Baseball is hard, and winning games gets harder every year – so for Jayson Werth, who watched the Nationals finish a second straight 71-91 season last year, watching a young team struggle to grow led to him wanting to make an impact.
That’s why he’s in Nats camp this year as a guest instructor, hoping he can provide some of the same knowledge to this current young core that he did when he signed with a young Nationals team years ago.
But would Werth consider a more permanent type of role as a “conduit” of sorts between the front office and the players, sort of what Sean Doolittle does as a pitching strategist, only less analytics (which he notably dislikes) and more how to play to those strengths?
“You get away from the game and then the game changes on you, and then you come back in and you're kind of out of touch – but I know the game, it’s still baseball,” Werth said. “I grew up listening to my grandpa talk about the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, then watched my uncle play in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and I played after that – so it’s changed in some regard, but still the same game, where you have to score runs. As the game evolves and players evolve, thinking has to evolve, but the analytics guys who never played the game don’t know the approach; they know the end game, but don’t know how to get there, and sometimes that’s the disconnect. I think there’s some give and take.”
Listen to Werth’s entire visit above!