How Jacob Young’s offseason raised his offensive value for the Nationals

Jacob Young began the season at a blistering pace.

By June 1, he had surpassed his career total in homers by hitting seven. He was squaring the ball up consistently and demonstrating that there was more value in his bat, proof that his offseason training had paid off.

But then came June, when the Nationals outfielder suffered his worst month of the season, batting .186.

Young had a talk with the coaching staff before the All-Star break. There wasn’t anything mechanical that needed to be overhauled. It was more about Young’s pitch recognition. The rate at which he was swinging at pitches outside the strike zone spiked to 34.2%.

“I’ve hit my whole life, so getting to the big leagues and struggling was really hard.”

Nationals outfielder Jacob Young

But the conversations through that rough patch illustrated how far Young had come.

“Honestly, the message was ‘You’re still better than you were,’” Young said. “‘Even though the numbers aren’t there, you’ve had some unlucky results. You’ve had spurts of really good moments, so it’s in there. We just got to find a way to make it more consistent.’”

Young was hitting the ball hard and barreling it at a high rate; the batted balls just weren’t finding grass. But the process was there. His bat speed was at a career high and his OPS was above league average because he was getting more extra-base hits.

The offseason improvements Young made training at the player development facility Driveline positioned him to have the best offensive season of his career. Regarded as one of the best defenders in baseball, Young knew he had untapped potential in his bat. One way to reach it was to get his best swing off more consistently — and in his breakout 2026, he’s doing just that.

Entering Tuesday, the 27-year-old had cut his groundball rate from 56.5% in 2025 to 40.3% this year. He had also upped his rate of pulling the ball in the air to 16.3%, just below the major-league average of 16.8%. When he misses at the plate, he’s still hitting the ball harder and in the air more consistently.

“What [last offseason] was really about was making his best bullet even better,” said Travis Fitta, who was Young’s Driveline instructor before being hired as an assistant at Washington’s Triple-A affiliate. “Just about making his misses even better than what they already were.”

Young wanted to improve his offensive game after posting a career-worst .583 OPS in 2025. He was open-minded to new training methods as he explored and reexamined who he was, and could be, as a hitter.

“I always believed I was a better hitter than I was showing in the big leagues,” Young said in May. “I’ve hit my whole life, so getting to the big leagues and struggling was really hard.”

As he was searching for a hitting program, he had just moved to the Tampa Bay area as his offseason base. Driveline, which has soared in popularity in recent years, has a facility in the area, so Young took a tour.

Driveline believes in training hitters in extreme conditions — facing challenging velocity in drills and different pitch shapes — and incorporating biomechanical data to help them. The pragmatic, data-driven training approach appealed to Young, so he decided to work out there five or six times a week.

The main focus was improving his bat speed. Fitta challenged Young to reach the major league average of around 71.5 mph. Bat speed doesn’t necessarily equate to better hitting, but increasing it allows Young to optimize his ball flight and avoid hitting ground balls.

Bat-speed training has become more widespread throughout baseball with several methods — swinging with weighted bats, using longer or shorter bats. But Driveline pairs bat-speed training with its advanced technology, including a blast sensor or a HitTrax, a high-tech baseball simulator that tracks ball-flight data — measuring exit velocity, launch angle and distance for instantaneous feedback.

Fitta said each day had a singular focus to avoid overwhelming Young. One day was focused on speed. Another was dedicated to ball flight.

The toughest days for Young involved bat-to-ball training. Fitta would toss small Plyo balls and, with a skinny bat, Young would have to mash them. Then he would face “disgusting [pitch] shapes” off a machine with baseballs and foam balls while having a target ball flight to hit. The difficulty is by design.

It can be frustrating when a player isn’t seeing immediate results.

“Young would walk out going, ‘Well, I think I’m wasting an entire offseason,’” Fitta said. “‘I don’t think I’m getting any better at this,’ and it’s obviously the competitor being the competitor, but for him, I think he learned a lot about how to not only deliver speed and deliver force, but how to be very accurate with it. And I think J.Y. deserves all of the credit for the resurgence that he has done, because at the end of the day, no matter how good the coaching is, and no matter how good the place that you went is, players are the ones who swing the bat, and players are the ones who get better at doing something.”

The goals of the training sessions are to improve pitch recognition, make sure Young’s attack angles are out in front so he can do more damage and that the bat speed is evident.

But the rigorous practice settings allowed Young to understand what he’s doing wrong on days when he’s hitting the ball on the ground and not in the air. Fitta said it’s important to remind the player that the failures he sees in practice are the same that appear in games. Being diligent in preparation and adhering to the process are beneficial in the long term.

“It was always like a very competitive environment, and a game-like environment,” Young said. “It was always difficult. You kind of failed until you didn’t. But it’s fun. You’re testing your hitting at a higher level, so it’s not just someone throwing BP. It’s something that is more of a real pitch shape and kind of makes you realize if something’s working or not working.”

Maintaining bat speed is a never-ending process. It diminishes over the course of a major league season as health and fatigue cause it to fluctuate. Young tries to do bat-speed training at least once a series or once a week.

Although Young didn’t set out to hit double-digit homers, the power numbers are a result of the offseason he spent rewiring himself.

“This offseason was a big turning point for him. We’ve all had moments where we’re like, ‘I’m gonna throw it against the wall, and I got nothing to lose. I’m going to bet on myself and go do it,’” Fitta said. “And I think J.Y. needs to be celebrated way more for what he was able to do this offseason because it wasn’t simply just about becoming a better offensive player, but it was not accepting that that was it for him and he was just going to continue to be that guy.”