Can Young add enough offense to elite glove to stick long-term?

PLAYER REVIEW: JACOB YOUNG

Age on Opening Day 2025: 25

How acquired: Seventh-round pick, 2021 Draft

MLB service time: 1 year, 37 days

2024 salary: $740,000

Contract status: Under club control, arbitration-eligible in 2027, free agent in 2030

2024 stats: 150 G, 521 PA, 468 AB, 75 R, 120 H, 24 2B, 1 3B, 3 HR, 36 RBI, 33 SB, 10 CS, 30 BB, 102 SO, .256 AVG, .316 OBP, .331 SLG, .648 OPS, 86 OPS+, 11 DRS, 21 OAA, 2.6 bWAR, 2.7 fWAR

Quotable: “Defense can definitely help, but everyone has to hit. There’s a lot of great defenders out there who didn’t stay in the league because they couldn’t hit. It’s something you’ve just got to do. Of course I want to be seen as not just a defender. I want to be seen as a guy who can play every day and produce offense, too. Obviously, baserunning goes into a lot of that, too. But being able to produce with the bat itself is huge.” – Jacob Young

2024 analysis: You wouldn’t know it based on his final stat line, but Jacob Young didn’t make the Nationals’ Opening Day roster. His stint at Triple-A Rochester, though, lasted only three games because Victor Robles’ early hamstring injury created a void in center field. A void Young proceeded to fill the rest of the year, and perhaps for years to come.

Touted as a good defensive outfielder, Young performed like an elite defensive outfielder. He led the majors in Outs Above Average. Not just center fielders. Not just outfielders. All major league players. He did so by possessing the best jump of any player in the sport, getting himself going in the right direction as soon as bat struck ball to give himself the best chance to reaching fly balls in the gaps or over his head. All of that made him quite valuable on the basis of his glove alone, with his 1.6 Defensive WAR rating tied for sixth-best in baseball.

At the plate, Young got off to a hot start (.313/.352/.373 in April) but then cooled off for several months (.231/.302/.297 from May 1-Aug. 9). Some adjustments made with hitting coach Darnell Coles (repositioning of his hands, focusing on letting the ball get deeper on him before swinging) helped him go back on a modest offensive surge down the stretch. Over his final 43 games, Young slashed .280/.329/.379, giving manager Davey Martinez no reason to remove him from the everyday center field job despite the arrival of both Dylan Crews and James Wood.

2025 outlook: Given the depth of outfield talent the Nationals have in their system, the notion of Young beating out everyone else for the center field job would’ve sounded far-fetched back in April. But he happened to be the first of the prospects to arrive in the majors, and to his credit he performed well enough to stake his claim to the job before anyone else could. Now, can he hold onto it long-term?

Defensively, there’s no question Young has the ability to be an everyday center fielder for years to come, even with an average-at-best arm. But as he himself pointed out, defense alone won’t guarantee you a long-term job in a big league lineup. (The Nats, of all teams, have countless examples of this in their history.) So, as he knows, he’s going to have to hit enough to stick in the daily lineup.

Young is never going to be a power hitter, and he isn’t going to try to become one. What he did show down the stretch this season was an ability to hit doubles, especially to right field. Nearly 28 percent of his batted balls this season were to the opposite field, 10 percent higher than the league average. And that wasn’t a bad thing, because he had success going that way: His batting average to the opposite field was a stout .408, his slugging percentage an excellent .524. (The MLB averages among all right-handed batters: .284 and .407.)

If Young can continue to be effective driving the ball to right field, if he can get more consistent laying down (and beating out) bunts and if he can cut down on his outs on the basepaths (19 of them in total, between caught stealing attempts, pickoffs and other baserunning outs), he does have the opportunity to hold off the more-touted outfield prospects in the Nats system and solidify his place as their center fielder in 2025 and beyond.