https://www.thebanner.com/sports/nationals-mlb/nationals-james-wood-consistency-Q4EKXFCSJ5ENFFQZTI43BVTZPE/The link probably doesn't work, but you can find the story by navigating to the Banner's sports site and selecting the Nationals tab.
Golden wrote a piece about how Wood is gaining respect and overcoming his second half of 2025. Physically, Golden says that Wood was dealing with nagging quad and knee injuries. He worked on some physical adjustments over the winter trying to calm down his upper body and react to pitches more by moving his lower half.
That said, the most important change per Wood was in his head. In the second half, he pressed and sped the game up.
When Wood is at his best, he trusts his hands and his eyes. If he doesn’t like a pitch, he won’t swing. If a pitch is in his zone, he’s aggressive. And he knows he won’t get beat by any pitch.
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In the second half, he didn’t maintain that demeanor. He chased hits. Griffin sensed Wood was trying to force his way out of slumps.
He trusted his instincts less and uncharacteristically swung at pitches out of the zone. He’d get antsy and force contact on pitches he couldn’t hit hard. Other times, Wood would be too selective and not swing at all.
Wood’s first-half whiff and strikeout rates were 30.2% and 27.6%, respectively. In the second half, those figures jumped to 36.8% and 39%.
Overthinking, tweaking his approach.
Golden says the slow start this year was a chance to throw him off and lead him to tweak his approach, but Wood and the coaches thought from the BP thought he was coming out of it in the batting practices he took in Philly. Of course, right after that, he had the week he mashed and won player of the week.
