Washington Nationals news & notes: Futures Game GameThread + more…

Notes and quotes as the Nationals take on the Nats’ top prospects this afternoon…

NATIONALS FUTURES GAME:

“We’re incredibly thankful for the continued support of our fans in D.C., and we can’t wait for them to get a look at some of the players who will make up our next championship-caliber roster,” President of Baseball Operations & GM Mike Rizzo said in a press release on today’s Nationals Futures game between the players still on the big league roster as of now, and the top prospects in the organization. “Players like James Wood, Dylan Crews, Brady House, and Robert Hassell [III] have certainly received a lot of attention, and I know that once our fans have the chance to see a full lineup of the young guys in our system, there will be even more of reason to be optimistic about where we’re headed.”

“People think they know our prospects by name and stuff like that,” Rizzo told reporters this winter.

“But they know a handful of the more popular ones. We got a good, deep system of exciting guys that we’re going to run out there, and it’s going to be fun for them to play, and it’s going to be fun for us to sit back and watch, and it’s going to be great for the fans to finally put a face with a name and give them something to kind of track throughout the season in the minor leagues.”

Davey Martinez said he was excited for fans in the nation’s capital to see all of the club’s top prospects in person in a major league setting.

“I think it will be fun for myself, the coaching staff, even the fans to catch some of our young prospects.

“We got a lot of ‘em, so I think that’s going to be a lot of fun,” the manager explained.

“I think it’s going to be a fun game,” Rizzo added. “I think it’s going to be great for the fans, that’s why I was all about it. I think the fans love seeing those young players that they all read about, and seeing them playing at the big league ballpark against big league competition, I think it’s going to be fun, and I think the interaction of the new and the veteran players is going to be good for them. I think it’s a win-win for everybody. It’s going to be an exciting day.”

Rizzo, Martinez, and the rest of the club’s coaches and scouts got a good look at all the prospects in major league camp this spring, as they played out the schedule of Grapefruit League games, and the GM and skipper in D.C. were impressed with the growth they saw from the top young prospects in the system like Wood and Crews.

“They have absolutely no panic in their system at all, there’s nothing too big for them,” GM and President of Baseball ops Mike Rizzo said when asked about the possibility of either or both of the top prospects making the club out of Spring Training last weekend, before both were assigned to minor league camp and then to Triple-A and Double-A for Wood and Crews, respectively, this week.

“The most important thing in my mind,” Rizzo explained when he spoke with MLB Network Radio hosts Jim Bowden and Jim Duquette, “… is these guys have not been overwhelmed whatsoever by not only the pace of play here in the big leagues or the amount of velocity that there is.

“They really have a calm presence to them, they really have a major league routine already, which is important, and have performed very well.”

“They’re not afraid of a big moment, and they stay in the moment,” Davey Martinez told reporters, as quoted by MLB.com’s Jessica Camerato after the game:

“Both of them were very calm, understood what they needed to do up there and both did a great job.”

Wood, Crews, and a team full of the Nats’ top prospects are in Nationals Park today to take on the club’s expected Opening Day club (with a few things still to be decided).

It all starts at 12:05 PM ET…

ALSO THIS:

As usual this time of year we get asked to do a season preview or two for our fellow SB Nation site managers. This time it was the folks at The Good Phight (Phillies).

We answered their questions about the 2024 Nationals for a post they’ll put up some time today.

Here’s one Q and one A for now and we’ll post a link to the entire exchange when it goes up on their site…

Q: The Nationals are rebuilding, but there are still some interesting players on the team, namely CJ Abrams. He made a swing change that sort of saved his season last year. What else might Abrams need to do in order to take yet another step in his development?

A: Was it a move to the leadoff spot, where he was more comfortable and responded to the responsibility, staying on plane and on top of the ball with his swing, shrinking the strike zone, and not chasing out of his so-called “happy zone”, not chasing fastballs up or breaking balls down? Was it a moment of recognition last year that this is his team and he’s going to be a leader for the next-gen Nationals? All of the above?

Abrams made a significant jump over the course of the summer last year. If he is able to continue to improve his strike zone discipline, continue to improve as a defender (I think he got a lot more comfortable at short last year too), and if he keeps stealing bases and stirring things up at the top of the lineup, he can have even more of an impact than he did as the season went along last year. And he is still just 23, so there is reason to think he’s still building towards being the kind of player he’ll ultimately be. As you guys know in Philly, (you like Trea now, right?), the Padres did both teams a great service trading away both shortstops.”