Step by step, Crews learning how to become big league star

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – It wasn’t the kind of hit most will remember. Dylan Crews has and will hit plenty more pitches a lot harder and create a lot more damage than he did with the slider he got from Astros reliever Miguel Castro in the Nationals’ exhibition opener Saturday afternoon.

But ask Crews about that bloop RBI single over a drawn-in infield and his eyes immediately light up. He knows how important that seemingly nondescript moment on Feb. 22 was in the broader scale of his development as a major leaguer.

“For sure,” he said. “I think you learn something new every day. I’m trying to get better every day, and this is why we’re doing this right now in spring training. Trying to really just look at the details of what the game’s providing you, and then trying to succeed as much as you can. So then when you get to the season, they just almost happen naturally.”

Why was that bloop base hit so significant? Because of the situation it came in (runner on third, less than two outs) and because of the type of pitch it came on (an 0-2 slider off the plate).

Crews did a lot of things well in his first five weeks in the big leagues last fall. He smoked fastballs with authority. He excelled in right field. He ran the bases well.

What he didn’t do well was hit breaking balls. He went 4-for-41 with zero extra-base hits and 17 strikeouts on them. And he didn’t record a single hit off any of the 80 sliders he saw in the major leagues.

And in his first at-bat of 2025, he fell back into that same trap, whiffing at a 1-2 slider off the plate from Houston starter Ryan Gusto for a game-opening strikeout.

But when the opportunity presented itself again two innings later, this time with Jacob Young standing 90 feet away and poised to score on any ball that cleared the infield, Crews delivered in textbook fashion.

“That’s beautiful,” manager Davey Martinez said. “Hey, we had a chance to drive in a run there by moving the baseball. He stayed in the middle of the field, stayed on it. Very good at-bat. That’s what we’re talking about. The whole process was good. His thought was: ‘I’m not going to pull off, I’m going to try to stay in the middle of the field and drive in a run.’ It worked out.”

We tend to think of spring training as an opportunity for hitters to find their timing at the plate. To take some healthy cuts and see if they can hit the ball hard. Crews thinks of spring training as an opportunity to work on specific game situations that present themselves. In this case, the situation called for contact over power, a fly ball or line drive over a ground ball.

“It’s not just about hitting,” Crews said of his mindset during spring training. “You’re working on situational stuff, too. And it doesn’t have to be with runners on third. It could be a runner on second with no outs, your main objective is to get the guy to third. Make the guy behind you’s job a lot easier. Anybody can hit. For me, it’s about situational stuff and trying to do the little things to make your teammates’ job easier.”

It's exactly what made Crews such a successful college player at LSU. And it’s exactly what made the Nationals want to use the No. 2 pick in the 2023 Draft on him.

Yes, he’s got tremendous, all-around baseball skills. But he’s also got an intangible quality about him that general managers, managers, coaches and teammates rave about, the kind of quality that allowed him to reach the majors in his first full professional season.

“The guy was in college the year before that,” Mike Rizzo said. “There’s no higher league. This is as good as it gets right here. You’ve got the greatest players in the world. And it’s a competition every day. What he does give you — and I’ll flip it to his positives – is he competes every at-bat. He competes every pitch in the field. This guy is probably as good of an IQ player as we have, and there’s nothing he can’t do on the field.”

Crews, who turns 23 on Wednesday, has every right to carry himself with an air of superiority. He won every award there was to win at LSU, including a national championship. He’s already made millions on his initial signing bonus. He has been rated one of the best prospects in baseball since he was drafted. Autograph hounds and kids alike turn giddy when they see him walk from the Nats clubhouse to the practice fields outside CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches.

But two weeks into camp, you barely notice Crews from the rest of the pack. He blends right in with everyone else, content to just be one of the guys and not act like he’s anything special.

“I know these guys get put on pedestals that they don’t even want, or they don’t think of themselves as being on,” center fielder Jacob Young said. “It’s nice when you get a player like this, honestly. Going up through the minors, you deal with some prospects who aren’t like that. I think it’s one of the reasons he got here so fast, because he’s so mature. He’s able to put all that stuff behind him and just play baseball and be one of the guys.”

The first 31 games of Crews’ big league career weren’t as successful as the first stretch of James Wood’s career a couple months earlier or Bryce Harper’s career a dozen years prior. He finished with a pedestrian .218/.288/.353 slash line. It was the first time he wasn’t the best player on the field in a long time.

Ask anyone in the organization if there’s any reason to be concerned Crews won’t ultimately live up to the hype, though, and everyone gives the same response: No.

“I don’t think people really understand it, especially someone with expectations like him. He handled it well,” said infielder Darren Baker, who played with Crews at Triple-A Rochester and finished the season with him in D.C. “He’s been dealing with this since college, so it’s kind of familiar territory. But he’s a tremendous talent, so it usually plays itself out.”

Maybe the Nationals have been spoiled over the last two decades with top prospects hitting the ground running from the moment they arrived. Ryan Zimmerman did it. So did Stephen Strasburg. Juan Soto. Harper. Wood.

That’s not the norm, though. It usually takes a little bit of time.

“It’s just a matter of: I have to be patient with him, Davey has to be patient with him, he has to be patient with himself,” Rizzo said. “Because like I said, this is a tough league. They try and exploit all your weaknesses. To make adjustments is the secret.”

That’s why everyone was so excited about Crews’ little bloop single Saturday afternoon. He made the adjustment. He did what he needed to do with a slider off the plate, especially with a runner on third and less than two outs.

And what did Crews do for an encore Sunday afternoon? He began the day by turning an 0-2 count into a full-count walk, then stole second base. And one inning later, he drove a ball to left-center that got past a diving Tyrone Taylor and sprinted all the way to a stand-up triple.

The pitch he did that on? A slider at the knees.

Suffice it to say, five weeks of major league experience a year ago (even if the stats didn’t blow you away) could make a world of difference this year.

“It definitely helps for sure,” Crews said. “You’re not going out there blind this year. I’ve got a little over a month now. I just think it’s full-go now as far as what to expect.”