Nationals Prospects: Daylen Lile looking to take advantage of his second chance in MLB

Daylen Lile hit his first MLB home run last night and is looking to make more noise now that he is back in the show

Daylen Lile got called up only a couple days after his more famous Triple-A teammate Robert Hassell III got his call up. Both were needed after Jacob Young and Dylan Crews went down with injuries. When Young came back from his ailment, Lile got demoted instead of Hassell. It made sense, Hassell had spent more time in AAA and is the better defender.

However, with Hassell’s OPS dropping into the .400’s, Mike Rizzo knew he had to give Lile another shot. Again, Lile’s call up was overshadowed by a teammate. Before Yesterday’s game, Lile was called up alongside top 100 prospect and former first round pick Brady House.

While House got most of the buzz, it was Lile who delivered the big moment last night. In the bottom of the fifth, Lile turned on a Carson Palmquist fastball, depositing it into the second deck. The way he got his hands in and turned on an inside pitch reminded me a bit of Daniel Murphy.

I am very bullish about Lile’s offensive game in both the short and long term. Despite only hitting .206 at the MLB level, he still has an OPS over .700 thanks to his extra base impact. He has also gotten terribly unlucky at the plate so far.

When you imagine a .200 hitter, you think of a guy who strikes out and whiffs a lot. However, that is not Daylen Lile. He is striking out just under 18% of the time and is only whiffing at a 10.4% clip which is elite.

He also makes a decent quality of contact as we have seen from all his extra base hits. His exit velocities are solid and the overall quality of contact is decent. Lile’s BABIP being at .222 seems to be purely down to bad luck rather than some quality of contact issue. After all, he is hitting .337 in AAA. Lile’s expected batting average of .287 also points to future improvement. Sometimes you need to take those numbers with a grain of salt, but there is no reason to believe that Lile can’t be at least a .265 hitter this year.

One thing that intrigues me about Lile’s game is how much he pulls the ball in the air. Pulled fly balls are the holy grail as they produce the best outcomes. Lile is pulling the ball in the air at an elite 28.6% rate. The MLB average is 16.6%. You don’t need to pull the ball in the air all the time to have success, just look at James Wood. However, it is a helpful trick to have, especially for a guy like Lile who doesn’t have the insane raw power Wood has.

Overall, I really like Daylen Lile’s offensive game. He has a sweet swing, doesn’t whiff, has a solid approach, and has good batted ball quality. All the tools are there for Lile to be an above average hitter, and quickly. He is still just 22, but I like what I see.

He is still a work in progress defensively, showing some warts out in right field. However, he is a good athlete with 87th percentile sprint speed. The tools are there for him to be a solid defender and he has already made a couple highlight reel plays. Now he just needs to sharpen up his reads.

On the night where Brady House made his debut, Daylen Lile was the rookie that showed out. He reminded us that he is a pure hitter who is just getting going. I am really excited to see him hit and I think he can be one of our best bats in no time. While some of that is due to the lack of depth in the lineup, Lile is a good hitter with a bright future ahead of him.