BALTIMORE -- The Nationals closed out their 2024 season with the second-fewest home runs in the Major Leagues, their 135 long balls better than just the White Sox (133).
This year, Washington is off to a markedly better start, with five home runs in a 10-4 win over Baltimore on Sunday marking the Nats’ first five-homer game since Sept. 29, 2023, against the Braves in Atlanta. Those five long balls also boosted them to 50 on the season, in a four-way tie for 14th most in MLB (Atlanta, San Francisco and Texas).
The finale win, which centered on the Nats’ young studs, highlighted an area the Nationals have made an effort to change -- starting with work in Spring Training.
“We did so much work in Spring Training, up to this point of the season, about hitting the ball a little bit more up front, getting the ball off the ground,” manager Dave Martinez said. “It's starting to come to fruition. I mean, it really is. We're starting to hit the ball more in the air, and that's where the home runs go.”
It’s making a big difference. It took Washington 62 games last year to reach 50 homers, a benchmark it reached on June 6. Excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the last time the Nationals reached 50 home runs in fewer than 48 games was in 2019, when they hit their 50th home run in their 34th game.
On Sunday, it all started with CJ Abrams, who crushed the first pitch of the game for a leadoff homer, his fourth of the season and the 11th of his career.
“He keeps putting up that one on the first pitch of the game, we’re in a good place,” starter Michael Soroka said. “He’s seeing the ball really well. He’s one of the many special talents that I think this organization has. It’s exciting to watch.”
Abrams’ middle-infield partner, second baseman Luis García Jr., followed his example, kicking off a six-run second inning for the Nats with a leadoff long ball of his own. Next came No. 9 hitter Dylan Crews, who blasted a three-run shot before Abrams went back-to-back with his second homer of the game.
It was Washington’s second set of back-to-back home runs of the year (Abrams and James Wood on March 31 in Toronto), and Abrams’ second career multihomer game (Sept. 11, 2023, in Pittsburgh).
The change in the Nats’ approach to point-of-contact has been big for Crews, too.
“When you catch the ball out front -- I always say, the party’s out front,” Crews said. “So you catch the ball out front, that’s kind of where your slug comes into play, your extra-base hit.”
There are still a few more kinks to work out. Josh Bell is working out of a slow start to the season, but the past week has helped. His average so far in May is .205, after hitting .137 in March/April.
Bell crushed an eighth-inning long ball, his first home run since May 2, to give Washington its fifth homer.
“If we can get him going, our offense is really going to take off,” Martinez said. “And we need to see that from him. He knows it, but I don’t want to put any pressure on him. I tell him, ‘Hey, don’t try to be the guy, just be a guy and follow suit.’ And [that was] a big home run for us.”
A week ago, the Nationals were in the middle of what became a seven-game losing streak, looking for anything to break them out of a slow stretch.
As it turned out, all they needed was some Interleague Play. And with this year’s Battle of the Beltways all wrapped up, Washington heads home with a three-game winning streak under its belts ahead of a three-game set vs. Atlanta (which leads the season series, 3-1).
“It’s awesome that we kind of bounced back from that,” Crews said. “You don’t want things to go like how it did over in Atlanta, and even before that. But that’s baseball. We’re going to come out here and flip the page, and that’s what we did.
“We’re just going to try and ride this wave as much as possible.”