As you may have heard the Nationals have the best offense in baseball this season, and rightfully so, most of the attention has been on the hitters having career years. Today I decided in the interest of fairness, it was time to check in on four guys who have not popped off yet, but have the tools to do so.
Dylan Crews
After his surprise demotion to start the season and then hot swap with fellow struggling top pick Brady House in May, Dylan Crews has now faced about the same number of pitches in AAA and MLB this year.
If you look at his Rochester numbers you can see the Nationals player development staff was trying to help Crews get the ball into the air more, taking advantage of his above average exit velocities. His average launch angle was 11.8 degrees, significantly higher than his MLB career average of 8.8. That led to more balls in the air, dropping his groundball rate from over 50% in Washington last year, to 45% in Rochester. And he was able to do that while hitting the ball harder, 94.6 MPH average exit velocity, and maintaining his fine swing decisions and contact rate from last year. Looking at the numbers, it’s not surprising the Nationals figured he was ready to come back up.
Since coming up Crews has maintained the new launch angle (11.1 degrees) and he is hitting the ball harder than last year, hooray! But, if you’ve seen Crews hit this year you knew a but was coming, he’s completely lost control of the strike zone. Crews’ swing rate at pitches out of the strike zone has jumped from a pretty constant 30.5ish percent up to a ghastly 40 percent. He’s also setting a career high in swing rate in the strike zone. Crews is putting a better swing on the ball, but because he’s choosing to swing at so many bad pitches, instead of doing damage, he’s getting under the ball for easy outs.
The issue for Crews is that he was a heralded prospect not because he did one thing at a super elite level (like James Wood’s power) but because he did everything above average. He does not have a single tool he can reliably fall back on if something is not working, he needs to be combining good swing decisions, with good contact and good power, if one of those is missing the whole won’t work.
Crews has done this before, to start 2025 he also struggled massively with chasing pitches, and as the season went on he figured it out. I think the hope here is that with patience he will figure it out again. My one concern is that after a sudden drop last year from an above average 88 percent to just barely sufficient 81 percent, his in-zone contact rate is again around 81 percent. That might need some extra work to fix back in Rochester.
Andrés Chaparro
If I had managed to get this post out before Friday night’s game I would’ve looked like a genius. Before his sudden breakout powering the Nats to a 23-run game, Chaparro had a 72 wRC+. After the game it was up to 118.
The story here is that Chaparro has some absurd power potential that he has not fully tapped into yet. He’s second on the team in average bat speed at 74.8 MPH, which he has been steadily increasing by a mile per hour every year since he joined the team. Unsurprisingly, that leads to strong exit velocity that is 3rd best on the team at an average of 91.8 MPH, barely ahead of Luis García Jr. and right behind the next player we’ll cover here. He has a solid average launch angle and is the only Nats player who both hits the ball hard and pulls it in the air at a high rate. When he hits the ball, he hits it just about perfectly.
The issue is he’s not hitting the ball every plate appearance. His swing rate is way down for his career average of 50.9 percent to 43.9 percent, which overall is not necessarily a bad thing as he’s been walking 15.5% of the time. The issue is when he does swing, he’s not making a lot of contact, just 78 percent in the strike zone.
Overall, I think sticking with Chaparro at least on the short side of the platoon with García and potentially expanding into the DH spot more is the right move for the Nats. His speed is going to put a cap on how good he can be, he won’t be getting the extra infield hits or hustle doubles here or there you need to be an elite hitter. But he hits the ball hard enough and is correctly patient enough that you can live with the swing and miss problem.
José Tena
Since Chaparro rudely denied my chance to predict a breakout right before it happens I will have to settle for the much less certain José Tena. Tena is a fellow member of the fast swinging (74 MPH), hard hitting (92 MPH) club, placing just behind Chaparro in the former, and just ahead of him in the latter. However, this is an entirely new development for Tena as his bat speed was previously around only 71 MPH and he’s exceeded his previous career high max exit velocity by almost 5 MPH! That is an extreme change to happen in a single season.
However, despite the fast swinging and hard hitting, Tena’s barrel rate puts him closer to Keibert Ruiz than it does his fellow hard hitting compatriots at a measly 5.3 percent. So, what gives? It’s not his launch angle, which has seen a remarkable jump from 1.2 degrees last year to a solid 10.3 degrees this year. And it’s not the direction, he’s also pulling the ball way more than he was last year, up to 33 percent from 25 percent.
No, the problem is that Tena unfortunately does not seem to know what a good pitch to swing at is. He’s swinging at 36 percent of the pitches he sees out of the strike zone and only making contact with an abysmal 47.2 percent suggesting these are not pitches on the edge he’s missing. His in-zone contact rate, like Crews and Chaparro is just at the borderline of livable at 79 percent, so he’s not making up for much there.
This is also a new problem for Tena who previously had a healthy career average of 86 percent contact on pitches in the strike zone and a much more manageable whiff rate around 22-23 percent. It seems that in selling out for more bat speed and harder contact at a better launch angle Tena has lost his contact ability. With more practice, it’s possible the Nationals can help Tena get adjusted to his new swing and bring his contact rates back up while maintaining the new power stroke. If they can do that, Tena will be the next Nationals player to go on a sudden tear.
Brady House
I’m going to try to keep this one short because I already wrote about the issues House was having when he was sent down in May. So far things are looking up in Rochester for House as he’s got his in-zone contact rate up to a robust 85.1 percent, the highest for his career. He’s also been doing that while still keeping his swing rate at pitches outside of the strike zone down from last year just like he was in DC.
For that he’s being rewarded with much more consistent contact taking advantage of his power potential, with a 91.7 MPH average exit velocity also representing a career high. I feel like a broken record here, but he too has increased his average launch angle to a new career high of 9.3 degrees. All together it seems like House is putting in the work at AAA to improve the areas he needs to to have success at the Major League level.
Before this sounds like I’m about to say House should be up tomorrow let me pump the brakes a bit. His swing rate, while better compared to his career-to-date, is still bad and Baseball Prospectus’ DRC+ thinks he’s been getting a little lucky with balls falling in and puts him at 86, well below the AAA league average. The Nationals tried the band-aid patch at the beginning of the season, having House just focus on not chasing as much and while he did so, it also exposed some major flaws. Now they’re taking the patient approach, rebuilding his swing to set baselines for contact and launch angle, then looking at improving his chase rate from that sturdier base. The good news is it looks like the progress is being made, the bad news is we’re still a ways away from the final product.
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