Some clubhouses play cards to pass the time. Some play dominoes. The Washington Nationals are all in on chess.
That's been a known quantity since April, when beat reporter Jessica Camerato wrote about it following a sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers. Chess has been a constant this season in the Nationals clubhouse, with teammates playing before games to focus themselves and think more strategically.
There's a new development in that, and it's showing where the team's social media is missing out on critical opportunities to engage the fanbase.
A new video from YouTube creator GothamChess, real name Levy Rozman, who boasts over 7 million subscribers, has him entering the Nationals clubhouse to face off with Drew Millas, Curtis Mead, CJ Abrams, James Wood, and Gus Varland. Rozman plays 10-minute games with each, then tries to guess each player's Elo, a rating system used in chess that aims to estimate the likelihood of one chess player beating another in any given game.
The whole exercise, especially including the involvement of Varland--who immediately endeared himself to the video's comment section with his constant antics throughout his game--proves that the Nationals social media team is missing out on serious opportunities to both expand the fanbase and engage more deeply with active fans.
Right now, the Nationals don't have a ton of outward-facing personalities. That can be just fine for a lot of guys; it'd be unfair to someone like James Wood to expect him to suddenly be much more talkative and put on the facade that he's someone he isn't. But a guy doesn't have to be a superstar to adequately represent the team in public channels.
Yeah, social media challenges and "questions of the day" are good for quick engagement, but it's not hard to see that they don't exactly do massive numbers on the team's Twitter, Bluesky, or Threads. They've performed better on Instagram, but the crossover post the team did with GothamChess on the platform massively outdid the team's other recent posts in likes, and nearly 12,000 have liked the YouTube video.
The best way to grow a passionate fanbase in the age of social media is to give them personalities to root for. Varland, unfortunately, may not be that great on the field--the team optioned him to Triple-A after a disastrous five-run outing against the Phillies that sent his season ERA over 6--but there's now a small subset of casual and even non-baseball fans who are aware of him and think of him fondly.
There's other opportunities there with other guys on the team. Longform content is in on social media right now, and collaborating with other popular creators will increase the team's presence on platforms like YouTube and get the names and personalities of the players in the minds of people who might not otherwise think about the Nationals.
So if anyone on the Washington Nationals social media team reads this: the fans yearn for more of this. We want to see our guys express themselves more. We want to see how they act around each other. Let us get invested in the personalities that make up this team.
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