Washington Nationals news & notes: James Wood homers to beat Reds; Nats sweep three-game series…

Notes and quotes from the Nats’ three-game sweep of the Reds…

Washington Nationals’ rookie James Wood was 8 for 25 (.320/.452/.480) with a double, one home run, six walks, and seven strikeouts in his first seven games in the majors, but going into Saturday night’s matchup with the Cincinnati Reds in the nation’s capital, the 21-year-old slugger was 6 for 32 (.188/.212/.188) with no walks and 16 Ks in his previous eight games and 33 PAs.

“We got to get him back in the zone,” manager Davey Martinez said before the second game of the three-game series.

“[Get him] again to understand that hey, look for your pitch, and control the controllables.

“He’s a young hitter, and he wants to do really well. I don’t want him to feel like he’s got to chase hits. Accept his walks, and he’ll be just fine.”

His message to Wood, Martinez said, was a simple one: He’s not the first player to struggle early in their major league career.

Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images

“I talked to him today a little bit, and I just asked him if he was okay,” Martinez said, “… and, ‘How’s everything going?’” And I said, remember what makes you really good. Accept your walks, get the ball up in the zone, and you’ll start hitting the ball again. Stay in the middle of the field. The biggest thing for him is not trying to do too much, stay in the middle of the field. I know he came up and everybody was talking about how many ground balls he was hitting, and I told him, ‘Hey, when you’re hitting them 105-108 MPH, who cares. You’ll get the ball in the air, just get a good pitch to hit and get a good swing at it.”

What he doesn’t want Wood to do is press.

“I don’t want him to feel like he’s got to do more than he’s capable of doing,” Martinez said.

“He’s going to do a lot, and we just got to understand that he’s very young, and he’s going to learn up here. This is a constant. They find your weakness, as we all know, and they’re going to exploit it. He’s got to learn how to use that to advantage, and honestly, just accept the balls, take them and be ready to hit the balls you can hit.”

Wood went 0 for 4 with a K in the Nationals’ win on Saturday, leaving him at .230/.309/.295 on the year.

He singled the first time up (107.2 exit velo) on Sunday, on a 1-2 fastball over the middle of the plate from Reds’ southpaw Andrew Abbott, lined out sharply to left field (109 MPH EV) in his next at-bat, hit a fly to center field (99 MPH EV) in his third trip to the plate, then stepped up in a 2-2 game in the eighth, with two on after back-to-back, two-out singles by Keibert Ruiz and Ildemaro Vargas and hit a first-pitch fastball up in the zone from lefty Justin Wilson to left field for a 404 ft., opposite field, three-run home run (105.9 MPH EV) which gave the Nationals a 5-2 lead and eventually a sweep of the three-game set with the Reds.

He was ready for the first-pitch fastball from Wilson, and crushed it.

“Sometimes it’s the best pitch you’re going to be able to see all day,” Wood said, as quoted by MLB.com’s Jessica Camerato, of attacking the first pitch after the game. “So you’ve just got to be ready for it.”

“We talked to him about being more aggressive today,” Martinez said of Wood going after the first pitch.

“As you could see he was swinging at a lot more pitches today, so we want him to swing the bat. Swing at good pitches.

“If you get walked you get walked, but want him to swing the bat. Today, he had a good day today.”

As he said previously, it was a matter of process eventually leading to results.

“He’s hit the ball hard. For him to hit a home run to put us up 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.’

“‘Just get a good swing off and try to hit the ball hard.’ And he’s been doing that.

“Hopefully, that opens up the floodgates, he starts getting some hits, and has something to show for it.”

Photo by Mark Goldman/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Not falling behind in counts, and being aggressive in the zone, he said, is the key.

“My suggestion to him was just go up there, get a good pitch you can hit, and let her go,” the manager said.

“Don’t put yourself in a hole by taking strikes. Be aggressive, but get the ball in the zone, he did that today.”

“I was seeing a lot of spin,” Wood said of his at-bats throughout the game. “I was missing them, but I was still taking good swings on them. I kind of just kept my head up. I felt like I was making good contact and I kind of just had to trust that the results would come.”

As Martinez has said from the time Wood first came up earlier this month, he doesn’t let things get too big, and he’s able to produce in big spots like he did in the series finale.

“He’s got no heartbeat, he just goes out there and competes,” the skipper said.

“I know he’s been frustrated because he hasn’t gotten the hits he wants, but I know he can hit. We all know he can hit, so today was a good day, not [just] for him, but for the Nats.”