That Time A D.C. Prep School Cast Away Nats Phenom James Wood

[DCSportsFan.com]

James Wood did more than any other Washington National this spring to get fans fired up for the real season. Wood, who came to the Nats in 2022 via the Juan Soto trade, led all the organization’s minor leaguers last year with 26 homers, 91 RBI and a .520 slugging percentage. Baseball America pegged the 6-foot-6 21-year-old as the top defensive outfielder in the Nats’ farm system. Wood began spring training with a thrilling home run binge and ended it with a Grapefruit League-best 1.214 OPS.

Alas, for all his pep rallying down in Florida and as bright as Wood’s future with the organization surely looks, he wasn’t on Washington’s Opening Day roster Thursday as the Nats fell to the Reds in Cincinnati. Wood was among the final batch of cuts announced by the team last week. But this isn’t the first time Wood’s been cast aside by a baseball team in the nation’s capital. While awaiting his debut in the bigs, let’s look back at the weird tale of his last exile from D.C., which came amid one of the region’s higher-profile schoolboy sports soap operas.

Wood grew up in the D.C. suburbs, and he began his high school career playing for St. John’s College High School in town. D.C. hasn’t been much of a baseball town for decades. By my count, as of last season only three guys born here since 1990 ever made the majors: L.J. Hoes (a St. John’s alum), Matt Mervis, and Peter Solomon. The last native to become a bona fide MLB star was Maury Wills, who starred for Cardozo High in the early 1950s. (The greatest prep baseball story in the town’s history goes even further back and belongs to St. Alban’s James Trimble, a superstar pitcher and alleged classmate-with-benefits of Gore Vidal while both were at St. Alban’s School in the early 1940s, whose bright future on the diamond was cut short at Iwo Jima 79 years ago.)

But the St. John’s team that Wood played for as a freshman in 2019 was absolutely loaded with talent. Among his teammates were several future D-I pitchers and James Triantos, a Chicago Cubs prospect who was named the Offensive Player of the Year in the Arizona Fall League a few months ago.

Read more here: https://defector.com/that-time-a-d-c-prep-school-cast-away-nats-phenom-james-wood

[DCDeal]

Wow – another re-hash of the Post’s 2020 attempt to slander Gibbs and the SJC program.
Didn’t work then.
And for the record, those players chose to leave and not compete.

[Author]

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