Notes and quotes on Nationals’ shortstop CJ Abrams trying to find it at the plate…
Davey Martinez gave CJ Abrams a day off in the finale of the series with New York’s Yankees last week in D.C., after Washington’s 23-year-old shortstop went 0 for 8 in the first two with the AL East leaders in Nationals Park.
“Just wanted to give him a little breather,” the Nats’ skipper explained when he put Abrams back in there, batting seventh in the lineup instead of leading off in the series opener with Chicago’s Cubs in the nation’s capital. “I want him to relax a little bit, just kind of start working better at-bats. As you know, he’s chasing a lot. I just want him to kind of slow down a little bit. So I talked to him before I sent the lineup out. He’s good with it. And like I said, when you start getting on base and taking your walks, I want you to get back up there. But we need to slow you down a little bit. He’s just swinging a lot.”
Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images
Going into the game, Abrams was 24 for 132 (.182/.243/.288) in 34 games in the second half of the 2024 campaign, with five doubles, three home runs, seven walks, and 34 strikeouts in his 144 plate appearances.
“He’s got to go back to using the middle of the field and swinging at strikes,” the manager said. “I know he likes swinging at the first pitch, as we always see. I told him, I said, “I’m not going to tell you not to, especially if you get a fastball, but it’s got to be in the zone. And that’s where we need to be.’ But like I said, he worked his way to be a leadoff hitter. He’s going to do it again. I just want to just ease his mind a little bit and just go out there and have fun and get some decent pitches to hit. If not, walk.”
Martinez, acknowledging his shortstop’s prolonged struggles, talked about trying to get Abrams going down the stretch to finish on a positive note after a strong first half which resulted in Abrams’ first career All-Star appearance.
“He’s been struggling pretty much since the All-Star break,” the seventh-year manager said.
“And we’re trying to get him going. I think the biggest thing we need to do with him is understand that he needs to slow his feet down. He’s really going to get the baseball.
“We need him to get back, get ready early, and slow his feet down a little bit.”
It is, of course, not the first time a young hitter has faced adversity early in their big league career.
Martinez said he has seen it before, and he hopes Abrams and the Nats’ coaches will work through it.
“It’s part of the game. I was hoping that he’d work some things out and get out of the funk. I wanted to see how he’d react to everything.
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“It’s been going on for a while, been wanting to do it for a while, and I thought, ‘Let’s do it now and see if we can get him back so he can finish the season off strong.’”
Martinez talked, after deciding to give Abrams another game off in the series opener in Pittsburgh, about what they were working on behind the scenes with the young hitter.
“He’s been struggling a lot over the past few weeks, and we want to get him back on his feet,” Martinez told reporters, “… try to get him in his legs a little better hitting-wise, and hopefully we can get him going again.”
Asked what he was seeing from Abrams at the plate, Martinez said, “He’s really flying open and getting really — his stride is getting really long, we’re trying to shorten up a little bit and trying to get him to hit the ball back up the middle of the field. He’s missed a couple balls I think he should have drove, better swings, but just missing them, and I think it’s because his stride gets too big.”
While they know what they want Abrams to do, and have made it clear to him, the difficulty of putting it into practice in big league at-bats is something Martinez did acknowledge as well.
“It’s part of hitting,” he said of Abrams’ slump.
“Sometimes you get in that little funk. Sometimes it’s a little harder — it sounds easy, but it’s a little harder when you’re out there competing to try to get yourself to slow down a little bit. For right now, he’s taking batting practice, and we’re trying to get his foot down a little earlier and get on time so he’s not striding so big.”
Abrams went 1 for 9 in the first two with the Pirates in Pittsburgh’s PNC this past weekend, but led off in the finale with a home run on an 0-2 slider up he hit 416 feet to center field, connecting for his 19th homer of the year.
TAKE ME TO YR LEADOFF BATTER pic.twitter.com/YoC7bnUIqJ
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) September 8, 2024
“That was a great at-bat,” Martinez said after a loss to the Bucs. “We’re working really hard at keeping him in the middle of the field, and slowing his legs down a little bit. He has gotten a little bit better. Now we just got to get him in the strike zone. He chased some balls out of the strike zone today, specifically up. We got to get him a little down in the zone. But I thought he’s swinging the bat a little bit better. He’s really trying to hit the ball in the middle of the field. He got a couple hits yesterday the other way, a couple lineouts the other way, but the home run is exactly what we’re looking for.”
It was Abrams’ fourth home run of the second-half, but the occasional home run in a rough stretch isn’t the answer, getting him consistently swinging at pitches in the zone is the Nats’ ultimate goal, and going out of the zone is the persistent issue.
“It’s the chasing. He’s just got to really stop chasing,” Martinez said.
“When he gets the ball where he can really hit, he seems to be hitting the ball hard, so we got to keep him in the zone.”