2025 was supposed to be the year Dylan Crews finally got through his growing pains.
The Nationals' second-overall selection of the 2023 MLB Draft was often flip-flopped between there and the top spot with LSU teammate Paul Skenes. It was Skenes who ultimately took that top spot, and it was Skenes who rocketed quickly into superstardom, winning Rookie of the Year and Cy Young award honors in his first two seasons.
Meanwhile, Crews has struggled to get out of the blocks and escape first gear. A 31-game stint in the bigs in 2024 led to him actually worsening at the plate in his first full season in 2025, when he played 85 games. He walked less, struck out more, and decreased every part of his slash line year over year. There were some encouraging signs - his groundball and popup rates dropped, and his pull rate increased, but somehow his pull-air rate declined. Swinging more than ever, he made less contact with pitches in the zone and chased more pitches outside the zone. DC3, put simply, looked lost.
It's not gotten better. As his counterpart Skenes has gone on to lead the USA to the championship game of the World Baseball Classic, Crews has remained in spring training camp with the Nats. In 11 games, he's slashing .107/.188/.107 for a .295 OPS. He's in the bottom 1% of strikeout rates, the bottom 10% of average exit velocities, and he's yet to pick up an extra-base hit. Among 360 qualified hitters this spring, his .176 wOBA ranks 12th-worst (teammate James Wood is 20th-worst).
At what point does it stop being too soon to worry? A number of Nationals fans would say that time has passed already. After a 2025 season that was supposed to be the foundation for Crews finally coming into his own in the big leagues, 2026 has begun with Dylan looking about as lost at the plate as ever and what was unthinkable a month ago is now starting to look like it might come to pass - Crews might be headed to Rochester to start the year by the time the Grapefruit League wraps up play in a week's time.
He hasn't been drastically outmatched by his competitors, granted. Jacob Young has played in just two games after returning from a wrist issue that kept him out until a couple days ago. The aforementioned Wood and his cornermate Daylen Lile, who were both thought to be locks for the Opening Day roster, while they will almost certainly both still make it, have also been unable to hit their strides this spring. None of the trio of Lile, Wood, or Crews have a strikeout rate south of 30%; nor do Christian Franklin, Joey Wiemer, or Robert Hassell III, for that matter.
It's impossible to say what "the answer" to this is right now, because there isn't a concrete answer. Over the next week, roster cuts will continue to shape the Opening Day squad, and we'll find out who will start the year at Triple-A Rochester. Whether or not Crews is among those remains to be seen, but either way, he's leaving himself with a lot to prove in 2026.
Spring Training numbers aren't everything. The past has made that rather evident. But these plate appearances are what reveal the process these players are taking, and the numbers under the hood aren't suggesting anything inspiring about the already concerning results. In a battle to crack what was expected to be a competitive and exciting young outfield, it seems like nobody is particularly interested in winning, although hopefully some recent showings might be a future trend.
Much of the percentile data in this piece was sourced from Thomas Nestico's website, who uses the MLB Stats API. Other data was acquired from FanGraphs.