The Nationals’ former first-round pick fought to return after starting the season in the minors. “I just had to face it,” he says.
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After a two-out RBI single in the Washington Nationals’ 7-5 loss to the San Diego Padres on Friday, Dylan Crews pointed to the dugout and smiled.
He’s been here before — he had 35 RBI in parts of the two previous major league seasons — but this was different. This was his refined, upright swing, where he doesn’t get into a stance until right before the pitcher goes into motion. This was his new bat path, allowing him to get the ball in the air to center field, dropping in front of the charging center fielder.
This is what he worked for when he was in Class AAA Rochester, the 2023 first-round pick turning his disappointment over not making the Opening Day roster into six weeks of self-reflection and self-improvement.
He’s still not where the Nationals need him to be. In the ninth inning of Friday’s game, he flew out to right field when the team needed him again to produce. But he’s made progress. That single extended his hitting streak to six games, and he’s 9 for 41 with a walk in 10 games since being called back up.
“It feels great being here,” Crews said. “Just want to keep things going.”
Crews knew he had two options after the Nationals optioned him for the start of the season: sulk or get to work.
The emotions did get to him at times, he said; the disappointment of not making the Opening Day roster after being a mainstay on the team over the previous two years is hard to keep down. He made the decision, though, not to show it in public. He wanted to get back to the majors as soon as he could, and he knew the best path was to put his head down and work on the gritty details that the Nationals were requesting.
It was boring and repetitive. But it worked.
“He bought it,” Rochester hitting coach Brian Daubach said. “He stuck with it every day.”
With five days left in spring training, the Nationals called Crews into a meeting. They wanted him to stand taller and bring down his chase rate, which was 29.5 percent during the 2025 season. And he was going to be making these adjustments in Rochester, away from the major league spotlight.
He developed a routine to help him accomplish these tasks, working with Daubach, Rochester assistant hitting coach Travis Fitta, Nationals hitting coach Matt Borgschulte and Nationals assistant hitting coach Shawn O’Malley. He did it every day, without fail, even when the temperamental Upstate New York spring brought unseasonable elements.
Crews began his progression by standing sideways with his feet glued together. Facing an underhand front toss, he focused on staying upright throughout his entire swing. Then, against an angled toss, he put his back against the batting cage net and worked on direction and getting the ball in the air.
After that, with the pitcher tossing normally, he inched closer to his normal stance, while still trying to keep his feet closer together and his body upright. He finished with his normal swing and his two-strike swing.
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Rinse and repeat, every single day. The routine takes him 15 minutes, and it only took him about three weeks, he said, to start to notice a difference.
“It’s been great,” he said. “I know the last month in Rochester the ball was getting in the air a lot. We’re still trying to get that to work here as well.”
Across the organization, the Nationals have a new philosophy this year: hunt the med ball. They place a medicine ball on a ball bag, to teach hitters to “hunt” or sit on pitches in hitter’s counts. This helped Crews, especially as he narrowed down on which pitches to be aggressive on and which to let go.
As he worked up north, the Nationals kept a close eye on him. Every night after the major league game, Manager Blake Butera checks minor league box scores. If it wasn’t Butera contacting him, the Nationals’ hitting coaches or other members of the front office reached out.
Crews is a major part of the Nationals’ future. They didn’t want him to feel abandoned or like a failure just because he was temporarily in Rochester.
“It’s a really hard league, and there aren’t many players, if you look at it, that have been called up from AAA and never went back down,” Butera said. “It’s a hard game, it really is. Mentally, physically, all of the above. I think at the end of the day it’s patience and also understanding how much different the major leagues are from AAA.”
Crews started to see the results turn in his favor in May. He hit .308 and slugged .585 in his last 17 games at Rochester, with a strikeout rate of 22.5 percent. On May 18, he got a call first from Rochester Manager Matthew LeCroy, then from Nationals assistant general manager Devin Pearson. They were satisfied with what they saw and wanted him to put it to the test in the majors.
Crews called his fiancée, Jane Carson, who burst into tears. He worked hard for his first call-up in 2024, but this one was different. Every step of baseball came easy to him — from an Under Armour all-American in high school to a College World Series champion at LSU to a No. 2 overall pick by the Nationals.
The majors have been the only place where he has struggled. But he’s hopeful that after some time away, he can get back to being who he is.
“I just had to face it,” Crews said. “I could have done things a lot differently. I know the potential that I have and what I’m capable of doing, and I wanted to come out there stronger than ever.”
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