PLAYER REVIEW: JAMES WOOD
Age on Opening Day 2025: 22
How acquired: Traded with CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, Robert Hassell III, Jarlin Susana and Luke Voit from Padres for Juan Soto and Josh Bell, August 2022
MLB service time: 91 days
2024 salary: $740,000
Contract status: Under club control, arbitration-eligible in 2028, free agent in 2031
2024 stats: 79 G, 336 PA, 295 AB, 43 R, 78 H, 13 2B, 4 3B, 9 HR, 41 RBI, 14 SB, 8 CS, 39 BB, 97 SO, .264 AVG, .354 OBP, .427 SLG, .781 OPS, 122 OPS+, -7 DRS, -6 OAA, 1.1 bWAR, 1.2 fWAR
Quotable: “You look at what he’s done since he’s been here, in a short period of time, he’s really done well. But we knew that about him. He put up good numbers in the minor leagues. And he’s just now starting to understand who he really is. The sky’s the limit for him. I always talk about the All-Stars we potentially have here. He’s one of them. I’m really proud of him.” – Davey Martinez
2024 analysis: From the moment he joined the organization in a blockbuster trade, the question wasn’t if James Wood would reach the big leagues. It was when he would make it. A dominant performance in his first big league camp this spring raised the possibility it might happen very early in the season. And Wood actually did appear to be on track to get called up by early June until a minor hamstring injury slowed down the process and delayed things a few weeks.
Nevertheless, Wood’s July 1 debut was one of the most anticipated in Nationals history, arguably the club’s most anticipated once since Bryce Harper a dozen years earlier. And he got off to a rousing start, reaching base in 14 of his first 31 plate appearances, displaying both patience and loud contact when he did swing.
There was a lull after that, though, with pitchers realizing they couldn’t afford to throw him fastballs over the plate and Wood losing that trademark patience and chasing pitches out of the zone for a two-week stretch that saw him strike out 26 times while drawing only three walks. Twenty-one games into his career, he owned a disappointing .200/.273/.288 slash line.
And then, as everyone figured he would, Wood figured it out again. He laid off most of those pitches out of the zone. He took his walks (32 in his final 58 games). And he hit the ball hard, especially to the left-center field gap. With an .862 OPS over the last two months of the season, Wood looked very much like the elite prospect he always was touted to be, possessing a rare combination of bat speed and plate discipline that drew some comparisons to the superstar the Nats traded to San Diego to acquire him two years ago.
2025 outlook: As Martinez said, the sky truly is the limit for Wood, who has all the tools to be a superstar and showed off those skills at various points during his first three months in the big leagues. Now it’s just a matter of consistency and fine-tuning.
Wood hits the ball as hard as just about anyone in the sport. His average exit velocity was 92.8 mph, which would’ve ranked 14th in the majors if he had enough plate appearances to qualify, right alongside Gunnar Henderson and Bobby Witt Jr. And his chase rate (21 percent) is elite, way lower than the league average of 28.5 percent percent. But he actually could be a little more aggressive and get away with it: Wood swung at only 55.3 percent of pitches in the strike zone (league average was 67 percent). Given how hard his contact is, he would probably benefit from swinging at a few more pitches on the edges of the strike zone.
Wood also needs to start hitting the ball in the air, and to the pull side, with more regularity. His ground ball rate (55.1 percent) was quite high, and only two of his nine homers and five of his 13 doubles were hit to right or right-center field. His opposite-field power is exceptional, and nobody wants him to lose that. But he can learn how to better identify pitches he can pull with authority, and the results could be eye-popping if he does.
There’s also plenty of room for improvement in the field for Wood, who reached the big leagues with a reputation as a potential top-notch center fielder but never really did look comfortable in left field. He did have the least experience there of any of the three outfield positions, so maybe with time he’ll get more comfortable with the angles. His long strides give him a literal leg up on others, but he still needs to learn how to get better and quicker reads off the bat to fully take advantage of his speed and length.
At the end of the day, you have to remember Wood just turned 22. He burst through the minor leagues, playing only 283 games as a professional before his promotion to D.C. Experience will do him wonders. And if he’s already showcasing these kind of traits while learning on the job, imagine the player he be become once he actually masters the game.