James Wood Is Still Growing (And Other Things to Know)

1. The first thing to know about James Wood is that he’s not just tall. It’s an important note this week, with Wood about to play in his second All-Star game in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. When you’re 6-foot-6 on a baseball field, the modifier tends to follow you like a nagging younger sibling. Now up for the National League is 6-6 outfielder … There’s a catch by Wood, the Nats’ 6-6 … This guy, I mean, he’s 6-6, for crying out loud, he must have been good at basketball. None of it’s in bad faith, necessarily. Wood is extremely tall. He was a pretty good hooper in high school. But height alone, while a defining gift in other sports, has never made it so someone can crush a baseball over and over. Ask Charles Barkley, who’s also 6-foot-6, or Bill de Blasio, who’s 6-6 if you round up an eighth of an inch. And while you’re at it, ask them if, in their expert opinion, being tall has ever taught a young player how to fail in the major leagues without going crazy. Or if it’s ever helped anyone deal with the demands of being famous in their hometown. Or if, in the middle of a weekslong slump, it can magically make all your frustrations go away, just because you can reach the top shelf without a step stool. Ask them if height makes it easier to constantly be the center of attention at work, especially when you haven’t been around that long.

2. The second thing to know about James Wood is that he’s still growing.

3. We’ll get to the 23-year-old’s stats in a bit here. Spoiler: They are pretty absurd. But it’s worth framing them with what happened last summer — when, for about six weeks, Wood looked far from making another all-star game in the near future. After posting a 1.014 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in May of 2025, that shrank to .564 for July. And after hitting 22 homers in April, May and June, he hit only nine in July, August and September of his first major league season, all while his strikeout total kept climbing.

4. He was quietly dealing with knee and quad pain in his left leg. When Kenny, his dad, brought friends to a game, they immediately asked why Wood was walking and running like that. He wasn’t smiling much, either, which made his mom, Paula, think about the Little Leaguer who vibrated with excitement when winter started thawing. She later said she just wanted him to get that back.

5. “I don’t want to say I hit the panic button,” Wood said in an interview this month. “But I will say that I wasn’t sure where to go. I mean, this is the hardest place to struggle. But also, with these pitchers, it’s the easiest place to struggle at the same time. You don’t get any breaks.”

6. Some time after last season ended, the Woods did a “family postmortem,” as Paula put it. Paula, Kenny and James’s two sisters try to make it as easy as possible for Wood to play 40 minutes from where he grew up in Olney, Maryland. For example, when friends ask for tickets, Kenny usually handles it. This also means that Kenny and Paula are often in the stands at Nats Park. James didn’t want that to change. He did, however, tell his parents he doesn’t always need them to hang around after games. Sometimes, he explained, he just wants to zone out, pop in some music, lose himself in lifting weights.

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7. Wood was already planning to have a more detailed postgame workout routine. This was the first thing that would be different in 2026.

8. His initial offseason goal was to get his body right. If Guinness kept a world record for split squats, he may have set it while training with Harvey Sharman, the Nats’ director of medical services. Then once the calendar flipped to January, Wood headed to Florida to fine-tune his swing, which included a handful of visits to John-Ford Griffin at IMG Academy, where Griffin has worked with Wood since his senior year of high school. He’s one of the few true experts on Wood’s swing. But no one is an expert like Wood himself, which Griffin explains by mentioning how their sessions keep getting quieter and quieter.

9. “At the beginning, I felt like more of a hitting coach with him,” Griffin said. “But now it’s more like I’m a supporter, because he’s his own hitting coach, processing and making small tweaks in real time. That really never happens at his age.”

Wood’s 28 home runs ranks tied for fourth in MLB this season. He also ranks first in walks (79) and first in runs scored (89). Mark Goldman/Icon Sportswire/AP

10. Right before this season began, Paula had a few things to say to her son. And because she wanted it to feel a bit more intentional than something she might tell him in passing, she opened an email and started typing. Her prayer, she wrote, was for Wood to find joy in at least one thing every game. For him and his teammates to stay healthy. For Wood to keep showing the league that he’s just getting started, then “continue getting more comfortable sharing some of yourself with the world … you have a lot to offer!” But that wasn’t all. She reminded Wood to look around once in a while and remember how far he’s come. Then, after urging him to treat his mind and body well, she wrote: “Protect your peace and minimize the distractions. It all matters and will pay dividends for the rest of your life.”

11. Paula typed a bit more: “And, always, remember just how much we all love you! We are here for you. All you need to do is ask.”

12. She hit send.

13. But to get Wood to actually read the email, Paula had to text him that it was in his inbox. “OK, yeah, that’s true,” Wood said with a laugh. “But she also sometimes has to call me to tell me she sent a text, so it’s not just emails I’m missing.”

14. “It’s a crazy season,” Wood said of what he took from his mom’s message. “So just try to find ways to slow it down and enjoy it. I think I’ve been a lot better about that. It comes with time, more than anything, but I’m also definitely paying more attention to myself this year.”

15. So, those numbers: For traditional stats, Wood’s OPS (.985) ranks second in the whole league. He is tied for fourth in homers (28), first in walks (79), first in runs scored (89, 31 more than the next player), and even has 15 steals. Only the Astros’ Yordan Alvarez reached base more often in the first half of the season. And then with advanced numbers, Wood ranks first in hard hit rate and second in average exit velocity (95 mph). It all makes the strikeouts — 129, fourth-most in the sport — extremely palatable.

16. In a way, the strikeouts are by design, a function of Wood’s plate approach when he’s thriving and when he’s not. He’s highly selective about what he swings at. He sacrifices a good bit of contact ability for power. And with two central goals of baseball — hitting the ball hard, getting on base — he’s been as good as just about anyone. He also has 10 leadoff homers, which is already a Nationals record. He’s a massive reason why the Nats are tied for the most runs scored in the league — and why, after Vegas projected them to win around 65 games, they are 48-49 at the break, right on the edge of the wild-card race.

17. And so success correlates with attention in the major leagues. That applies off the field, where there are regular tugs on Wood’s time, and inside the clubhouse, where he now gets attention by simply walking through the room. But because of how young the Nats’ roster is, Wood doesn’t have an established veteran to lean on, to watch and learn from when it comes to granular life in the majors. In Chicago, Pete Crow-Armstrong has Alex Bregman. In San Diego, Jackson Merrill has Fernando Tatís Jr. and Manny Machado. In Arizona, Corbin Carroll has Nolan Arenado.

18. “This is a team full of guys who are figuring it out,” said Kevin Frandsen, the Nats’ color commentator and a former major leaguer. “So of course they’re going to gravitate toward James, both because of the way he’s playing and just who he is. That also means he’s sorting through a lot on his own, to a degree, which is no small thing. I was in the cage recently and you could literally feel everyone migrating toward him. He doesn’t say a ton, but they want to hear how he breaks down his own swing. They want his opinion on their swings. Honestly? It feels a lot like Zim.”

James Wood leads the Nationals off the field after defeating the Kansas City Royals on June 16. John McDonnell/AP

19. “I get why people would make that connection,” Ryan Zimmerman — or Zim — said on a drive to the ballpark this summer. “But let me just say: These kids now have to worry about way more. Social media didn’t exist when I went through what he is going through. It used to be that, in your first two or three years, you really didn’t say much or do much. You were seen and not heard, so that made it a lot easier for me.”

20. Zim is Mr. National, the team’s first first-round pick after it moved to D.C., the player who spent his entire career with the franchise, growing as it did, and winning a World Series ring. Having retired a few years back, he’s still with the club as a special advisor, popping in here and there. When he first came up in 2005, the Nats were in the early stages of building toward contending, not too different from when Wood debuted two Junes ago. There was maybe some pressure, Zim says now, in knowing he was one of the few reasons anyone bought a ticket. Otherwise, though, he felt like he was able to ease into a prominent role.

21. “But with James, given the way he’s played, even if you’re a quieter guy, a guy that doesn’t really love the spotlight, you’re kind of forced into that role no matter what,” Zimmerman said. “There’s so much attention now. But if I have any takeaway of how he’s handled it, it’s that he seems to have figured out the best way: Just be yourself. Teammates like that.”

22. Last month, Wood had a freezing-cold stretch that lasted 14 games. From June 15 to 29, he collected only eight hits in 64 plate appearances. He struck out 25 times to six walks. His OPS dipped below .900 for the first time in five weeks. And then, after hitting a double at Fenway Park on June 30, Wood stood on second base, turned toward the Nats’ dugout and … meditated. He closed his eyes. He touched his pointer fingers to his thumbs. He looked like a man protecting his peace, just like his mom suggested. It looked, honestly, as if her email was rattling around his head, right there in the middle of the field. Was it?

23. “Well … um … so …” It was a couple weeks later and Wood was about to burst out laughing at his locker in D.C. The truth was that CJ Abrams, the Nats’ shortstop, is constantly ordering random things off Amazon. And some time before that Boston series, Abrams had torn open a box to reveal his latest purchase: a set of Tibetan meditation bowls. Abrams spread them out on the floor, and he, Wood and a few other Nationals messed around with them, which might have been relaxing if they weren’t so busy riling each other up. “Then someone, I forget who, said that meditating would be a sick celly for a double,” Wood recalled. “But then we didn’t double for like a week. So when I did, I had to hit it, you know?”

24. James Wood is still only 23.