Individualized player plans and then a macro approach to scoring runs
A lot has changed over the years with analytics bringing on new tools of measurement such as launch angle, exit velo, and bat speed. All objective numbers to be used by whoever wanted to get in front with the knowledge to combine with traditional stats. OBP was already the rage with the Moneyball revolution. And RC, OPS and WAR became the three most important stats to measure a hitter’s worth. While K rates, SLG and HR/9 were important, nobody was willing to pay Adam Dunn the big bucks after posting a lofty .536 SLG and an .889 OPS with the Nats in 2010 at the age of 30. The reason — only a 3.0 WAR. The White Sox signed him to a 4-year $56 million deal to basically DH.
Here’s the cautionary tale — some have compared Dunn to Pete Alonso. And Alonso just finished his age-30 season with a 3.6 WAR and a .524 SLG and an .871 OPS. Very close to Dunn’s numbers. The K rates had Alonso way ahead at 22.8% compared to Dunn at 30.7%. And Alonso just cashed in for a 5-year $155 million deal. Alonso’s RC was 116 and Dunn at 105. Time will tell on this. Dunn had a 117 RC in the year before he went to free agency.
That allows us to segue into one of my long-held hitting philosophies that you would not teach Dunn to hit like Nasim Nunez or Jacob Young. Your Dunn on the 2026 Nats is James Wood. Let’s go back to our World Series hitting coach — Kevin Long. He was accused of being a launch angle teacher. He corrected them that he teaches BLD. What is BLD? Long explained that is boring line drives. Not so boring. Every hitting coach knows that line drives have the highest xBA and xSLG which would give the highest OPS if the ball is not caught. Improving on contact location by going with pitches is the advanced course of Tony Gwynn. BABIP — using the eye test and ranking it with exit velo is a great tool to know the luck factor.
The goal here is how do you get each player to hit BLDs? Again, you do not want to teach Wood the same way as Nunez in the process to get to the results. Individualized player plans and then a macro approach to scoring runs is the new philosophy being instilled by new hitting coach Matt Borgschulte. We have been waiting to hear this from a Nats hitting coach. And in Borgs’ first media session of 2026 — he put it all into his talk with the media if you were listening close enough.
Borgs had huge success as the hitting coach with the Orioles from 2022-2024 and saw some players transform from fringe DFAs like Ryan O’Hearn who went from a .611 OPS before Borgschulte to an .801. Hitters like Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson thrived under Borgs. After he left, both dropped off — a lot.
The new hitting coach has an overarching philosophy of what is the macro point of the game: run production. And that is a team philosophy. Basically everyone has to work towards that goal of increasing run production from the 4.24 runs per game the Nats were at in 2025 where they ranked 20th in baseball. League average was 4.45 with the Bronx Bombers leading at 5.24. Exactly one run per game more than the Nats. Run prevention, of course, is the other side of the coin and that will fall on the pitching and defense.
Borgs does not have Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Cody Bellinger on his roster. What people might not realize is that Trent Grisham hit the second most homers for the Yankees and Jazz Chisholm was just after Grisham — and both were actually ahead of Bellinger and Stanton. Can Borgs take Wood, Abrams, and add two others to become his Grisham and Chisholm?
Speaking of the Yankees, in the movie 61* that was about the 1961 home run chase by the M&M boys of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris in pursuit of Babe Ruth‘s record of 60, Maris is sitting with his wife and showing her on a bat that the difference in hitting a home run is sometimes a margin of an 1/8th of an inch on the bat barrel. Certainly from a line drive double to a home run you could believe that. Maris believed that 65 years ago. They didn’t know that would later become known as launch angle.
“The overarching philosophy is, the goal of the offense is to score runs, and we’re going to value every aspect of hitting that we can to maximize that run scoring potential of the offense. Whether that’s hitting the ball over the fence, in the gap and driving for extra bases, or whether that’s taking a good at-bat, taking our walks and really owning the zone.”
— Borgschulte said
“They’re trying to do it at the highest level, which makes it extremely difficult. So learning about that process is something I’ll continue to take with me.”
“A couple things that stick out are the competitiveness and the desire that these guys have, not just to be good players, but to continue to get better. It’s really exciting for me to hear guys that are really interested in improving and wanting to be the best. Not just better, but the best. Those are the kind of players you want to work with.”
“We’re going to be developing player plans for each of these guys to help them improve in the areas they need to. Several of them will have an emphasis on trying to hit more balls on a line in the air to produce the results that we want.”
Perhaps Borgs biggest challenge will be going from the worst team on launch angle to a line drive hitting team. Said another way, he needs to get them from pounding worm burners to BLDs. On top of that, some of the hitters must improve their chase rates to see more pitches and accept walks.
The Nats didn’t have a hard-hit rate issue (when they actually made contact) as they ranked 8th in MLB with a 42.1 percent average. The problem was too many of those hard-hit balls were driven into the ground where we know the BABIP is only in the low 200’s. Not good, but if you get those in the line-drive launch angle range — all of a sudden your BABIP skyrockets into the low-600’s.
MLB Statcast graphic
As a general guideline, here are the launch angles that correspond to different types of contact:
- Ground ball: Lower than 10 degrees
- Line drive: 10-25 degrees
- Fly ball: 25-50 degrees
- Pop up: Higher than 50 degrees
The Nats were the worst in MLB with a 9.9 degree launch angle as the team average. Some of that is the teaching of hitting down to the ball to create backspin. Sure, people complained when Long was teaching that to Trea Turner — and it eventually worked for him as he is quietly on a Hall-of-Fame trajectory. But again, you might not be teaching that same philosophy to Wood and Brady House. Hence, Borgs will be doing individualized hitting plans. Every player is different.
Again, this is about line drive swings and staying in that 17.5 percent launch angle range with margin for error. And Borgs next spoke about making the pitchers have to pitch to you meaning that you must stop chasing bad pitches. Force pitchers to come inside the zone and make mistakes.
Remember, the strike zone is always a rectangle with a varying height and a fixed width. Every batter deals with the same 17 inch plate. And obviously a taller batter like Wood has more vertical strike zone than a shorter Dylan Crews has to work with. Wood’s rectangle is higher in length and more area to cover. The facts of geometry. Another fact of strategy is getting the pitch in your hot zone where a batter can do more damage as well as accepting walks and moving the line. The 2025 roster tied for the ninth-highest chase rate (29.0%) and the 11th-lowest in-zone swing rate (66.3%) among all teams in MLB resulting in, or at least contributing to the third worst team ranking in walks.
“I think sometimes we can make hitting a little bit too complicated for hitters. So having a simple approach, giving the hitters what they need, information-wise, and working with them on their swing, on what they need to do to improve, but also keeping it simple and making sure that when they go into the box, their mind isn’t on what they need to do in their swing. It’s simply on the approach, staying in the present moment and executing the plan that they’re set out for.”
— Borgschulte said
“We don’t want to attack the pitcher’s pitches on the corners. Those are pitches that are going to be really challenging to put in play in hard [contact]. As well as laying off those pitches, it sets us up to [not swing] at the chase pitch and force them to the middle. We get into better counts. We make better decisions. And we have more guys on-base, — and force the pitcher to make more pitches, and so on and so forth to help the team offensively.”
Remember, the Nats have Borgschulte plus two assistant hitting coaches in Andrew Aydt and Shawn O’Malley. That is six eyes on these hitters plus player development and analytics personnel. Between them, they have talked to every player. Each player has an offseason plan to work on. Having two additional hitting coaches under Borgs will help handle the workload with an evolving roster of 13 position players.
Aydt is new to pro coaching for a team, but spent the past seven years coaching at Driveline Baseball, most recently as the assistant director of hitting. O’Malley was a hitting coach in the Seattle Mariners’ system for six seasons including a stint at their Triple-A affiliate the past two years. O’Malley played 13 seasons in the pros with three seasons in the big leagues. “The collaboration that we’re going to have, the communication that we’re going to have is going to be really important,” said Borgschulte. “… I’ve been coaching for a while, but I haven’t stood in a Major League [batter’s] box before. So being able to have all of those different perspectives and bring them together with a group that doesn’t have an ego and doesn’t [only] want to be the guy with the right answer, we’re just looking for what’s right for the player. So really excited about our [hitting] staff and excited to get going.”
This is where the rubber meets the road as they say. Coaching up players as individuals. Having a plan and then executing the plan with consistency will be the real test. No overhauls of the engines here. Subtle tweaks to get to the goal for each player and the macro overarching goal of scoring more runs and getting above that MLB average of 4.45 runs per game. Baby steps first. Remember, you can’t get home if you don’t get to first base as Step-1.
