Washington Nationals rookie James Wood was 8-for-25 (.320/.452/.480) with one double, one home run, six walks and seven strikeouts in his first seven major league games, but came into Saturday night’s game with the Cincinnati Reds The 21-year-old slugger has recorded six hits in 32 at-bats (.188 batting average, .212 on-base percentage, .188 slugging percentage) in 33 at-bats in eight games so far in the Washington D.C. capital, with no walks and 16 strikeouts.
“We’ve got to get him focused again,” manager Davey Martinez said before the second of the three-game series.
“[Get him] Re-understand, find your pitch, and control what you can control.
“He’s a young hitter and he really wants to perform well. I don’t want him to feel like he has to go for hits. He’ll be OK if he accepts the walks.”
Martinez said his message to Wood was simple: He’s not the first player to struggle early in his major league career.
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“I talked to him a little bit today, asked him if he was OK,” Martinez said. “…and I asked him, ‘How are you doing?’ And I told him to remember why he’s so good: take the walks, get the ball up in the zone, and you’ll hit the ball again. Stay in the middle of the field. The biggest thing for him is not to overdo it, stay in the middle of the field. I know when he came up to bat, everybody was talking about how many grounders he hit, and I told him, ‘Hey, if you hit it 105-108 mph, nobody cares. The ball’s going to be in the air. Get a good pitch to hit, take a good swing.'”
What he doesn’t want from Wood is to put pressure on him.
“I don’t want him to feel like he has to do more than he’s capable of,” Martinez said.
“He’s got a lot more to come. We have to understand he’s still young and he’s still learning. It’s normal. As we all know, they find weaknesses and they exploit them. He’s got to learn how to use that to his advantage and, honestly, he’s got to be ready to take the ball and hit the balls he can hit.”
Wood was hitless in four at-bats with one strikeout in Saturday’s win over the Nationals and is batting .230/.309/.295 this season.
He singled in his first at-bat Sunday (107.2 EV), hit a 1-2 fastball over center field off Reds left-hander Andrew Abbott, hit a sharp liner to left field (109 MPH EV) in his next at-bat and hit a fly to center field (99 MPH EV) in his third at-bat. Then, coming on to pitch in the eighth inning with the game tied at 2-2 after consecutive singles by Keivert Ruiz and Ildemaro Vargas left him with a runner on second, he hit a first-pitch fastball from left-hander Justin Wilson high in the zone into left field for a 404-foot, three-run homer (105.9 MPH EV) that gave the Nationals a 5-2 lead and ultimately sealed their three-game series victory over the Reds.
He was prepared for Wilson’s first pitch fastball and crushed it.
“Sometimes it’s the best pitch you’ll see all day,” Wood said. Quote from MLB.com reporter Jessica CameratoHe has a goal of attacking the first pitch after the game, “so I’ve got to be ready for that.”
“I told him to be more aggressive today,” Martinez said of Wood’s first-pitch approach.
“You see, he was swinging at more pitches today. So we want him to swing. We want him to swing at good pitches.”
“A walk is a walk, but I want you to swing the bat. Today was a good day.”
As he said before, it was a matter of process that ultimately led to results.
“He hit it hard. For him to hit a home run and put the team on top is a great feeling — not just for him, but for the team. I keep telling him, ‘You can’t control where the ball goes.'”
“He said, ‘I’m just going to try to get a good swing and hit the ball hard,’ and that’s what he’s done.”
“This will help him get going, get some hits and hopefully produce some results.”
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The key, he said, is to stay behind in the count and be aggressive in the zone.
“My suggestion to him was just to go out there and throw some good pitches that she could hit and let her do the rest,” the manager said.
“Get strikes and don’t put yourself in a tight spot. Be aggressive, but throw the ball in the zone. He did that today.”
“There was a lot of spin on it,” Wood said of his at-bat during the game. “I took the spin off it, but I still made a good swing. I just kept my head up and went for it. I felt like I was making good contact and I just had to trust that it was going to come.”
As Martinez has said since Wood’s first appearance earlier this month, he doesn’t make things too big, but he’s able to deliver when it matters, like in the series finale.
“He doesn’t have a heartbeat, he just goes out there and competes,” the captain said.
“I know it’s frustrating for him not getting the hits he wants, but we know he can hit, we all know he can hit, so today was a good day,” said Brown. [just] Not for him, but for the Nationals.”
