The public address announcer bellowed, “The future is now” at Nationals Park as Dylan Crews and his teammates took the field Monday night. I think Nationals fans would prefer if the future was yesterday, when Juan Soto would run to the outfield to say hello in a Washington uniform, not a New York Yankees jersey.
Monday was a big night at Nationals Park for a team with a 59-73 record on Aug. 26.
The home team was taking another step to reverse the losing that since 2020 has become the ever-present “now” there.
After all, the game marked the long-awaited arrival of one more member of manager Dave Martinez’s “Hope Row” — that group of top young Nationals prospects who shared a row of lockers in the team’s spring training clubhouse.
Crews, winner of the 2023 Golden Spikes Award for the best player in college, was taken by the Nationals in the first round last year with the No. 2 pick overall.
“I woke up and had a different feeling today,” Martinez said before the game. “We’ve been waiting, but I really believe that this is another piece to the puzzle and to our future.”
Crews joining other hope-bearers James Wood, C.J. Abrams and other young Nationals players is certainly reason to be optimistic. Abrams has struggled since his All-Star Game appearance, but Wood has shown All-Star potential since his July 1 call-up.
Crews had put up decent numbers this year between Double-A Harrisburg and Triple-A Rochester, with a .270 average, 21 doubles, six triples, 13 home runs and 68 RBIs in 100 games. He knows the expectations of Hope Row.
“We have a great core moving up together,” the LSU product said. “I think we’ll be pretty good in the next year or two.”
They’ll be interesting, that’s for sure.
General manager Mike Rizzo has been coming up aces of late with trades and draft choices, between Wood, the arrival of Jose Tena, and the pitching performances of D.J. Herz and Mitchell Parker. Plus he’s got the hottest pitching prospect in the minor leagues in Travis Sykora. As more young players arrive, the expectations will be heightened.
But they’ll need more. You can’t field a team of kids that cost you pennies. They’ll need some veteran presence on the roster next year, and not just a Joey Gallo or whatever spare part can be picked up off the scrap heap next season.
They’ll need two big bats, one at first base and the other at designated hitter — legitimate free agents with home run power — if it indeed, is “going to happen” as Martinez said about expectations.
He added this to those expectations. “Over the winter, we’re supposed to get a little better,” Martinez said.
He is speaking to the commitment of the Lerners’ ownership.
Will Mark Lerner lie to Nationals fans as he has in the past, telling them “whatever he (Rizzo) desires he has the resources and he has always had the resources since the day we took over the team to build a winner” in a “Nats Xtra” interview last year?
With an active roster payroll on the books for next season that is significantly less than $100 million, it shouldn’t be too much for Rizzo to find and add the experienced pieces this team needs.
Even if one of those pieces is Soto, right?
There is a movement among some Nationals fans to push for the Lerners to sign Soto, who will be a free agent at the end of this season and bring him back to Washington.
Soto was traded to San Diego in 2022 after passing up a $440 million contract offer from Washington.
He was then traded to the Yankees in December, where he has continued to be one of the best players in baseball — and he appears to have fallen in love with playing in New York.
“Right now, I’m playing for the Yankees,” Soto said. “I’m happy. We’ll see where it’s at … we have good energy in here. Nothing is going to be like we had with the Nationals in 2019 (World Series championship season). But this is really close to what we had then. We all get along together and we are playing really hard.”
There were some chants of “Come home, Soto!” in the right field seats Monday night at Nationals Park and many in the crowd of 32,812 were wearing their Nationals Soto jerseys.
He got a big standing ovation when he came to the plate in the first inning.
But here’s the reality check: The team gave away 10,000 Dylan Crew T-shirts on Monday night. Fans should get used to wearing those Crews T-shirts and keep the Soto jerseys in the closet.
There is a better chance of the Lerners changing the team’s name from Nationals to Redskins than them spending more than $500 million to bring back Soto.
• You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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