James Wood, the promising Washington Nationals prospect who has developed into a minor league powerhouse, is expected to make his MLB debut Monday when the Nationals take on the New York Mets at Nationals Park, a source familiar with the matter told The Washington Post on Friday.
Wood, 21, started the year with the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings. The 6-foot-1 outfielder, whose long-awaited Major League call-up has been making waves all season, is hitting .346 with a 1.036 OPS in 51 games for the Red Wings.
The Nationals, in the midst of an extended road trip, will face the Tampa Bay Rays later on Friday in Florida.
Wood, a powerful left-handed hitter, has slugged 51 home runs in his minor league career, including 26 a season ago. Wood, who grew up in Maryland, entered the Nationals’ system in 2022, one of several prospects the San Diego Padres sent to Washington as part of the trade for superstar Juan Soto. Also in that deal: MacKenzie Gore, the left-handed pitcher who will start Monday.
Wood, clear and soft-spoken, has long carried the weight of enormous expectations. And his mother, Paula, has said he’s “always been obsessed with baseball in a way that’s different from anything else in my life.” Earlier this year, his Class AAA manager hinted that he might be ready for a bigger stage.
“That’s obviously not my call,” Red Wing Manager Matt LeCroy said at the time. “But he’s done enough at this point that if they asked me (to call him) I would feel confident (to say), ‘Hey man, that might as well be it.’ ”
Wood is in the middle of his fourth season in the minors. He started the 2023 season in high Class A Wilmington and jumped to Class AA Harrisburg after just 42 games. This year, he participated in his first big-league spring training and impressed in West Palm Beach, Florida, Washington’s spring training home.
Wood didn’t make Washington’s Opening Day roster — the Nationals wanted to give him more time to develop. But as he glided through Class AAA, the noise around him continued to increase. Wood suffered a right hamstring injury in mid-May, which sidelined him for a few weeks. He returned on June 18 and has only played in six games.
When the Nationals traded Soto, they hoped to build a young core that would make them competitive again. Two parts of that core – Gore and shortstop CJ Abrams – are already in Washington and are off to a strong start to the year. Now Wood will join them as Washington’s years-long reconstruction takes another major step forward.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
