Why the Nationals brought Dylan Crews back now

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The version of Crews who was demoted to Triple A before Opening Day, candidly, was not ready to hit those goals in early April. “In this last week,” Triple-A Rochester hitting coach Travis Fitta said in a phone interview with The Athletic on Tuesday, “he smashed those goals.” Now, the 24-year-old is a National again, recalled ahead of Tuesday afternoon’s game against the New York Mets. He hit .291 with a .527 slugging percentage with Rochester in May, lifting the ball with more authority and, especially over the last week, chasing less. “It’s a great feeling being back here,” Crews said Tuesday. “Makes you realize it’s very special being here.” At the end of last season, a front office that did not draft him with the No. 2 pick in the 2023 MLB Draft evaluated Crews with fresh eyes. They saw a franchise player, but one who had been rushed through the minor leagues. They saw a player who dealt with an oblique injury last season and had a .634 OPS since he made his MLB debut at the end of 2024. This spring, they saw a player who went 3-for-29 with no extra-base hits. At the start of the season, the team chose to go with Joey Wiemer, who was optioned alongside third baseman Brady House on Tuesday in corresponding moves. Those in the organization who spoke with The Athletic over the phone and in media scrums Tuesday spoke of two important psychological traits, and two important offensive characteristics. At the plate, they talked about Crews’ ability to get the ball in the air and make smarter swing decisions. Mentally? “There was a confidence and a belief in the work he’s put in,” farm director Devin Pearson said Tuesday over the phone. “And the maturity to realize he’s still young and has a lot of success ahead of him, and this is just part of the journey.” There is also the uncomfortable financial aspect. Crews entered the season with service time of one year and 35 days. Had he been up for the entirety of this season, Crews would have reached two years of service time and become a free agent in 2030 at 28 years old. Now, however, there are just 131 days left in the season, so Crews will end up with 1.166 years of service time if he stays with the big league club the rest of the season. It will leave him about a week short of reaching two years. He will now hit free agency at 29. “That (had) nothing to do with it,” Nationals president of baseball operations Paul Toboni said Tuesday, when asked about Crews’ service time. “(If) we had an injury two weeks ago, and he was playing his tail off, he would have been up two weeks ago. We always say, ‘you should do right by the player, and more importantly, do right by the team,’ and we want to win games up here.” When Crews arrived in Rochester, the swing mechanics needed work. He went down into his legs and then came back out of them. His head moved a lot as he swung the bat. He wasn’t as upright as he needed to be. The downstream effects were significant: He struggled to hit pitches up in the zone, and couldn’t get the ball in the air consistently. At the start of Crews’ return to Rochester, Red Wings manager Matt LeCroy brought the outfielder into his office and asked him to take a seat. He knew Crews’ makeup well, but demotions — particularly ones that come after a full year in the majors — can complicate matters for players with even with the best makeup. That day, LeCroy asked a question he would repeat every day for the next seven weeks: Was there anything else Crews needed from them? “He knew he needed to make some changes,” LeCroy said in a phone interview Tuesday. “That’s the big thing. He evaluated himself correctly.” Over the next three weeks, the work began to show up in the cages. That, several of the organization’s officials said, was because he was still working on the swing decisions. At times, too, he reverted to old habits that he appeared to have fixed in the cages. “When you’re embracing a swing change or revamping your lower half or foundation, you hope that the numbers will be there a lot quicker, just for the sanity of the hitter’s mind,” LeCroy said. “Every time you walk up to the scoreboard and you see your batting average or slug or all that, it’s hard to walk away from.” On April 26, Crews was hitting .222 with a .322 slugging percentage. The organization began to pull Crews out of the lineup once a week, asking him to come to the park to work on his swing unfettered by the results of the game. Crews, Fitta said, can make excellent swing decisions. But when players alter their bat paths, they often want to swing as often as possible to test it out in a game. “It’s like getting a shiny new car,” Fitta said. “People want to get in that car and drive really fast. So, when you start to make swing changes with guys … they want to drive it really fast and they want to go see it more often. Swing decisions usually take a big hit when that happens.” Three weeks ago, Fitta said, there was an “a-ha” moment. The coaches showed Crews a chart that showed the type of hitter he would be if he only swung at pitches inside the zone. Then they showed him a chart of the hitter he would be if he only swung at pitches outside the zone. “You understand what is driving both the success and the failure,” Fitta said they told Crews. “So what’s the one thing that you can control most?” “I can swing in-zone and I can try to limit my chase,” Crews responded. Last week, minor league director of hitting C.J. Gillman came through Rochester. In the first game he saw, Crews hit a 112- and a 107-mph line out. In May, the average exit velocity of his outs was 95.7 mph — for comparison, the average exit velocity of every batted ball from James Wood this season is 96.5 mph. While the organization wants its minor league players to pull the ball in the air more, Crews was hitting the ball with such authority to all fields that they didn’t need a drastic improvement on that front, at least not yet. And last week, his chase rate was just 16.7 percent. Crews maintained his attention to detail in the field and on the bases. He played all three outfield positions, and had his first step improve. His turns at first base got better. He shagged fly balls with authority as others took batting practice. On April 23, LeCroy remembered, Crews caught a sinking liner, held his glove in the air, clenched his fist and screamed into his glove. “For our team, it’s like, man, look at that right there,” LeCroy said. “He had to come down to Triple A, and he’s still competing like he’s playing in Game 7 of the World Series.” Now, the Nationals will try to help Crews maintain that approach in the majors. They had several of the big-league hitting coaches reach out to Crews regularly when he was in the minors. They also knew he put a lot of pressure on himself this spring. Before Tuesday’s game, Nationals manager Blake Butera said they know that pressure won’t go away. It can’t, not for someone with Crews’ resume or alma mater. “It’s just more about us helping him work through it and understand what’s in his control, what’s out of his control, and what he actually needs to focus on,” Butera said. “Which is playing baseball.” He won’t have the pressure of being “The Guy” in a Nationals’ lineup that leads MLB in runs, either. “Our offense is really good. That is great, in that for him and others, I think there’s oftentimes this feeling when you’re recalled or called up (that) you’ve got to be the savior,” Toboni said. “He can just be Dylan Crews. And that’s a really good player.” The first few days with Rochester, Crews said, were difficult. But nothing good came from sulking. He tried not to think about what he was missing out on. The routine was often “boring” he said, but “necessary.” Finally, on Monday, he got the call when he was 15 minutes away from … “Woo-stir? Is that how you say it?” Crews said. “I was about 15 minutes away (from the WooSox stadium), and got the call.” Now, he’s in a place he can pronounce. The place he is supposed to be. When asked if he learned anything about himself in Rochester, Crews chuckled. “That I’m pretty good,” he said. Safe to say his confidence is back. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms