Young Nationals Superstar Makes Debut In Latest MLB Player Rankings

The Washington Nationals and their fanbase are hoping for one of their top players to break out into stardom this year and it looks like he is well on the way.

CBS Sports' Dayn Perry recently released the latest top 100 MLB player rankings and outfielder James Wood made the list at the No. 83 spot.

Wood was the lone National on the list, putting Washington in the bottom-seven of teams in MLB. Four other teams had just one player make it and two had none.

This is already and improvement over last year, where the Nationals had zero players make the list.

The 22-year-old is one of the top pieces that Washington got back from the San Diego Padres in the Juan Soto trade. He made his MLB debut last season and certainly didn't disappoint.

Over his first 79 games in the Majors, Wood posted a .264/.354/.427 slash line with a 122 OPS+. He hit nine home runs and stole 14 bases.

The hope for him in his sophomore campaign should be to push himself to have the first 20/20 season of his career.

Given that he isn't the best defender in the outfield, they will need his offense to carry a bit of the load. It certainly looks ready to early on in his career.

Wood is entering the season with a ton of momentum, as he has had an excellent spring.

Over 11 games and 36 plate appearances, he has a .344/.417/.844 slash line with four home runs. That is a very promising pace that he has set.

He has yet to steal a base this spring, but that makes sense as he has little reason to be over aggressive before the year begins. As long as it comes back during the regular season, that is all that matters.

There are a handful of his teammates that could breakout and find themselves with him on the next edition of this list, but the most likely are Luis Garcia Jr. and CJ Abrams.

Garcia was the best player on the team last year, but his breakout sort of came out of nowhere. It'll take some time for him to get recognized by the rest of the league.

A .282/.318/.444 slash line with a 115 OPS+ and 18 home runs to 22 stolen bases is a great year for a 24-year-old.

Abrams didn't finish last year great, but did make a great overall jump in his first All-Star campaign.

He had a .246/.314/.433 slash line with 20 home runs, 31 stolen bases and a 110 OPS+.

Like Wood, both of those players have had strong starts to the year in spring training.