Washington Nationals Part-Time Outfielder Off to Spectacular Start

The Washington Nationals have been off to a somewhat mild start so far in 2025, primarily because of their batting lineup, which has been very inconsistent through the first month of the season.

With a 15-19 record through 34 games, the Nationals stand in third place among the National League East teams, behind only the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies. Unfortunately, being seven and a half games off the lead already is a substantial margin.

However, some of their veteran pieces have put things together and kickstarted the offense in recent weeks. One of the players who has really begun to improve is outfielder Alex Call, who, despite a small sample size in 2024, has started to really prove his worth on a team of predominantly younger pieces.

Having veterans who can teach the younger prospects and players around the lineup is critical for long-term team building, and with Call leading the team in batting average for players with more than five games played, he has rapidly become a huge contributor.

Through the first month of the season, Call slashed .328/.432/.414 with 12 RBI, 10 runs, a stolen base, and 13 walks to six strikeouts. His hitting has been extremely efficient, and while he still lacks that power pop that would really take his game to the next level, it really does not affect how successful he has been whatsoever.

He has also been extremely reliable in the field, as in 150 innings in the outfield, he has 41 putouts, two assists, and no errors, posting a perfect 1.000 fielding rate on 43 chances.

When looking more into the advanced statistics and diving into why his success is occurring, there are four clear and definitive outliers in his metrics. These are chase percentage, whiff percentage, strikeout rate, and walk rate. In all four of these stats he is 96th percentile or higher in according to Baseball Savant, and in chase percentage, he is the 100th percentile, a.k.a one of two players at the very top of the MLB.

These stats indicate a clear picture, in that he is swinging only at pitches he finds to be within his abilities to hit, and if he does swing, odds are he will be making contact with the ball in the large majority of cases. While his squared up percentage does not meet the threshold for a percentile ranking on Baseball Savant, it depicts that he would also be 90th percentile or above there as well.

Overall, Call has been outstanding to start the year, and given he has had the opportunity for substantial playing time already, it could be safe to say he will only get increased reps as the season goes on if he keeps playing this way.