As the professional baseball career of Nelson Cruz flashes before my eyes, no single image emerges to define his legacy. He served as a leader in the clubhouse, was devoted to off-the-field humanitarian efforts, proudly represented his Dominican homeland, consistently hit the baseball so hard that he earned the nickname Boomstick, and did all of it at a high level for more years than any aging curve would have dared to predict.

Last week, after 19 seasons in majors, Cruz announced his retirement on The Adam Jones Podcast. He also addressed the second-most important topic pertaining to his career: the origin of his nickname. Back in 2009, while playing as himself in a video game for some sort of promo event, Cruz hit a home run and referred to his bat as the Boomstick. The name circulated amongst fans and stuck. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball Research & Development Intern

Location: Nationals Park, Washington, DC
Status: Part-Time

Description
Internships are a key way for us to find future full-time members of our department, with many of our senior department members beginning as interns. While a pathway to a full-time position is not assured, many of our former interns have found full-time opportunities with the Nationals or other MLB clubs. While internships ideally span from Opening Day to November 1st, we’re open to candidates that may not be available for this entire period.

The Washington Nationals are committed to creating a diverse environment and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, family responsibilities, matriculation, political affiliation, genetic information, disability or veteran status.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Use R to build statistical models to answer a primary baseball research question under the direction of a Baseball R&D team member
• Communicate findings through written reports, presentations, and informal conversations
• Design and build informative data visualizations for use in automated reports or internal web applications

Requirements:

Education and Experience Requirements

• Experience analyzing datasets and training statistical models using R, Python, or equivalent
• Has or is pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree from a four-year college or university, preferably in Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science or related field
• Willingness to relocate to Washington, DC
• Authorized to work in the United States

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities necessary to perform essential functions

• Ability to complete statistical modeling projects
• Ability to listen and incorporate feedback
• Enthusiasm for learning new skills related to programming, statistical modeling, and data visualization
• Passion for baseball and desire to work in baseball operations
• Working knowledge of sabermetrics and modern quantitative baseball evaluation concepts

Physical/Environmental Requirements

• Office: Working conditions are normal for an office environment. Work may require occasional weekend and/or evening work. Occasional long hours may be required during draft, trade deadline, or postseason.
• Interns can attend all home games but are not required to. Meals are provided to staff during games.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Washington Nationals.

Intern, Major League Operations (2024 Season)

Job Classification: Part-Time
Location: Nationals Park, Washington, DC

Summary:
Contribute to Washington Nationals Baseball Operations for the 2024 season as one of our highly valued interns. We’re looking for accomplished individuals who can contribute to our front office by specializing in work related to Major League Operations. This internship is for the 2024 season and typically spans from Opening Day to November 1st. We will also consider candidates available after completion of the spring semester.

The Major League Operations internship includes assisting the Baseball Operations Department with day-to-day assignments, along with long term projects centered on roster management, salary arbitration, transactions, and the economics of baseball. A degree in economics, statistics, computer science or mathematics is preferred, and it is expected that the candidate will be able to demonstrate an interest and understanding of both publicly available sabermetrics research and the economics of baseball. Experience in finance or consulting is valued, as well as baseball/softball playing experience at the collegiate or professional level.

The Nationals are a military-friendly organization actively recruiting veterans and spouses.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Manage recurring tasks such as updating depth charts, maintaining tracking sheets, and disseminating daily reports
• Ad hoc data analysis projects
• Review of new research from various external analytical sources
• Assist with major baseball events such as the trade deadline, the amateur draft, and salary arbitration
• Support with general office administration
• Other duties as assigned

Requirements:
Minimum Education and Experience Requirements

• Undergraduate or graduate degree from an accredited college or university
• Undergraduate or graduate degree in Economics, Statistics, Computer Science, or Mathematics preferred
• Experience in Finance or Consulting preferred
• Minimum cumulative grade point average of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale
• College or professional baseball/softball playing experience preferred
• Available for the entire term of the Internship
• Authorized to work in the United States

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities necessary to perform essential functions:

• Highly motivated and excellent attention to detail
• Demonstrated passion for baseball and baseball operations
• Excellent communication skills including the ability to write clearly and effectively
• Ability to use time efficiently
• Proficient in MS Office applications such as Excel and PowerPoint
• Strong analytical skills
• Uphold Core Values: Excellence, Performance, and Accountability. These core values set the tone in everything we do, help us succeed on and off the field, make a difference in the community and provide the best guest experience in sports. It is important that the person in the position commits themselves to these core values so that we can constantly move forward in the same direction—together.

Physical/Environmental Requirements

• Office: Working conditions are normal for an office environment. Work may require occasional weekend and/or evening work.

All applicants for employment at the Washington Nationals are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 prior to commencing employment. Applicants who receive a conditional offer of employment will be required to produce proof of vaccination status prior to their first day of employment. Applicants with qualifying disabilities or bona fide religious objections may be exempted from this requirement or otherwise accommodated if they are unable to be vaccinated.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Washington Nationals.

While most of the baseball world was focused on the playoff race, the Nationals got an early start to their offseason on Wednesday, avoiding arbitration with veteran utility man Ildemaro Vargas. The terms of the contract have not yet been announced, but it’s safe to presume the journeyman will earn a raise over his $975,000 salary from the current season. He set a new career high in plate appearances this year, playing in 84 games at five different positions. What’s more, the 2023 campaign marked the first of his career in which he wasn’t optioned, traded, or designated for assignment; apart from a three-week stint on the injured list and a few rehab games at Triple-A, he spent the entire season on Washington’s big league roster.

I’ll be honest: when the Nationals first broke the news about Vargas, I didn’t think it warranted a full write-up. Still, I wanted to do my due diligence, so I began my typical process of cursory player research. First, I checked his FanGraphs page. A 77 wRC+ and -0.1 WAR? Sure, sounds about right. Next, I went to Baseball Savant. 16th-percentile xwOBA? Yeah, that tracks. Then, I looked on Baseball Prospectus. A 144 DRC+ and 2.0 WARP? Okay, nothing out of the… wait, what?

After refreshing the page a couple dozen times and checking to make sure there isn’t a second Ildemaro Vargas out there, I realized this guy might be just a little more interesting than I initially thought. DRC+ is only one metric, and like any metric, it’s vulnerable to small sample size trickery. Be that as it may, I can’t ignore the fact that DRC+ ranks Vargas as the fourth-best hitter in the National League; it goes Ronald Acuña Jr., Mookie Betts, Juan Soto, and Vargas. He’s ahead of names like Matt Olson, Luis Arraez, and Freddie Freeman. Small sample size or no, this is a player who deserves our attention: Read the rest of this entry »

Full Stack Web Developer, Baseball Research & Development

Summary:
The Washington Nationals are seeking a full stack web developer to join our Baseball Research & Development team. We are looking for candidates who are both passionate about building web applications and enthusiastic about the opportunity to work on software that has a significant impact within a baseball organization.

The developer will work on a small team to build and maintain an internal web application used by scouts, coaches, player development staff, and the baseball operations front office. Some key features of the site include scouting reports, video, player projections, custom reports and tools, and the display of both public and proprietary metrics related to player performance and evaluation.

We prefer candidates who are willing to relocate to Washington, DC area for in person/hybrid work at Nationals Park but are willing to consider a fully remote option for exceptional candidates.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Design and build interactive data-driven pages, which may include filterable and sortable tables, plots, heatmaps, video, and other interactive components
• Build API’s for connecting internal microservices
• Develop data imports and other background processing jobs
• Collaborate with software engineers, data engineers, and analysts in the R&D group
• Participate in code reviews

Requirements:

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, information science, or related experiences
• 4+ years of full-time web development experience

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities necessary to perform essential functions

• Ability to communicate clearly and effectively
• Ability to write clean, concise, and maintainable code
• Ability to work both collaboratively and independently
• Experience with modern programming languages (e.g. Ruby, Python, JavaScript) and frameworks (e.g. Rails, Django, Flask, FastAPI, Node/Express). Experience with Rails is preferred.
• Experience with frontend JavaScript frameworks, such as Vue 3, React, or jQuery.
• Understanding of relational database schema design, experience using MySQL & PostgreSQL, and comfort writing direct SQL statements.
• Experience with data visualization.
• Experience with Linux and using command line tools.
• Experience working with a large inherited codebase is a plus.
• Authorized to work in the United States

Physical/Environmental Requirements

• Office: Working conditions are normal for an office environment. Work may require occasional weekend and/or evening work.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Washington Nationals.

Throughout the 2019 postseason, the Washington Nationals made a habit of using their entire margin of error. They needed a three-run, last-ditch rally to get out of the Wild Card game, then another 11th-hour comeback to get past the Dodgers in Game 5 of the NLDS. Dave Martinez tried to shorten his pitching staff as much as possible, a desperation move that’s backfired on manager after manager as long as there have been playoffs.

By the time Game 6 of the World Series rolled around, the Nationals were facing elimination once again. They’d lost three straight to the 107-win Astros and needed to beat Justin Verlander on the road to stay alive. Patrick Corbin had been run ragged. Max Scherzer’s body had locked up to the point where he couldn’t dress himself. Martinez had already gambled with the likes of Tanner Rainey and Wander Suero more than anyone was comfortable with.

Then Stephen Strasburg stepped up and did something you don’t see pitchers do much anymore. He handled it.

After a rocky first inning, Strasburg kept the irrepressible Astros offense off the board into the ninth. The Nats once again scored bunches of runs late, and the next evening they were hoisting the proverbial piece of metal. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2020, the Washington Nationals succumbed to one of the worst championship hangovers of all time. They’re on course to finish in last place in the NL East for the fourth year running (though by God, the Mets are going to make them earn it this year!), and while signs of rejuvenation are on the horizon, they are only signs at this point. Since that pandemic-shortened season, Patrick Corbin has existed mostly as a study in contrast, a reminder that the ruins of now used to be the enviable bastion of then. In 2019, Corbin was one of three bona fide front-of-the-rotation starters in Washington, along with Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg. Now, Strasburg is on the IL indefinitely as he recovers from thoracic outlet syndrome. Scherzer is gone. So are Juan Soto, Trea Turner, Anthony Rendon, Ryan Zimmerman, Daniel Hudson, and Sean Doolittle. Victor Robles has been limited to just 36 games this season due to injury. For all intents and purposes, Corbin is the only championship National left.

Last year, Corbin pitched as an act of self-abnegation, posting a 6.31 ERA and leading all of baseball in losses, hits, and earned runs allowed. His name was a metonym for futility.

But right now? Things aren’t that bad. Read the rest of this entry »

CJ Abrams befuddles me. There’s no question that he has plus raw power in his bat. Look at this year’s statistics; he’s sitting in the 81st percentile for maximum exit velocity. But despite that fact, he’s in the 10th percentile for average exit velocity, and the 17th for hard-hit rate. He’s a power hitter! He’s a slap hitter! Both are true.

Likewise, I’m not quite sure what to make of the rest of his game. He has blazing straight line speed, and he uses that to his advantage on the basepaths. We have him down as the third-most valuable baserunner in the majors this year, behind only Esteury Ruiz and Corbin Carroll. But almost all of that value comes on stolen bases – he’s 25th in UBR, which measures non-steal advancement. And on defense, he has tremendous range and an average throwing arm, but grades out somewhere between average (DRS) and poor (OAA) anyway. His profile is a series of contradictions.

The thing is, all of these have been true about Abrams since the Padres drafted him in the first round in 2019. He was a divisive prospect from the start; it was never clear whether he’d end up as a slugging second baseman or a rangy, leadoff-hitting shortstop. Then the pandemic canceled the 2020 minor league season, and he missed most of 2021 with injury even as the Padres aggressively promoted him. Suddenly he was debuting in the big leagues at 21 as an injury replacement for, gulp, Fernando Tatis Jr. Life comes at you fast. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cubs made it clear that they’re buyers on Monday afternoon, acquiring third baseman Jeimer Candelario from the Nationals for shortstop Kevin Made and pitcher DJ Herz.

What a difference a week makes! After losing the opener of a four-game series to the Cardinals just over a week ago, the Cubs stood at 45–51, and it seemed more likely that they would be sellers than buyers come deadline time. An eight-game winning streak later, off the backs of the hated Cardinals and the moribund White Sox, changed that calculus; even a Sunday loss to break the streak wasn’t enough to banish the idea that the NL Central was there for the taking. After all, four games in the standings isn’t that wide a chasm, and with the fourth-best run differential in the National League, there’s at least one legitimate reason to think the Cubs have deserved better than their .500 record this year. The Pirates have faded, the Cardinals wouldn’t be trading off talent if even they thought they had a miracle in them, and neither of the Reds or Brewers are likely to take big steps forward. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t want to be rude, but here’s a fact of life: I pay less attention to the Nationals than the average team in Major League Baseball. It’s not because I have a grudge against them or anything; I went to college in Virginia and have a ton of family in the D.C. area, so I know an absolute ton of Nats fans. They’re just not that interesting at the moment, and there’s a lot of baseball to watch, so someone has to slide down the priority queue.

When I have paid attention to the Nationals, though, I’ve liked what I’ve seen. I thought they made some smart signings this offseason. They’ve done a good job of giving plenty of playing time to interesting players. Lane Thomas might never have found a regular home if the Nats hadn’t come calling, Joey Meneses is being given every chance to play out of a season-starting slump, and Hunter Harvey looks like a nice bullpen arm for the trade deadline.

In my chat this week, someone mentioned that the Tigers would be in the thick of the AL Central race if they’d merely held onto Jeimer Candelario and Isaac Paredes. And that drove a realization for me: Candelario looks good again. Is he the real deal? Can some contending team plug him in at third base and have an All-Star–level contributor? Let’s find out. Read the rest of this entry »