Hunter Pence. I think about the stretch from 1994 til like 2005, where the Brewers had virtually no one I would ever think of seriously collecting playing for them. Aside from that one year of Hideo Nomo and the beginning of Nelson Cruz, it's a wasteland of replacement level guys and 'that guy's. At one point, Milwaukee seriously subsisted off of a core of Jeromy Burnitz, Geoff Jenkins, Jeff Cirillo, Jose Valentin, Fernando Vina and Dave Nilsson. Really.

So what I'm saying is that the 2026 Nationals...likely will be a bad team. They're not looking terrific, not gonna lie. They won yesterday against the Pirates in a squeaker, and even then most people are chalking that up to Don Kelly's mismanaging rather than anything the Nats actually did. Even though they currently lead the Mets in the standings, and are arguably playing better than the Phillies right now, they are not exactly expected to compete, and the general idea is that they'll likely sell at the deadline. But...even if they are a bad team, they still have James Wood and C.J. Abrams, and both are terrific. 

The Nationals have taken on several prospects from other teams, Abrams chief among them, with the intent on starting a new dynasty. Some have already moved on; Lane Thomas is now with Kansas City and MacKenzie Gore is now with Texas. The majority are still impacting the direction of this team. Even though Wood and Abrams came over in the same deal, they're still the marquee guys for this Nats team. Abrams is off to a scorching start, hitting .367 with 19 RBIs and 6 homers, plus a crazy 1.175 OPS. It is very possible that the Nats could trade Abrams at the deadline, and the lack of any 1st place prospects have sort of cemented that.

Which leaves James Wood, who I do not think is in danger of being traded anytime soon. And the Nationals are all the better for it. Wood is 23, reaching his prime, and still hitting great power numbers, with 5 homers and 14 RBIs already. Dude's a born power hitter, and though the high K rate is still scary, his production can't be denied. The hope is he can stay in Washington for a bit and help the team develop. You're already seeing Brady House, Foster Griffin, Daylen Lile, Nasim Nunez and Clayton Beeter becoming everyday options, and it's better than the carousel of replacement guys we've seen over the last few years.

The Nats at least have control over how much they can accomplish even in the midst of a seemingly lost year like this one. If James Wood, C.J. Abrams, Cade Cavalli and Jacob Young can deliver on great seasons, that'll at least be a step in the right direction. 

Coming Tonight: He just took a no-hitter into the eighth right around the point where Cleveland fans really started tiring of the old ace.

Drift Wood

 

Beyond the Mets and Phillies, the NL East is in a weird place. The Braves are in third, but still haven't decided whether or not they're gonna go for it this year, and have sort of bobbed back and forth this whole time. The Marlins are in last, but because they have Kyle Stowers, they've managed a ton of clutch victories and may keep piling them up. And the Nats are just barely in fourth, and may deserve to pull even higher.

And that's the odd part. This is what the Nats look like when they have the Crews-Wood-Young outfield fully installed, when they have a competent rotation and a good closer, when they have definite stars like C.J. Abrams, and when they actually look like they know what they're doing for the first time since, ironically, the red caps were taken away in 2020. And even with all that, they're still a game behind a Braves team that doesn't even know whether they're competing or not. 

James Wood, as we all figured last year, is exactly what the Nats needed. Even at 22 he feels confident, self-assured and comfortable in the majors. So far he's hit 9 home runs and 21 RBIs, seconded only to Nate Lowe's 27, and his .926 OPS leads the team. I know people are really worried about Dylan Crews not clicking immediately, but this team has enough guys that have. Wood, Abrams, Young, Gore, Parker. And plus, enough teams have proved that if the golden child prospect takes his time, the rest of the team can step up and ensure it's not solely on him. That's how the Tigers worked before Torkelson got it, that's how the O's worked before Holliday's current hot streak. Crews is hitting for power, even if he's not fully five-tool yet. A good season from James Wood is definitely enough to distract from the fact that Dylan Crews is still figuring out the majors. 

People should be paying attention to how the Nationals do against good, competitive teams. Earlier this year they took two from the Diamondbacks and two from the Dodgers. They had some big wins against the Orioles and just took down the Reds for a bit. Yesterday they legged it out in extras against a very ferocious Guardians team who, in all seriousness, should have won that game. That scrappiness, that big game attitude, is gonna be very valuable going forward, even if they're not competitive yet. They are a good team that many perceive to be a bad one, and that's gonna be a help to them as they continue to play really good teams. A lot of even the best teams don't have starting combos as strong as MacKenzie Gore, Mitchell Parker and Cole Irvin. The O's don't even have one guy that can do who those three can right now.

So, Wood getting off to a great start might be just the beginning of a fun improvement of a season for the Nats. I don't know if they're fully a playoff team yet, but they'll be better than they have in a while. 

Coming Tomorrow- Everyone knew he'd be elite, and now that he is you commonly forget just how good he can be.

2024 in 'The Future' Guys

 

This year alone, we've finally seen what Paul Skenes, Jackson Holliday, Wyatt Langford, Jack Leiter, James Wood, Jackson Chourio and Rece Hinds look like in the majors. This is a generation of rookies that could very well define the remainder of the decade, and they've all shown up in the last three months. It's kind of wild to think about that.

I mean, I'm at the point with some of these guys, Wood and Hinds specifically at the moment, where the highlights are flying and I'm going 'should I be writing some of these down?'. Rece Hinds has hit 5 homers and 11 RBIs in six major league games, and...is he just gonna keep doing this at this rate? Is this one of the all-time icons of the sport or is he just really happy to be up in the majors? It's a thought I've had with Skenes, cause he's been incredible so far and I so badly want him to be the real deal and what everybody thought, and...I look at Jack Leiter and Jackson Holliday, and I know that sometimes it doesn't work that simply.

James Wood, so far, has been fine. In 13 MLB games...fine. He's hitting .245, he's got 6 RBIs and 1 home run. But at the same time, he's 21. Like, not everybody takes to the majors immediately, it takes time. Not everybody's Juan Soto. Look at Holliday again, clearly it didn't happen immediately. In Triple-A, Wood was hitting .353 with 37 RBIs and 10 home runs in 53 games. Clearly, in Triple-A he's above the median quality. But the majors he's still feeling out what the median quality is and figuring out how to surpass it. C.J. Abrams has probably been talking to him, he had a similar acclimation issue in 2022, that's kinda why he's in Washington in the first place. But now Abrams is the best hitter on the team, and he's an All-Star this year. Sometimes it just takes time. 

I think Wood is gonna work his way up to being on Wood's level, and we may not see his full force til either late this year or sometime next year. But I know it'll happen because it's obvious how powerful Wood is, just from what the Nats saw in him in the first place. 

And who knows, maybe people like Holliday, Leiter and Chourio just needed that struggle period and incubation time to really launch into their full potential. I know people aren't really optimistic about Holliday right now, but he could just be off this year, and 2025 could hold the opportunity he's been waiting for. Or there might even be a completely different rookie star of the 2020s that materializes soon enough and makes us all feel like fools for not noticing them to begin with. 

For now, all we can do is watch these rookies develop and see where they end up.