Despite the loss last night, Nationals fans still got to see the James Wood show up close and personal. The Nats 23 year old slugger hit one of his majestic shots off of Bryce Miller. Unlike most of his home runs, this ball was pulled and got out of Nationals Park in a hurry.
As you can see, James Wood has been one of the best players in all of baseball
this year. It is only June 13th, and Wood has already matched his WAR total from last season. Despite Wood’s insane power and freakish size, it still does not feel like he gets talked about enough around the league.
Once the Nats climb up the standings over the next few years, I am sure that will change. When Wood is at his best, he is a truly breathtaking player. That elite version of Wood is exactly what we have gotten for most of this season. He looked all out of sorts the first week and a half of the season, but since then he has been consistently dominant.
In his last 30 games, Wood is hitting .316 with a .996 OPS. We all know that the 6’6 slugger has crazy power, but he has been a truly elite all around hitter lately. There will always be strikeouts in his game, but similarly to Aaron Judge, the quality of contact is so good that he can also hit for average.
Aaron Judge is not a name to throw around lightly, but I think Wood is the closest thing we have seen to Judge. As we know, Judge has been the most dominant hitter of the 2020’s, with an OPS over 1.100 from 2022 to 2025. Reaching those heights could be a tough ask, but I think Wood can be a guy who posts OPS marks over 1.000 in his prime.
A big reason for that is how often he barrels up baseballs. Right now, Wood has a barrel rate of 25.3%. That is comfortably the best mark in the league, with Judge being the closest with a 21.7% barrel rate. In the statcast era, Wood currently has the 4th highest barrel rate of all time, only trailing 3 Judge seasons.
For context, a barrel is a ball hit at least 98 MPH at a certain launch angle threshold. The harder the ball is hit, the wider the threshold is. Here is a link to MLB’s definition of a barrel. It is a somewhat weird definition, but the point is that barrels are the best contact a hitter can make. The batting average on a barrel tends to be in the .700 range and those hits tend to go for extra bases as well.
In an era where power is as important as ever, being the best at finding barrels is incredibly valuable. James Wood finds the most barrels in all of baseball. Among players 25 or younger, the barrel gap is enormous. Wood has 42 and the next closest players have 28. This just shows you why Wood has the highest offensive ceiling of any young player in the game.
There were times last season and to start this year where I was tough on Wood. The strikeouts were worrying, and he did not look like the same guy we saw in the first half of last year. However, as I probably need to remind myself more, patience is required for these young players. This version of Wood is the best we have seen yet. I think he is at a higher level than he was in the first half of last year.
A big reason for that is his batted ball profile. Even when Wood was rolling last season, he was hitting a lot of ground balls. In the first half of 2025, Wood’s ground ball rate was 50.2%. This year that number has been cut to 38.5%, which is a massive cut. Fewer ground balls means more barrels and more damage.
The fact Wood is hitting more balls in the air makes me less concerned about him having a power drop off in the second half again. Even if he goes through some stretches where the strikeouts pile up, he will have more chances to go deep when he does hit the ball.
Watching Wood hit all these line drives and flyballs is a glorious thing. He has the best opposite field power I have ever seen in a player. Over half of his home runs go to left center, with many of them being in near identical locations. Here is a video of all his home runs, at least through May 26th, and I loved watching it.
From Bryce Harper to Juan Soto to James Wood, Nationals fans have been blessed to have some of the best left handed bats of the 21st century on their team. While Wood still has work to do to get into that category, he certainly has the ability to do it. At just 23 years old, Wood has a .953 OPS and is underperforming his xwOBA by 25 points.
The last thing Wood has to do before he can truly be anointed as one of the game’s best is to keep this up for a full season. Last year he hit a wall, but I think Wood will have learned from that. There is only one way to find out for sure though. For now, let’s just sit back, relax and watch the big man hit.
