There is still low-hanging fruit to pluck at even the highest levels of professional baseball. Consider the Washington Nationals.
It was not too long ago that under former general manager Mike Rizzo — in the spring of 2024 – when Nationals placed placards in their Florida complex and spring-training bullpens that read “I don’t care how hard you throw ball four.”
The real message was that the Nats were fighting the reality that velocity is king in terms of pitching performance. Unless you are a Greg Maddux-like command outlier, you’re going to need stuff.
But times are changing in Washington.
This past winter under a new regime, the Nationals revamped their pitching program. They hired Simon Mathews as a 30–year-old major league pitching coach – he worked at Driveline and Push Performance before serving as an assistant pitching coach for the Cincinnati Reds. Washington added another Driveline alum Luke Dziados as an assistant pitching coach.
Dziados contributed in a number of ways at Driveline including research on topics like the limits of motion capture in understanding arm pain.
While pitching is not yet a team strength, the Nationals improved their ERA from a 5.35 mark last year, worse than only the Rockies, to 4.69 ERA this year – among the top-five improvements in the sport.
But in this piece, I want to focus on their hitting progress this season. Progress there is even more remarkable, and also with plenty of Driveline influence.
More than a third of the way through the season, the Nationals lead the majors in run scoring.
Yes, the Nationals.
The Nationals ranked 20th last year in run scoring (687 runs, 4.24 runs per game). This season they’ve scored more runs than the Dodgers as of June 5 (331 runs to 330) and are scoring 5.32 runs per game – a 1.08 runs-per-game improvement that ranks second in baseball to only the Pirates.
The Pirates improvement is largely tied to external additions like Brandon Lowe, Ryan O’Hearn and the arrival uber prospect Konnor Griffin.
But so much of what the Nationals have done is tied to internal improvement, which shows the game is far from optimized in some corners of the highest level of play.
More than 80% of plate appearances this year have come from returning players – players like James Wood, Jacob Young – already with a career-best eight home runs – and C.J. Abrams.
Abrams, an extraordinary athlete, is tapping into his phenomenal potential this season, enjoying career bests across the board.
I spoke to Abrams recently to understand how he’s benefitted from new training regimens, approaches, and working with Driveline alumni in Andrew Aydt, hired as the team’s major league assistant hitting coach this past offseason. Travis Fitta, the Triple-A hitting coach – who is occasionally embedded with the major league team – is a former Tampa hitting trainer at Driveline.
Abrams is the ninth-most improved player in the majors in terms of wRC+ – +42 – and two of his teammates, Wood and Young, also rank in the top 30.
What’s changed?
Abrams was introduced to an underload-overload bat-speed program this offseason, which is on brand for an organization benefiting from a strong Driveline influence.
Abrams’ bat speed (72.7 mph), fast swing percentage and blast percentage are all improved.
“Being able to swing the bat fast that’s always good,” Abrams quipped.
We agree, C.J.
But we don’t just train bat speed at Driveline.
Yes, improving bat speed is a big deal. But we also focus on swing paths – Abrams is enjoying 61% ideal attack angle – and swing decisions. They are all core tenets of what we train, of what leads to performance gains. His teammate, Young, is a great example of bat path improvements.
Young is also a Driveline client – adding further Driveline flavor to the Nationals.