Washington Nationals Get Impressive Early Contributions From Summer's First-Round Pick
The Washington Nationals made a risky move in this summer's MLB Draft, spending a first-round pick on Wake Forest's Seaver King, a player just one season removed from playing Division II baseball.
It feels safe to say that the pick is working out so far.
King, 21, hit .295/.367/.385 in Single-A Fredericksburg across his twenty innings, scoring fifteen times and stealing ten bags in ten games.
Fredericksburg, despite being only Single-A, is still a far cry from Wingate, where he played for two seasons before transferring to ACC powerhouse Wake Forest for his third and final season.
King is up to the challenge, however. "You’re never going to be the best,” he told MLB.com shortly after being drafted. “There’s always room for you to get better as a player and as a person. It’s one of the only sports where there’s not [a clear] best player ever. There’s always an argument. So I love the difficulty of it and how you can get better every day.”
And King has seemingly gotten better at every stop of his career so far. In his two seasons at Wingate, where he played predominately infield, he left with a 47-game hitting streak after batting .3871 and .411 in his first two seasons. (The Division II record is 54 games, held by now Los Angeles Angels outfielder Kevin Pillar.)
In his one year layover at Wake Forest, he added centerfield duties to his defensive toolbox and hit a career high 16 home runs while maintaining a batting average over .300. “I’m what you call a swinger, so I like to swing a lot,” King said after the college season. “But I’m also comfortable with two strikes to where I’m not gonna strike out. I got more used to college baseball and approach, and I think that’s why the power numbers ticked up and why the strikeout numbers stayed down. That’s just always been my identity of not striking out and improving the damage I can do when I am ahead in the count.”
And in the minor leagues of the team that leads all of baseball in stolen base attempts (277), he's significantly stepped up how often he runs. After going just 11 for 12 in 60 games at Wake Forest, he stole 10 bags (in 11 attempts) in just 20 games for Fredericksburg.
MLB Pipeline has him as the #5 prospect in the organization with the belief that he has a future either in the infield or on the outfield grass, with him playing all 20 games with Fredericksburg at shortstop but with collegiate experience at second base, third base, and centerfield as well as shortstop.
He currently has an ETA of 2027 to make his major league debut, although several believe he has the skillset to push that forward to 2026 or possibly even 2025.
LINDSAY CROSBY