![\"Robert](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/USATSI_28408273-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWEST PALM BEACH, Fla. \u2014 As a reporter, sometimes you just get the sense that you\u2019re one document away from a great story. In my first interview on the Washington Nationals beat for The Athletic, I stood with pitcher Cole Henry at his locker and got that feeling.<\/p>\n
It stemmed from a comment made months ago, when president of baseball operations Paul Toboni first arrived in Washington. He talked about \u201cmaking the scoreboard visible,\u201d and now Cole was fishing in his locker for a sheet of paper that would illustrate precisely what Toboni meant.<\/p>\n
Every pitcher left in camp was listed on the left side of the paper. Each was given a designated row. Next to every name was a series of percentages that detailed how they\u2019d performed thus far in camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s all the stuff that we want to be good at as a pitching staff,\u201d Henry said, pointing at the columns at the top before shifting his focus to the numbers and colors below.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreen is good,\u201d Henry said plainly. \u201cRed is \u2014 you know, not good. But like, we want to have a certain percentage. So it\u2019ll tell you if you have a good percentage. Thirty-two percent whiff is good. Free-throw percentage is \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of it should have been self-explanatory. But as I scanned the sheet, I realized that the only ones I understood were whiff rate and fastball velocity. When I admitted this to Henry, he was kind enough to walk me through the scoreboard:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Whiff rate: How often the batter swings and misses.
\u2022 Fastball velocity: You probably can figure this one out on your own.
\u2022 Free-throw percentage: How often the pitcher got ahead early in counts.
\u2022 Attack percentage: How often the pitcher threw their pitches in the zone.
\u2022 Kill percentage: How often the pitcher put a hitter away in a two-strike count.
\u2022 Battle win percentage: How the pitcher fared in even counts (1-1, 2-2).
\u2022 Pre-two-strike WC: \u2026<\/p>\n
This is when Henry realized that he, too, needed a little bit of help.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey Rut,\u201d Henry called out to teammate Jackson Rutledge. \u201cWhat is \u2018Pre-two-strike WC.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPre-two-strike win count,\u201d Rutledge said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo kind of the same as the battle percentage,\u201d Henry said. \u201cI guess.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the kind of conversation that Toboni and the front office envisioned upon taking over in Washington, with players immersing themselves in the kind of data that had once been treated here with suspicion.<\/p>\n
Despite needing an assist on the last category, Henry clearly understood the assignment.<\/p>\n
He had spent the offseason working on his command. Now, he was proud to own the best attack percentage in camp. It turns out Henry\u2019s row on the sheet was greener than any other pitcher on staff. It was not a detail that he offered on his own. But when I brought it to his attention, he confirmed as much with a nod and a smile.<\/p>\n
For hitters, plenty of new video within reach<\/p>\n
\n Robert Hassell III is batting .286 (8-for-28) in Grapefruit League play. (Sam Navarro \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
Pitchers and position players each have their own enclaves, and on the other side of the clubhouse, I found outfielder Robert Hassell III lounging in his chair, tapping away at his phone. He was eager to explain all the data that Nationals hitters could now access.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I think it\u2019s pretty cool,\u201d Hassell said, his interest piqued. \u201cI\u2019m sure other teams had it before. Last year was kind of the basic pitch base. \u2026 Got a little video on the pitcher before, but it\u2019s much more in-depth this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The data is accessed through tablets, and though he didn\u2019t have one in hand, his eyes and hands darted around as he conjured in his mind the virtual dashboard that acts as a gateway to anything he needed: videos, metrics, locations, past starts.<\/p>\n
\u201cStuff like that all on one dashboard instead of having to go ask or wait till the next day to come in and ask \u2014 I think it\u2019s really useful,\u201d said Hassell, who will start the year in Triple-A Rochester. \u201cFor me, I learn just as much from playing the game as I do from watching video.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love it,\u201d he added. \u201cI treat it like a little kid phone app game.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wanted to know how many angles were available on video.<\/p>\n
According to Hassell, there\u2019s more this year than in the past. Now, about 90 minutes after each game, he watches his swing from the open side, with the front of his body facing the camera, the way most hitters look at their mechanics. He then watches from the broadcast side, the view from the familiar center-field camera, to see if he is flying open or moving his hands too much. And finally, he watches from the closed side, or the view with the player\u2019s back to the camera, just in case it offers an additional insight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey even have some of my high school pitching video on there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When asked if he\u2019d gone back and watched the film from his pitching days, Hassell looked up as soon as he realized he could find yet another practical use for all of this new data: getting some digs in about a couple of fellow Nationals prospects.<\/p>\n
\u201cI faced him back then, got him to ground out twice,\u201d he said, grinning ear to ear, recalling a past encounter with Yohandy Morales. And then there was the time he got the best of Cayden Wallace. \u201dStruck him out,\u201d Hassell said. \u201cMake sure I told him that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baseball\u2019s youngest manager not afraid to get his uniform dirty<\/p>\n
It was not as bizarre as when his predecessor brought camels to his first spring training camp. But this was different: The youngest manager in baseball standing behind a screen in Port St. Lucie earlier in the week, giving up tank after tank as he threw batting practice to members of his starting nine.<\/p>\n
At times, manager Blake Butera, 33, has taken ground balls with the infielders. When he shagged baseballs with the outfielders, he tried to rile up his players by telling them, \u201cHey, you\u2019ll drop more than me today.\u201d (They never have.) And though it\u2019s been out of earshot of the media, Butera has been known to talk smack.<\/p>\n
The aftermath of \u201ceating it\u201d during a baserunning drill caught the attention of clubhouse advisor Mike \u201cWally\u201d Wallace. \u201cThis is a new one,\u201d Butera recalled Wallace saying. \u201cI\u2019ve never had a manager\u2019s pants that are dirty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Butera explained that he is not alone in this sense. Los Angeles Chargers Coach Jim Harbaugh, he said, plays catch with quarterback Justin Herbert. JJ Reddick will run drills with his Los Angeles Lakers. Butera said he doesn\u2019t plan to stop, if only because he\u2019s afraid if he does, he won\u2019t be able to pick it back up again.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t always get a chance to do that, because obviously, as you get older, the body starts to break down,\u201d Butera said. \u201cBut I think it goes a long way for the players to see that you\u2019re in it with them and that you\u2019re not above anything. I\u2019m not too good to throw BP.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. \u2014 As a reporter, sometimes you just get the sense that you\u2019re one document…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99,2331],"class_list":["post-538447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-washington-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}