Fever Report No. 040 · 2026-10-28
What the Miss Didn't Change
The WAR call missed. The board hasn't moved. The bat explains why both are true.
The miss
We said James Wood would add at least two wins from the All-Star break through September 27. He lost 0.08. The ledger says MISS — eight hits, thirteen now, and this one sits with us.
Nothing that motivated the call has moved. Wood's EV95 is 112.835 mph — harder than 99% of the 406 qualified MLB hitters in our sample. His results on contact still trail the physics by −0.0588, further below than 96% of qualified hitters. The board still ranks him No. 3 of 20.
The call measured WAR accumulation and got the wrong answer. The board measures the gap between bat and outcomes, and that gap hasn't closed.
The person
Gerardo Caceres, Wood's longtime hitting coach, called Kenny Wood after the first round of the 2021 draft closed without his son's name called. All 30 organizations had made a mistake, Caceres said. The Padres fixed theirs in the second round, 62nd overall, with a $2.6 million bonus that paid him like a first-rounder.
A year later, Wood was on a bus with the Padres' Single-A Lake Elsinore club — thirty minutes into a five-hour ride — when he learned he'd been traded to Washington for Juan Soto. New meant Rockville, Maryland, where he was born, where he grew up playing for the Olney Pirates, twenty minutes from Nationals Park.
He grew up a Yankees fan whose favorite player was Curtis Granderson. Nationals hitting coach Darnell Coles has called him a great kid who is almost too nice — the kind IMG coaches remembered picking up stray balls after batting practice. The basketball lineage is deep: his father Kenny is a University of Richmond Hall of Famer who played in Europe, his sister Sydney played at Northwestern, his uncle Howard reached the NBA. A family of basketball players produced a 6-foot-6, 234-pound left-handed bat whose contact belongs to almost no one else in the sample.
The board and the crowd
The breakout board reads the physics. The crowd reads the stat line. Same player, different conclusions.
Chatter says his second half was awful — power gone, production down. One analyst noted the same fade but pointed to year-over-year gains in chase rate, whiff rate, bat speed, and zone contact, saying he is only getting better. A fantasy ranking still placed him fifth overall in dynasty formats. He appears in start-bench-cut polls alongside Corbin Carroll and Jackson Chourio. The crowd hasn't quit. It stopped trusting the second half.
The board's case rests on 334 balls in play and a bat that hasn't changed. The spark data backs that: weekly EV95 readings opened at 110.0 in early April, peaked at 115.2 a week later, then settled between 111.5 and 113.3 from May through September. Same bat in May, same bat in September.
His 2026 line — .265 average, .891 OPS, 30 homers, 106 runs, an All-Star selection in right field — is a career best. The engine says the stat line still hasn't caught the bat.
The market
Cardboard tracks the second half, not the spark. His 2025 Topps Chrome Refractor PSA 10 sits at $119, down 2.1% this week. The Bowman Chrome Red Rookie Redemption PSA 10 is $69.23, down 9.6%. Both drifted as outcomes cooled and the crowd followed.
The board says the contact didn't cool. The market hasn't caught that, and it may not until the numbers do.
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On the record
If Wood's luck gap reaches zero — results meeting what the bat produces — the board's reading was wrong, and the miss on C0001 was the gap closing rather than a detour. We'll know when next season's balls in play reach a sample deep enough to judge — 334 is where we stand now.
Biographical details per The Banner, Bethesda Magazine, Wikipedia, Forbes, Washingtonian, and JM Baseball / Dugout Discussions. All performance data: MLB StatsAPI via the FVR engine.