Daylen Lile - 6/6/23

A closer look at the Nationals 2021 2nd round pick

Prospect Spotlight 🔦

Daylen Lile LF – Age: 20 – B/T: L/R, 5’11’’ 195 – Nationals (Low-A)

• Born: 11/20/2002 (Louisville, KY)

• Draft: 2021, Washington Nationals, 2^nd Round

• High School: Trinity, Louisville, KY

It’s no secret that the Nationals have been struggling as an organization for quite some time now. After achieving the ultimate goal of winning a World Series in 2019, not much has gone right. Patrick Corbin has completely fallen apart, Stephen Strasburg may never pitch again, and the trades of Juan Soto, Max Scherzer, and Trea Turner have demoralized the fanbase. To compound issues, the Nationals have one of the weaker farm systems, in my opinion, which is especially frustrating given the players they traded away. The Nationals have struggled to develop players, which became increasingly obvious since they collapsed soon after winning the World Series. Despite all of the negativity, there are a few players in the Nationals system that has intrigued me this year. One of those, Daylen Lile (20) - WSN (A), the Nationals second round pick in 2021, has been off to a strong start in his first season of pro ball after being injured all of last season.

Heading into the draft, Daylen Lile was seen as a probable a second rounder. FanGraphs had him at 47, Baseball America had him at 61, and Pipeline had him at 80. While the Nationals have tended to take prospects who were risky because they tended to lack feel to hit, that was not the case for Lile, whose hit tool was lauded as an amateur. However, the rest of Lile’s game was considered fringy, with most analysts seeing fringy-to-average power, a fair runner, and a likely shift to left due to average range and a weaker arm. From my point of view, I saw a hitter with below-average power and a future left fielder as well, however I was also not sold on his hit tool. From a visual perspective, his swing looked clean and he had a solid approach at the plate, however, there were some swing and miss issues that concerned me. With the usual caveat that high school data is noisy, in the showcase data that I have access to, he ran a 35% whiff rate and a 25% chase rate. For a player who is hit tool driven, those numbers were concerning, even acknowledging the small sample size. Given the swing and miss issue and the relative lack of athleticism, Lile was on the low end of my draft board. The Nationals were clearly not concerned, and signed him for $1.75 million as the 47th overall pick in the 2021 draft.