There have been a lot of fun player development wins this season for the Nats. From Curtis Mead, to Keibert Ruiz and even stars like James Wood and CJ Abrams, plenty of Nats hitters are getting better. However, the most surprising development in my opinion is that Jacob Young has turned into a power hitter.
Over the first few seasons of Jacob Young’s career, fans thought they had a good idea of who he was. Young was a speedy center fielder, who plays amazing defense, but was not a good offensive player.
While Young always had solid bat to ball skills and a decent approach, it was not enough to make up for his lack of power. He hit the ball on the ground a ton, and did not hit it very hard.
In his first three seasons, Young hit only 5 homers in over 1,000 at bats. Every home run from the center fielder felt like a shock. This season, Young already has 7 home runs, which is obviously a career high. That shock factor after Jacob Young’s homers is slowly going away. He has shown that he is more than capable of going deep.
With Young’s power surge, he is turning into an excellent player who can be more than just a 4th outfielder. His season OPS of .683 is far from elite, but it is good enough with his defense. It felt like Young started the season somewhat slowly defensively, but lately he has been making a ton of great plays, and making them look easy. Young has 8 outs above average this season, which is in the 99th percentile.
We know about JY’s defense though. Today, I want to talk about some of the changes he has made to improve his offense. The biggest one has been getting the ball off the ground. You cannot hit homers when you put the ball on the ground, and Young was doing that a lot last season. His ground ball rate in 2024 and 2025 was 56.5%, which is extremely high. This year, that number is down nearly 20 percent, to 38.8%.
Last night, Dan Kolko implied in passing that the old regime wanted Young to hit the ball on the ground to maximize his speed. As a right handed batter in the big leagues though, you are not going to get a ton of infield hits. When looking at his swing, you can see that he is hunting ground balls. Young was almost swinging directly down on the baseball last year. This season, that swing is much more level.
That plays out in the launch angle numbers as well. Young’s average launch angle has gone from 3.8 degrees to 11.1 degrees. That is a huge transformation to make in one offseason. The Nats center fielder is also swinging harder and hitting the ball harder. While some of the credit goes to the Nats new staff, Jacob Young began this process in the offseason.
He went to Driveline to try and fix his offensive game. It feels like Young has wanted to add more power for a while. Before the 2025 season, he added a bunch of muscle, but it turned out that was not the issue. His problem was his mechanics, and with the help of Driveline and the Nats hitting coaches, he has improved his mechanics a lot.
Ironically, the coach he worked with this offseason was Travis Fitta, who is now a hitting coach in the Nats organization. Fitta is the assistant hitting coach in AAA Rochester, where players like Yohandy Morales are thriving. Driveline is known more for their pitching development, but it seems like they are changing the game on the hitting side now too. Andrew Aydt, the Nats assistant hitting coach is also a Driveline product.
If these guys can turn Jacob Young into a 20 home run bat, I do not know what they can’t do. Young seemed destined to be a light hitting 4th outfielder, but the added pop has changed his outlook. It is crazy to see how much this new staff has been able to unlock in players. From Young and Curtis Mead in the majors to Seaver King and Yohandy Morales in the minors, the Nats hitting development is on point.
