The Nationals are planning to reinstate outfielder Dylan Crews from the 60-day injured list tomorrow, reports Grant Paulsen of 106.7 The Fan. He’ll serve as the designated hitter today in what will be his final Triple-A rehab game before rejoining the big league club. Washington has multiple 40-man roster vacancies, so the Nats will only need to clear a spot on the active roster. Crews has been out since late May due to a significant oblique strain.
Crews, 23, was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2023 draft, going one pick after college teammate Paul Skenes. The LSU product debuted late last year and broke camp with the Nats in 2025, but he’s yet to produce at the levels expected for a former top pick who ranked as one of the sport’s best prospects prior to graduating to the majors. Crews has tallied 305 big league plate appearances and posted only a .206/.275/.354 slash in that time.
A disastrous start to his 2025 season has perhaps disproportionately skewed both his 2025 results and his career line to date. Crews was hitless through his first 19 plate appearances this year and struggled considerably for a couple weeks even after getting off the schneid. Through April 14, Crews took 49 turns at the plate and hit .106/.143/.106 with a 36.7% strikeout rate.
Things began trending up from there. Crews went on an eight-game hitting streak, followed that with a series of multi-hit performances and began turning his season around. He homered in his final two games prior to landing on the injured list. The overall production still wasn’t elite, but from April 15 through his May 21 IL placement, Crews hit .234/.315/.459 (116 wRC+) with seven home runs and a greatly reduced 24.2% strikeout rate in 124 plate appearances. Along the way, he averaged 90.9 mph off the bat and posted a strong 44.4% hard-hit rate.
It’s been a similar story on his minor league rehab stint. Crews was hitless in his first three Triple-A games but has shaken off the rust with a .294/.333/.500 slash over his past nine games with Rochester (36 plate appearances). He’ll get one final tune-up today before returning to the Nats tomorrow. That’ll give Crews a bit more than six weeks to hopefully build on the momentum he appeared to be gaining from mid-April through late May.
Even with the slow start to his big league career, Crews is still seen as a key piece of the Nationals’ future. He’s controllable for five more years beyond the current season and won’t even turn 24 until February. If he can continue his upward trajectory in the final few weeks of the season, there’ll be some optimism about the long-term outlook in the outfield. James Wood is an emerging star who’ll likely top 30 homers in his first full major league season. Crews can handle center but profiles better in right, leaving center field up for grabs among a group including defensive standout Jacob Young, former top picks Robert Hassell III and Daylen Lile, and deadline pickup Christian Franklin (who came over from the Cubs in the Michael Soroka trade).
If the pirates would have made a boneheaded decision and drafted Crews over Skenes, the internet would be saying it was the Pirates fault for his poor development and he was rushed to soon to the MLB level and he was a bust cause the pirates screw up everything blah blah blah.
So this is still the pirates fault? Got it
Weird comment when you have the best prospect in baseball. I think the Pirates farm is very highly regarded.
They are, but managing their transitions to the majors and their performance in the majors has been disastrous for the most part. Very frustrating for the fans, the players, the coaches, and the owner. The answer to this problem has been elusive and people have lost their jobs over it. Despite the changes, the results seem to be the same. It’s a systemic problem in Pittsburgh and short of blowing it up by selling the team and/or moving the team, the frustrations will apparently continue. Pittsburgh is a great sports town and the Pirates have a great history. But in a baseball world of no salary caps or other system that encourages parity, what are they to do? AND, baseball is unique in the number of games played over a season, attracting fans on weekdays/weeknights, and the unique pace of the play. Americans (contemporary humans in general) are fast action, immediate gratification, short attention span people who want the sort of entertainment that football, basketball, hockey have to offer. Soccer has barely caught on here because it is so low scoring and a bit slowly paced except for some flourishes of activity surrounding the shots on goal. Baseball fans are a different breed and a rare breed of sorts. You have to appreciate the statistics and the strategy and the individual accomplishments across defense, offense, and pitching. Not common.
As a Nationals fan, I agree he was rushed up. He wasn’t tearing it up in AAA last year before he was promoted.
Sort of like Bazanna with Cleveland. They moved him to AAA quickly when he didn’t have big numbers in AA
I think fans are expecting that immediate impact more than the teams are. Teams bring prospects up immediately and lose some years of control. Gone are the days when players stayed with teams for years if not careers. It has been a business for the teams for decades, but more recently it has become a business for the players. And you can’t blame them, but free agency has changed baseball. The money involved has drawn in middlemen who are looking for a piece of that revenue (agents, unions, sponsors, players’ entourages). The revenues haven’t kept up with appetites of the middlemen and owners lately (at least in some markets). I wonder what the baseball world would look like if the players were also the owners.
The Nats may not have had a chance to draft Paul Skenes. But with a 36.7% strikeout rate, it’s like Nats fans get to see Skenes on the mound every time Crews steps to the plate.
Funny! And tragic.
As I was telling my sister, he is set for life even if he sucks.
Probably because he could still be optioned.
Young can’t hit and lile can’t field. Lile and Hassel have done well recently although neither seems to be an impact player. Is it possible that lowe is designated for assignment, bell moves to first and lile is the dh with young sent down? Quite a shake-up if it happens. Doubt it will happen.
I don’t recognize Lile as a DH and his numbers don’t support it. The other Bench players can all DH with similar hitting stats to Lile. Maybe just platoon and let him face righties.
Do you mean because he’s not a slugger? Keep in mind this team is in the basement. Lowe is gone but at least he hit the first team grand slam since April of last year. He’s just about league average in ops but has a negative war. His performance in the outfield must be a major factor. Putting him at dh gives him at bats every day. Should still option young even though they don’t need to.
You make some sense. But giving him regular starts at DH just because of his average (or below avg) hitting and poor defense is not fair. I would let DeJong, Hassell and Lile rotate as DH, matching with opposing pitchers. He is just not good enough as an everyday DH. Now everyday OFs are Crews, Wood, plus one of Lile/Hassell/Young. Let them compete until one of them prove the ability to claim an everyday position.
Still a good prospect on a frustrating team
Because a 30ish game sample size in a first mlb call up at his age and developmental stage doesn’t override all the data that was there before in baseball scouting and talent evaluation. There are an absolute ton of good to great ballplayers who struggled as bad if not worse with their first cup of coffee in mlb
Still a relatively small sample size imo and minor league stats are typically evaluated in combination with scouting assessments of tools/ceiling in those rankings. You can’t exclude his college performance either since to my understanding sec college ball is widely considered a comparable competition level to lower minor leagues.
Yeah I hear you on that. There’s less separation in talent level among prospects on these top 100 lists than people often think and name recognition, pedigree and hype certainly play a role. Also there’s more diversity in profile and projections among prospects in the same general rankings bands than some folks give credit to imo.
Iirc Crews has been considered a high floor all around player dating back to his draft rankings while not necessarily having as loud of individual carrying tools as other comparably ranked prospects. So risk vs upside is a consideration here too. Every year at draft time some teams take college arms with high picks who are considered high floor guys with #3 mlb ceilings for example.
I think you may be overgeneralizing a bit with your comment about stats declining as players move up in minor league systems. While it is far more common than not that stats decline on promotion, in the long haul that can often prove to reflect a player’s adjustment period to higher level competition. I can see a good faith argument at this point to believe that the Nats may have pushed Crews to aggressively through their system but he has plenty of time and potential to adjust and improve.
Let it be said as it’s known that Crews is a huge disappointment for a number two pick. Any player will tell you the team doesn’t really develop your talent so either you have it or you don’t. The best the team can do is promote you through the minors at the right progression. If the Nationals MLB hitting coach isn’t good what caliber of hitting coaches in the minors are developing talent. If Crews didn’t have that high draft pick and money tied to him do you think his stats would have him in the majors?