While Paul Skenes arrives early to stardom, Dylan Crews feels no pressure

But reporters were not flocking to Crews because of what he was going to be doing on the field Saturday. Instead, many of them wanted to ask about what a former LSU teammate, Paul Skenes, will be doing at Globe Life Field on Tuesday night. Skenes, last year’s first pick and a rookie of the year candidate for the Pittsburgh Pirates, will be starting the All-Star Game for the National League, the first rookie in 30 years to do so.

“I’m very happy for him. He deserves everything,” Crews said. “I’m not surprised at all that he’s starting.”

Crews and Skenes have been tied to each other by the strange strands of baseball history for quite some time. Crews’s first home collegiate home run came off Skenes, when the big righty was at Air Force. By the time Skenes transferred to LSU for the Tigers’ 2023 championship run, Crews had established himself as one of the more accomplished collegiate hitters in recent memory. This time last year, the pair seemed certain to go first and second in the draft, with the only question being which one would go first.

The Pirates took Skenes. The Nationals took Crews. Crews has hurtled through the minor leagues and is hitting .253 with a .713 OPS in his first 20 games at Class AAA Rochester, a résumé that would make him one of the faster movers in a typical draft class.

But Crews and Skenes were top picks in a class that also included Florida standout Wyatt Langford at No. 4. Skenes debuted in May to massive fanfare and has a 1.90 ERA in his first 11 starts. Langford made the Texas Rangers out of spring training and is hitting .254 with a .702 OPS in his first 72 big league games. One could hardly blame Crews, who also watched fellow Nationals prospect James Wood debut in recent weeks, for feeling a little left behind. If the 22-year-old was feeling any added weight, though, he certainly did not show it Saturday.

“There’s no pressure to it. Whenever my time is, my time is,” Crews said. “That’s not my decision. I just have to keep doing what I’ve got to do, and that is be where my feet are every day and do what I have to do that day to be at a high level.”

Crews carries himself with a quiet certainty, a time-honed comfort under pressure and a palpable sense of self that stands out among players his age. In some ways, he feels familiar, a little Harperian in his sturdiness in the spotlight, though even a whisper of comparison to Bryce Harper is unfair. Crews did not become Baseball America’s No. 4 prospect because of gargantuan power or years of teenage hype. He became a polished hitter known for speed and smarts, a guy with power to the gaps and the ability to adjust. And he did so because, after letting pressure and expectations weigh him down in high school, he spent his college years learning how to carry both.

“Going to college really helped me be present every day,” Crews said. “ … Back in high school, I was always thinking about the draft, not what was happening at that moment. I went to college to give myself a little reset, so going through the minor league system, I can just focus on what I need to do.”

Crews started his season slow at Class AA Harrisburg. On May 14, he was hitting .234 with a .676 OPS. By mid-June, he was hitting .274 with a .789 OPS, five home runs and 15 stolen bases, a recovery so quick that he was promoted to Class AAA on June 18.

Since then, against the kind of offspeed-heavy repertoires prevalent at Class AAA these days, Crews has found more power, hitting three homers in 20 games with Rochester after hitting five in 51 with Harrisburg. And he has dropped his strikeout rate from 24 percent in Harrisburg to 19 percent in Rochester, albeit in a much smaller sample.

“I think as you move up, guys are more polished. They know how to throw their third, fourth, fifth pitch for strikes,” Crews said. “You have to take that as a hitter and teach yourself how to hit your pitch. … I’ve learned a lot moving up.”

People familiar with Washington’s thinking have indicated Crews is, in the Nationals’ view, not far behind Wood in terms of big league readiness. Whether that means he will debut this year or enter spring training in 2025 with a clear shot at the big leagues remains to be seen. Whenever Crews debuts, he probably will still be ahead of almost any other top draft pick’s normal development schedule. He said he is right on time with his.

“[Wood] is awesome. He’s an unbelievable talent — a guy who it’s a different sound off his bat,” Crews said. “He’s doing his thing up there. And whenever my time is to be there, I’ll be ready for it.”