The 2026 MLB season has come and gone. It was an eventful year for the Washington Nationals, with Luis García Jr. hitting over 20 home runs before being traded at the deadline, CJ Abrams logging easily the best season of his career, and Cade Cavalli posting All-MLB-caliber numbers. In fact, you can vote for Cavalli and his Nationals teammates to be selected to the 2026 All-MLB teams from now every day until the 9th of October.
Nationals' James Wood was a Statcast monster this year
One Nat stood head and shoulders above the rest in 2026, and that was right fielder James Wood. Posting his second straight 30 HR season, Wood not only cranked up his walk rate this season, but also cut down on the strikeout rate that had him brushing up against the single-season record in 2025 (that was then surpassed by the White Sox' Colson Montgomery this year). Under the hood, there's no reason to be worried that he can't repeat this success. It's worth looking into the numbers that made the 6'6" slugger such a beast in 2026.
There's a couple more traditional stats that Wood was notable in before we look at his Statcast numbers. Despite missing nearly a month of play on the injured list, James still finished second in the National League in runs scored. His National League-leading walk rate of 16.4% contributed to an MLB fourth-best on-base percentage of .3884. And his weighted on-base average (wOBA), the primary informing component of wRC+, was second in the National League only to the inevitable MVP Pete Crow-Armstrong.
It could have gotten even better. Wood's expected slugging clip according to Statcast was .548, 45 points above his actual number. The only hitter in the NL above him in that regard was Shohei Ohtani, who, in case you forgot, just won the National League MVP award two years in a row. That also juiced his expected wOBA to .403, tops in the NL and second only in MLB to Astros MVP favorite Yordan Álvarez.
The batted ball data is even more eye-popping. When Wood made contact with a ball in 2026, he squared it up with a high bat speed (what Statcast refers to as a "blast") more often than any other hitter in the majors. It's the most valuable type of swing, and likely feeds into his NL-best xwOBA. His barrel rate, both per plate appearance and per batted ball, was also best in the National League.
Raw exit velo? We've got that too: his 90th-percentile exit velocity of 110.9 MPH was second in baseball only to freak athlete Oneil Cruz, and his EV50 (the average exit velo of the hardest 50% of his batted balls) is tops in MLB at 106.5 MPH. A 99th-percentile walk rate and 100th percentile barrel rate are freakish, and give some credence to the idea that maybe--just maybe--the Nationals should pay this guy.
Other standouts
James Wood wasn't the only National to exceed expectations this year. After three straight seasons of below-replacement level production from backstop Keibert Ruiz, the 2026 campaign for the Venezuelan was a shocking but welcome departure from career norms.
Despite only playing 105 games as Nationals manager Blake Butera had Harry Ford starting against lefties for much of the second half, Ruiz posted 1.9 FanGraphs WAR in 2026, the best mark of his major league career. After miserable framing numbers his entire career, Keibert was worth +3 framing runs this year. At the plate, he rebounded from back-to-back seasons under a 70 wRC+ to end up above-average for the first time in his career in a full season.
That juice, a .443 slugging clip with the highest ISO (SLG - AVG) of his career at .163, was largely powered by a pull-air rate of 33.9% across his batted balls. The only hitter in baseball to pull the baseball in the air more than Ruiz this year was Pete Crow-Armstrong, who continued to defy early-career game power concerns by swatting 40 bombs en route to a 10 WAR season.
Ruiz was near the middle of the pack in barrel rates, but was still able to transfer near bottom-of-the-barrel bat speed into a top-25 hard-hit rate when he swung the bat. All that came without sacrificing his typically low K rate, which he kept under 11%--the 11th-lowest mark in the majors among hitters with at least 350 plate appearances.
The Nationals might also have something special on their hands in unheralded 27-year-old lefty reliever Erik Tolman. Tolman was having a tough year at Triple-A Rochester--through mid-August, he was running a 5.23 ERA in 32 appearances. Despite good stuff and strikeout rates, he was getting hit hard and walking too many guys to be effective. Still, his contract was selected on August 19. 15 appearances and five weeks later, Tolman's first ride in the major leagues ends with a whole lot of red on his TJStats page. He's still walking guys, but actually did so at a lower rate than he did at Triple-A.
The stuff is electric--among pitchers with at least 10 innings thrown, Tolman had the second-highest Stuff+ rating (136) of all changeups thrown in the big leagues in 2026, and his aggregate Stuff+ was 16th best in MLB, minimum 10 IP. Tolman, for all he's been through, has the skills to succeed in the major leagues, and looks like he might be joining the ranks of coveted lefty relievers held by the Nationals in recent years alongside Robert Garcia and José A. Ferrer.
It's gonna be a long offseason. It might be even longer depending on how CBA negotiations go in the coming months. But stick with District on Deck for the analysis you need through the winter months.
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