Can James Wood be the game changer the Nationals need? | Baseball Bar-B-Cast

Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman and senior MLB analyst Jake Mintz react to James Wood’s impressive MLB debut with the Washington Nationals. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

James Wood making his MLB debut.

The number two overall prospect is that MLB pipeline that, that is how you say that Jordan don't even stress about it.

Uh James Wood, a unicorn outfield prospect who is only 21 years old.

He's 67.

His legs go on forever.

He came up uh played his first two games on his debut on Monday, hit a 106 mile an hour single in his first at bat, posted a 30.4 ft per second run time, which is good.

Tied for the second fastest in baseball this year.

Absolutely outrageous last night, hit three balls hard over 95 miles an hour, all of our ground outs.

Uh He is an absolute wonderful player.

I cannot wait to see him develop.

I wrote a whole thing about him over at Yahoo Sports.

You can read, sat down with James about a month ago when he was still in AAA what a unique cat with a very fascinating developmental story.

And Jordan there is a tweet that you put on the internet machine from 2021 I believe before James Wood was drafted, where you said, remember the name.

Yeah.

I mean, listen, it's not even as much that, like, it's one of those things where, especially now following the amateur draft and sometimes you just hear about guys early on in their, in their draft seasons where it's like, all right, this is someone you really need to pay attention to the developments that he's made and, like, I had a conversation with someone earlier this week, just kind of talking about James Wood.

It's like, how can someone that big not strike out all the time?

And it's like, yeah, it's an extremely fair question.

Um, but I think that he did strike out a ton last year, but he is just so gifted and so just naturally able to make adjustments even with his gigantic frame, that that's why he is in the big leagues now is he managed to stop striking out.

This is a foundational player.

This is a new chapter of nationals baseball.

I know we've seen some of the players they've acquired in these trades, some of which have gone better than others.

But this is, this is a game changer, right.

We talked about earlier that the Cubs are lacking a game changer.

Well, James Wood could absolutely be there for the Nationals and that is a very big deal.