WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The plays that get circulated on social media are both obvious and appropriate because no one else in Washington Nationals camp — shoot, precious few others in baseball — can produce the kind of halfway-to-Mars home runs that James Wood launched in the first two games of spring training. The first, on Saturday night, was majestic, running past the grass berm in right field at Park of the Palm Beaches. The second, on Sunday, was majestic, carrying out over the center field fence of Roger Dean Stadium up the road in Jupiter.
But in evaluating and digesting the start to Wood’s spring — which is the buzziest part of a Nats camp that has decent buzz — consider the little roller he hit to the right side of the infield Sunday, a ball in that no man’s land between the pitcher, an incoming second baseman and a first baseman trying to decide whether to charge forward or retreat to the bag. Here came Wood, all 6-foot-6 and 235 pounds of him, striding like a cheetah.
“You saw that, too?” said Delino DeShields, Wood’s manager last year at Class AA Harrisburg. “Wow.”
“We’re all sitting there like, ‘Did you not just see that?’” said Dylan Crews, another outfielder on the rise. “That was impressive.”
The result was nothing because Miami Marlins second baseman Luis Arráez got to the ball just in time to flip to first for the out. Maybe the only aspect of Nats camp more impressive than Wood in the box is Wood on the base paths, where he swallows up ground like Joey Chestnut gobbles up hot dogs.
“It looked like it took six steps for him to get there,” Crews said. “It’s crazy how fast he can move for how big he is.”
February is a perfect time to get overly excited about a player who hasn’t taken a regular season at-bat above Class AA, who just turned 21 in September. Wood will have his time, and it probably won’t be on March 28, when the Nationals open the season in Cincinnati.
Or will it?
“There’s spots on this team to be won,” veteran lefty Patrick Corbin said, “and he’s got as good a chance as any.”
Let’s not get into playing general manager at the moment. That’s Mike Rizzo’s job, and those decisions will be determined after a month of spring training games, not three. The important part about Wood’s early performances here isn’t where he will end up playing in April. It’s who he is and how he goes about things.
“Go outside of his talent because that’s very, very obvious, right?” said DeShields, who played 13 seasons in the majors. “He’s just a real intelligent conversation. Really smart. Just somebody that you need to have your thoughts together when you approach him because it’s going to be a serious conversation.”
Wood seems to have a serious approach. On Monday morning, as he prepared to take batting practice on a back field here in a group that included Crews and fellow prospect Robert Hassell III, Wood walked to the dugout to retrieve a large portable speaker and wheeled it toward the cage. He did not, however, pump the tunes, instead setting the volume to a level at which coaches and players could hear each other. When he stepped into the box for his first round of swings — he is a left-handed hitter — he intentionally let the ball travel deep in the zone and swung late, spraying balls down the left field line, the opposite way.
“I don’t like pulling the ball in BP,” he said. “I just want to stay inside the baseball.”
That trick allows Wood to evaluate how long he could wait on a fastball and gives him time to adjust if a breaking pitch comes instead. It also reveals a maturity in preparation that is uncommon for 21-year-olds.
“He just does everything, really, the right way,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “Even when you watch him play defense, his pre-pitch [preparation] is good. He gets jumps on balls. He runs the bases hard. … I’ve got no complaints. I love watching him play.”
Wood’s size is can’t-miss, and it surely generates much of his power. One longtime member of the organization compared Wood’s offensive game to that of Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich, a former National League MVP. It’s instructive that Yelich, at 6-3 and 207 pounds, is a full three inches shorter and nearly 30 pounds lighter than Wood. Martinez said he thinks Wood, who came to the Nationals from the San Diego Padres as part of the haul for Juan Soto two summers ago, seems thicker through the torso and, somehow, wider in the shoulders compared with last spring.
“I told him, ‘Hey, I think your shoulders are just,’ ” and he started widening a “V” with his hands, “ ‘like your wings are sprouting.’ ”
“You think like an Aaron Judge-type player,” Corbin said, referencing the New York Yankees’ 6-7, 282-pound behemoth. “There’s just not too many of those guys in the game.”
But Wood does not take the power that such a frame can produce and turn it into a violent swing. His first homer, off Houston minor leaguer Misael Tamarez’s fastball, came from an easy, balanced swing. It produced a thwack that made people everywhere in the park whip their necks around with a start.
“His swing is so simple,” said infield prospect Trey Lipscomb, Wood’s offseason training partner and spring training roommate. “But we were joking in the locker room like, ‘Hey, did you see the homer?’ ‘Nah, but I heard it.’”
It traveled 422 feet. His homer Sunday was maybe more impressive because it came both off a lefty — veteran Miami reliever Devin Smeltzer — and off a sweeping breaking ball, nearly a replica of a pitch he had swung through earlier in the at-bat.
It also traveled 422 feet.
“I feel like I’ve gotten myself ready,” Wood said, “and it’s just kind of time just to go out there and compete.”
In the final inning of Monday’s 6-3 loss to the New York Mets, after Wood had driven in a run with a single in his first at-bat, came another not-flashy-but-very-important step. Facing right-hander Joander Suarez, Wood laid off two borderline pitches just off the outside edge of the plate. Instead of expanding the strike zone, he walked.
“That’s what we’re talking about right there,” Martinez said.
Camp is three games old. A month’s worth of exhibition games await, and then the regular season begins. James Wood has all of seven plate appearances. But he already has produced two worthy highlights that wow anyone who sees them and is filling all the other stuff that matters in between.
