In his end-of-season session with reporters, Mike Rizzo lamented the Nationals’ lack of power and need to make significant improvements in that department in the future.
“Slug is something that we’re going to try and either acquire and/or develop,” the longtime general manager said, “to get to a point where you don’t need to get three or four hits in an inning to score a run, and it makes it much more difficult to put up a crooked number.”
Rizzo said this one year ago, at the end of the 2023 season. If you didn’t know that, you’d have every reason to believe he just said it last weekend as the Nats were wrapping up yet another power-starved season at the plate.
The 2024 Nationals were an improved group in many ways. They were not any better at hitting the ball out of the park. In fact, they were worse.
Last season, they ranked 21st in the majors with 700 runs scored. This season, they ranked 25th with only 660 runs scored. Last season, they ranked 29th in home runs with 151. This season, they again ranked 29th with only 135 homers.
It remains the team’s most glaring weakness. And it once again raises the question: How do the Nationals add more power to next year’s lineup?
“That will be determined by how we utilize the offseason, and what our acquisitions are and that type of thing,” Rizzo said last week. “I do believe that the current lineup that we have, as they grow and as they learn the league, and your 21-year-olds grow into 22-year-olds, and so on and so forth, I do think that there will be more power in the existing lineup that we have. I think that kind of goes without saying. But we have to see and forecast what the lineup is going to look like via what we do in the offseason.”
Rizzo tried to add some experienced power to his lineup last winter. He signed Joey Gallo, who had averaged 30 homers each of his previous six full big league seasons. He signed Eddie Rosario, who hit 21 homers the previous year with the Braves. He signed Jesse Winker, who hit 24 homers as an All-Star with the Reds in 2021.
Those three veterans, though, cost a grand total of $8.5 million, with only Gallo getting a guaranteed big league contract. The three of them wound up combining to hit 28 homers for the Nationals, with Winker dealt at the trade deadline, Rosario released in late June and Gallo playing in only 76 games after missing considerable time with multiple injuries.
It will cost much more than that to acquire guaranteed power this winter, and it remains to be seen if ownership will give Rizzo the green light to do that.
Regardless of any offseason acquisitions they may or may not make, the Nats acknowledge they’re going to need their returning players to hit for more power themselves. And they have reason to believe that’s a realistic goal.
Only one player on this year’s roster hit 20 home runs: CJ Abrams, who finished exactly at that round number before he was demoted for the season’s final week in a disciplinary move. The All-Star shortstop was on pace to threaten the 30-homer mark in the first half before slumping badly the rest of the way, and if he does return in a better frame of mind next season he has the potential to actually get there in 2025.
A number of other young building blocks have the potential to hit at least 20 homers, many of them having already done it before in the minors. James Wood hit 19 combined homers in Washington and Rochester this season and totaled 23 in the minors last season. Dylan Crews hit 16 combined homers in Washington, Rochester and Harrisburg this season and has 21 total homers in 166 career games as a professional. Luis Garcia Jr. hit a career-high 18 homers in his breakout season, the same number Keibert Ruiz hit last season.
Jose Tena hit 21 combined homers in the majors and minors this season. Andres Chaparro hit 27. Juan Yepez hit 17 this season and hit 27 in 2021 while in the Cardinals’ farm system. And potential 2025 third baseman Brady House finished his minor league season with 19 homers.
As much as everyone hoped those young players would put up monster numbers as soon as they arrived in D.C., Davey Martinez had a more realistic outlook in mind.
“You’ve got to look where we’re at. You’ve got to look at our players,” the manager said. “You think because they hit 17-18 home runs at Triple-A, they’re going to do it here? It doesn’t work that way.”
Martinez shared a conversation he had this week with Tena, who was frustrated his minor league power production didn’t immediately transfer at the major league level. Martinez pointed out that José Ramírez, Tena’s former teammate in Cleveland, hit only 11 homers in his first big league season, the 29 the year after that, then 39 the year after that.
“I believe some of our young guys, the same thing will happen,” the manager said. “Not everybody can come up here and do the things we’ve seen some guys do. Those guys are superstars. But we have some players we feel like that can happen to, will happen to. …
“If those guys start doing that, the next thing you know, we’re not talking about a team that’s last in home runs. The potential is there, and we’re excited about that.”
In the meantime, the Nationals intend to continue looking for other ways to manufacture runs. This spring, they fully recognized their power deficiencies but felt they could better take advantage of their speed. They wound up stealing 223 bases, most by any major league club in three decades. (They also were caught stealing 73 times, most by any club in 14 years.)
Yes, an increase in homers would go a long way toward catapulting this lineup from the depths of the league. But so would better execution in the right moments, something that again was lacking this season.
“Knowing the restrictions we have in home run power … we have to be very efficient offensively,” Rizzo said. “We utilized our asset, which was speed, this year I think to the betterment of the organization. But I think that to score runners with men in scoring position (and) less than two outs, and to move runners, and to run the bases intelligently and not recklessly, I think are all things that will be addressed in spring training and throughout the offseason.”