Editors Note: This is the latest player profile in our 40-man breakdown series that we have started here at the Nats Report. Check our other player profiles.

Lane Thomas

• Position:  Right Field
• Current status: Second year of arbitration; on pace to reach free agency following 2025 season
• How acquired:  Picked up from St. Louis at the 2021 deadline
• 2023 Grade: B+
• 2024 Opening Day Projection: Starting RF, likely 2nd or 3rd in the order
• 2023 stats: 157 G/682 PA, .268/.315/.468 (.783 OPS), 39 2/3BH, 28 HR, 86 R, 101 RBI, 5.3 BB%/25.8 K%, 109 wRC+, 20 SB/5 CS, 2.8 fWAR

2023 Analysis

Lane Thomas, lovingly nicknamed the Lane Train, started off a bit slow. He went homerless through April, picking up just four doubles en route to a 76 wRC+. Come May, however, he skyrocketed, smashing fourteen home runs between May and June with a 157 wRC+. Hot as anyone in baseball, he missed out on a reserve role in the All-Star Game, but still carried a huge amount of the weight in a power-weak Nationals lineup. He stumbled in July, as his strikeout-high, walk-low approach faltered and never quite returned to the form he displayed over the two months mid-season. Statcast shows him roughly at or below league average in several key offensive categories, not impressing much beyond a 74th-percentile sweet spot rate, which is classified as a factor of balls hit with a launch angle between 8 and 32 degrees.

Even still, Thomas is an efficient baserunner and possesses the arm characteristics of a prototypical right fielder. He places in the top seven percent of the league with an average 29.3 MPH sprint speed (30 is considered elite), and Statcast has him pegged as a flawless runner when attempting to take extra bases for his career. His range suffered, as he was graded being worth 6 outs below the average right fielder when moving laterally towards third base, but his 18 outfield assists more than made up for it, leading the majors handily (the next closest value was 12).

A bad jump from Lane Thomas allows a walkoff single from Royals hitter Michael Massey on May 28.

2024 outlook

As fun of a player as he is and as easy as it is to point towards his triple-digit RBI total and two-month run of dominance as a sign of future success, it’s hard to reasonably predict significant upside for Lane Thomas. His ceiling is likely the ~3 WAR player he was last year, and with two more years of control, he presents himself as a likely trade candidate either at this year’s deadline or in the offseason. His walk rate has leaped to over 15% this spring, but Spring Training is not the regular season. A .325 BABIP for the season—it was north of .370 during his hottest streaks—was likely the driving force behind some of his dominant stretch last year.

Thomas’s issues with hitting fastballs have reared their head, as he was worth -2 total runs across four-seamers, sinkers, and cutters last season. He can hit offspeed and breaking pitches better than most, but it’s harder to pull those in the air in the way his power is reliant on. He hit groundballs at a 43.4% rate in 2023, which places him slightly below average among all qualified hitters. It’s easy to sit back and say that Lane simply needs to get ahead of fastballs and spit on pitches out of the zone, but if making those changes was as simple as “just doing it,” we wouldn’t be where we are right now.

Lane is approaching a crossroads in his career, and 2024 will be instrumental in determining whether the 28-year-old is a starter or a depth piece going forward. Several free agent acquisitions (Eddie Rosario, Jesse Winker, Joey Gallo) all play the outfield, even if their defensive abilities are questionable at times, and many of the team’s top prospects are outfielders as well. If Lane doesn’t prove that he can hit for power enough to offset his relatively low on-base numbers, he might be headed for the door.

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