If you’ve watched any Nats game this year you’ve probably noticed CJ Abrams. We’re 50 games into the season and he has 8 home runs, 9 steals, is batting .311 with a 160 wRC+. In other words, he’s making things happen. It’s exactly the kind of re-breakout we were hoping for after the unfortunate end to last season.
The Washington Post just had a good article on the work Abrams did during the offseason to improve his swing and approach at the plate. To summarize, Abrams worked with a new swing coach to improve his balance through the swing to generate more power and worked on reducing his first pitch swing rate to avoid being overly aggressive.
So far, the stats show this is a serious change. In 2023 he swung at the first pitch 41 percent of the time, in 2024 it was 39 percent, now it’s just 30 percent. In all other counts his swing rate has also decreased, but not by as much, from 58 percent in 2024 to 56 percent in 2025.
He’s taking the right pitches too as his first pitch strike rate has decreased as well going from 63 percent in 2024 to 55 percent in 2025. And that is backed up by his SEAGER which has had a big jump from 7 in 2024 to 13.4 this season. Abrams has developed a much more patiently aggressive approach, avoiding overswinging tendencies that harmed him in previous seasons.
So where does that show up in his overall results? While his walk and strikeout rates have remained flat, his exit velocities are a glowing indicator of improvement. His 90th percentile EV is up half a mile per hour and his average EV, has gone from 88 MPH to 90. That suggests to me that his reduction in swings is cutting out a lot of poor contact that would be easy outs.
I wouldn’t be worried about this being a fluke and Abrams crashing back down in the second half again this year. This is a clear, well-defined change in approach that is leading to better results and should continue to do so throughout the season.
The area for concern is still the defensive side where Abrams is yet again having a terrible season at shortstop. And while you may say the Nats have been here before with Ian Desmond and Trea Turner, poor defenders who more than made up for it with their bat, this is at another level. Because while Desmond and Turner had their struggles they could still play shortstop enough to be a positive value defensively when you adjust for how hard it is to play shortstop.
FanGraphs’ defensive runs saved is a combination of the fielding quality of the player and a positional adjustment that accounts for the difficulty of the position. From 2012-2014, Ian Desmond’s defensive runs saved on average was 7.3. From 2017-2019, Trea Turner’s defensive runs saved on average was 8.1. CJ Abrams’ three years with the Nats have been -0.3, -8.3 and -0.7. The positional adjustment for shortstops starts them at 7.5 runs, can you imagine how bad a defender you have to be to end up in the negative once, let alone all three years? Barring a miracle improvement, this has to be the last season Abrams plays shortstop for the Nationals.
Which leads to the title of this post, what’s next for Abrams and the Nationals after the demotion last season and his hot start this year? Everyone said the right thing this spring training. Abrams showed up a week early, had clearly done a lot of work in the offseason to get better, and said while it took a while for him to get over the demotion he was able to learn from it. Davey Martinez emphasized strongly how important he was to the team. But I think it’s foolish to believe that hasn’t left a scar on Abrams’ relationship with the Nats.
He's going into his arbitration years next year so a discount extension is likely already off the table. Luckily he’s one of the few Nats stars not represented by Scott Boras so there’s a chance the Nats could sign him to an extension close to his expected market value before he reached free agency but that would likely require a better team situation for Abrams to not want to explore his options.
What I have been thinking about since his demotion last year was whether the Nats are done with Abrams and just wanted to avoid trading him at his absolute nadir. Such a public punishment is not a common occurrence in MLB and Rizzo has been known to trade guys he thinks are insubordinate in spite of their value to the Nats. In fear of another second half collapse, could the Nats look to trade Abrams at the deadline this year now that he’s rebuilt his trade value?
Ultimately, I think that even if there’s a poor organizational fit, trading a young star like Abrams would send the wrong message to the fan base as the Nats are supposed to be adding more talent, not resetting again. Demoting him to AAA last year was such a drastic move I don’t think we can rule anything out in Abrams’ future with the Nats, but I don’t think trading him is really on the table. He’s clearly passionate about baseball and putting in the work to get better and the Nats need to continue nurturing that, starting with finding him a better defensive position.
Follow me on BlueSky.