LSU baseball head coach Jay Johnson has expressed how the opportunity to work with outfielder Dylan Crews played a large role in accepting the job at the SEC powerhouse in 2021. On Saturday, Johnson was on hand at Nationals Park to watch Crews go from college standout to member of the Nationals.
Crews, the No. 2 pick in this year’s MLB Draft, was introduced at a press conference after inking a $9 million signing bonus. After Crews spoke about his future with the Nationals, Johnson shared his memories on what helped the 21-year-old get to this point -- and what could be to come.
Rare skill set
“I think it’s the combination of elite player that’s an elite person,” Johnson said. “I think if you stack up these three seasons of college performance, you’d be hard pressed to find anybody any better. But there’s this humility that he plays with, this edge that he plays with, this ability to lift everybody up and make everybody else around him better, on top of these baseball tools that show up every single day to help his team win. It’s a truly special player.”
Batting .426 this season
“We talked before this season of, 'If you stay within yourself, if you don’t try to do too much, you might be able to hit .500,'” Johnson said. “... I look up on the scoreboard and he’s at .502. Remarkable. He handles elite pitching well. And I think that’s why he separated himself as the top hitter, maybe not [only] this Draft, [but] in several years because he can step in a box and handle Major League pitching right now in terms of controlling the strike zone, the bat speed, the combination of vision, recognition skills, managing the zone, hitting the ball hard on a line to all parts of the field -- he’s great at all of it.”
Control of the strike zone
“His vision is elite,” Johnson said. “He sees the ball incredibly well, and he has so much bat speed. He’s what I would call the best recovery hitter that I’ve ever seen, where it looks like he’s maybe going to get beat on a pitch and then make a decision late and, next thing you know, it’s a home run to right-center field. Almost like back in the day, Mike Piazza had an ability to do that, Edgar Martinez had an ability to do that. You don’t see that at the college level all that often. … He can make late decisions, which allows him to control the zone well and then get to that power.”
Outfield fit
“He's a legitimate center fielder,” Johnson said. “If you go back and you look in Omaha -- and that's a very big ballpark -- and some of the plays that he made in the College World Series, he made them look easy. He was the right fielder as a freshman. When I came over, I was like, 'You're going straight to center field,' because I believed he could do it because of the game instincts and the baseballness and the speed. And then now, it's like, you're not going to find me a better center fielder in college baseball.”
Drive to win
“I think the winning tools, those will become evident,” Johnson said. “The ability to hit the ball with average, hit with power, play great defense, he's a great baserunner. But I think how he plays, again, will lift everybody in the organization up. There's always that target on the first pick or first-rounder when they go out and they play. He's going to operate in a way where nobody's going to remember it because he's going to play the game the right way. … Winning is super important to him, so he'll earn the respect of his teammates and everybody in the organization quickly. And then by doing that by example, and that type of leadership, everybody will get a little bit better because of that. I think he just has this unique ability to earn everybody's respect by not just the type of player he is, but how he plays.”