2:34pm: The Nationals have formally recalled Hassell from Triple-A Rochester and placed Crews on the 10-day injured list due to a left oblique strain.
May 21, 8:20am: Nats GM Mike Rizzo confirmed in an appearance on the Sports Junkies radio show this morning that Hassell is being promoted today (hat tip to TalkNats). He did not specify whether Crews or Young would be placed on the injured list.
May 20: The Nationals are recalling outfielder Robert Hassell III for his MLB debut, as first reported by Chase Ford of MiLB Central. The Nats are dealing with a pair of injuries in their outfield. Jacob Young has been day-to-day with shoulder soreness since crashing into a wall on Saturday. More alarmingly, Dylan Crews exited tonight’s win over Atlanta with left side discomfort after a swing. Manager Dave Martinez said postgame that Crews would go for imaging tomorrow (via Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com).
Hassell becomes the fourth young player of the 2022 Juan Soto trade to suit up for the Nats. James Wood, MacKenzie Gore and CJ Abrams all look like foundational pieces. (Veteran first baseman Luke Voit also played in 53 games down the stretch that year.) MLBTR’s Steve Adams looked back at the massive haul in a post for Front Office subscribers earlier this month.
Hassell was the #8 overall pick out of high school in 2020. He was batting .299 in High-A during his second full minor league season when he was traded. The 23-year-old’s prospect stock has dropped over the past few years. Hassell posted an OPS below .650 in consecutive seasons in 2023-24. He hit below .250 in each year with single-digit home run totals. He still ranked 12th among Washington prospects at Baseball America over the winter, but he’d been as high as #2 in the organization immediately after the trade.
Hassell is hitting .277/.327/.384 through 171 plate appearances this season with Triple-A Rochester. It’s his highest batting average since his 2021 season in the low minors, but there’s still an overall lack of impact. Hassell has four homers with a 7% walk rate. The average International League hitter owns a .251/.340/.402 batting line. Hassell is below that in both on-base percentage and slugging. To his credit, he has heated up since the calendar flipped to May. The lefty hitter has mashed at a .339/.381/.559 clip this month after putting up a .242/.296/.286 line through the end of April.
That hot streak combined with the Nats’ outfield injuries to get Hassell his first big league call. He’s already on the 40-man roster, as the Nats selected his contract last November to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. He’s the only center fielder who is on the 40-man and on optional assignment, making him a logical choice to come up. The Nats are holding out hope that Young will avoid the injured list, but a Crews IL stay seems likely.
Hope he does well
Here’s to everyone that says he stinks. Brady’s next let’s go.
Congrats Hassell! I just mighty have the most extensive collection of your cards. Make me rich! Go bobby bats!
I was thinking the exact same thing! Auto serial #’d prospect cards may actually make money now lol
Crazy to think people favored him over James Wood at the time of the Juan Soto trade. Hope he recaptures what made him a Top 100 prospect 3 years ago.
Hassell can still become a star and wood can still become a bust…
But yeah wood was extremely under appreciated then
At the time of the trade Hassell had draft pedigree and torn through A+ with no bumps.. he was the more known commodity.
Wood was over 1.000 OPS as a 19 year old in A ball.. MLB knew what he was even if his prospect rankings weren’t updated then.. he was a t10 prospect that offseason
You can both be right. They hit on Wood.
We’ll call that luck 😉
Both Hassell and Wood were Top 100 prospects at time of trade. While both were meaningful parts of this trade, the biggest pieces WASH aquired at time of trade were Gore and Abrams.
Hassell is still young and plenty of time to prove he can play at MLB level. I don’t think it’s likely he shows same potential as Wood as far as power.
theguardian.com/sport/2022/aug/02/juan-soto-trade-…
I was shocked when I found out that wood was included in the trade. The Padres gave up far too much for soto. He was even traded to the Yankees. The guy who made the trade should have been axed.
Ma could become Pa and Pa could become Ma.
Bobby Barrels has been a below average minor league player for 3 years now. Wood has shown he can at least be a good power hitter in the majors. I think the jury is in on who is better among these two.
That’s not how I remember it. Hassell was considered closer to being ready to contribute at the MLB level but Wood was considered a long term gem. Then Hassell experienced some injuries and performance plateaus. He’s been hot very recently and it will interesting to see if he can carry that over.
Wood had a fair amount of Ks, and can’t field. Beautiful swing, but I could see the knock.
Keep in mind that Victor Robles was considered a better prospect than a guy named Juan. I forget his last name but I think he’s had a better career.
What’s the Hassell?
Seems like Billy Joe and Bobby Sue got into some type of Hassell in old El Paso.
Worst Steve Miller line:
1. Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas.
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is.
or
2. Abra, abracadabra. I wanna reach out and grabya.
Check out a Lynda carter movie where she played someone named Bobbi jo. She was such a great beauty.
Bobby B! Let’s goooo!
Let’s see what the kid can do!
Don’t think that bringing up Robert wasn’t a big HASSELL !!
No.
Congrats, Bobby Hass!!!
Bobby 3-Sticks, in the hizzy! Good luck!
I remember this.guy was the big.deal.from SD, first.thing he did in Washington was to find a cliff to fall off of….He was higher rated than Woods.and Crews.
Woods yes Who rated him higher than Crews?
What’s with the periods?
I thought I made up for the plethora of periods
The Nationals don’t have a player named “Woods.”
I thought he was going to be really good when he was young. Great stats in low minors at a young age.
Unfortunately he didn’t continue to develop after that. Sometimes hitters are just very advanced mechanically and physically and thus dominate lower levels but then their development isn’t as much as their age suggests. To be fair also had some injuries sapping even more of his little power he had (especially a lingering hand injury i think).
If you look at him now his plate discipline seems to be about average, maybe it plays a little below that in the majors and power is very low.
Best case he probably is a 245/315/380 hitter with like 10-12 homers which is a solid 4th to 5th outfielder. But it could also be worse and his plate discipline could go down even more against mlb pitching which is so much tougher than AAA pitching.
So I see him somewhat between a non major leaguer who hits 215/280/300 and a 4th outfielder. At this point the latter is probably a decent result if you forget he was a top50 overall prospect as a young kid.
Dude, best case is he develops into a great mlb player and just had some hiccups along the way.
The history of the game is littered with previous examples of guys taking a similar route especially when there were some injuries involved.
Sure it will hurt SD, but here’s hoping he blooms!!
One guy used too many periods and you don’t use enough. They are percentages.
Congrats to Bobby Barrels.
Hopfully he will be afforded a decent runway injuries aside
99 wRC+ in AAA? Not bad. Best of luck in your debut.
Interesing to see what Hassell can do although his .742 OPS is exactly the IL league average. He wasn’t great last year or 2023 for that matter…
Padres got a better return flipping Soto then the Nats got
False!
Absolutely. Gore,abrams and wood have been great this year. They are just about the only ones who have been.
false
The Soto trade is just the gift that keeps on giving for the Nationals.
Kids got an ugly face
I thought he had already made his ML debut? Who was the Nats on player that was demoted all the way to double A because of a late night and he was late to arrive to the park?
Are you thinking of CJ Abrams arriving late to a game because he was at a casino? Nats demoted him almost immediately, but I think it was only to AAA. Cheers Logjammah!
Yup that’s the guy. I Lougled it after my edit time ran out.
According to his Wikipedia page he was sent to Rookie level Florida Complex League.
Players like Hassell with a below league average OPS in AAA and the minors overall are not foundational pieces. They are filler.
Did I miss the part where the article called him a “foundational piece”? Looks like a #4 to me.
More websoulsurfer constantly defending Preller while claiming to be an Angels fan.
bro looks 10
Langford looks great, but Crews looks pretty good also. I see a lot of similarity between them, but baseball is a tough sport to get established in,.