Stop me if you've heard this one before: CJ Abrams has 3 home runs through his first 8 games of the season.
Running a .900 OPS less than two weeks into the season isn't particularly uncommon, and oftentimes doesn't mean much for the long term, but there are certain things under the hood we can look at to see whether or not a hot start is legit. Some of those things have provided a very encouraging sign for the 24-year-old shortstop.
Since mid-2023, Statcast has been tracking aspects of players' swings: their bat speed, where they stand in the box, that kind of jazz. That data was then made available to the public in May of 2024, where it's been visible on Baseball Savant ever since.
Analysts the internet over scrambled to establish correlations between this data and on-field results. The most basic connection made: a harder swing produces harder contact. Players like Steven Kwan and Luis Arráez generally run slower bat speeds as they focus on hitting the ball through the infield or into the gaps; Giancarlo Stanton swings the bat as hard as he can and hits the ball 120 MPH. There's usually a trade-off; swing harder, strike out more, but usually it's a net gain because more damage is being done when contact is made.
CJ Abrams, a lanky 6'0", showed up to Nationals camp with about 10 pounds of muscle added, mostly in the legs, as MLB.com reporter Jessica Camerato noted in February. From everything that we heard from camp, it seemed like he was ready to turn over a new leaf heading into 2025. He took 59 plate appearances over the next month or so, hitting a couple home runs and stealing a couple bases and ending with a pedestrian but not by any means bad .777 OPS. Now, he's turned on the afterburners: CJ's average exit velocity is in the 90th percentile among major leaguers, his expected wOBA is at the same mark, and he's got 4 barrels on 20 balls in play.
Again, CJ's not a particularly bulky guy. Lean and athletic, his top-10 prospect status was defined by his 80-grade wheels and 60-grade hit tool back in 2022. But over the last couple years it's become evident that there is some power to be generated in that wiry frame. If it's not coming from the arms, one figures, it needs to come from the legs, which is where CJ focused in the offseason, and that's paying dividends: 50 swings into the season, CJ's bat speed has climbed from 72.2 MPH in 2024 to 73.8 MPH this year. That represents a climb into the 80th percentile. It's also come with the longest swing length and the highest fast swing rate of his career thus far.
Other things have changed about his plate approach, too: Abrams has extended his right foot outward 6 full inches towards the plate, creating a much wider stance that allows him to generate more of that power from his legs and turn on pitches even outside the zone and pull them into the stands, like this one off Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon Pfaadt.
When I wrote about CJ in January, I stressed the power potential that could be in store if he was able to routinely pull the ball in the air the way he did in April of 2024. His hot start in 2025 is reflecting that exact sentiment: out of 259 qualified hitters, only 13 have pulled a higher percentage of their batted balls in the air so far this season. It is possible that CJ hits 30 home runs if he's able to continue this over the course of the year.
The MLB season is a grind, though, and things go wrong more often than they go right for this team. Notably, Abrams has struck out in 30% of his plate appearances so far this year, which is okay if he's able to continue making hard contact the way he has, but it's almost never that simple, and as we get into May, June, and July, that K rate stabilizing itself will be critical to his longterm success. If that materializes, though, it'll be bombs away for CJ Abrams all summer long.