SEATTLE – The first five days of Robert Hassell III’s major league career included 17 at-bats, two hits (both coming in his debut), zero walks and some clear-cut pressing at the plate.
Not that anyone should have been surprised by that. How many rookies, no matter how highly touted, look totally comfortable in their first week in the bigs?
Davey Martinez knows this as well as anyone. The Nationals manager often reminds his young players that he began his career in an 0-for-11 slump. And as he reminded Hassell on Wednesday morning, the key is stay true to yourself, to try to remain the same player you were the previous week at Triple-A.
“You’re going to get overamped, and you want to try to do a lot,” Martinez told Hassell. “But this game is tough enough. Don’t make it harder on yourself. Just do the things you’re capable of doing.”
Several hours later, on the heels of the biggest night of his brief big league career, Hassell was complimenting his manager for the much-needed message.
“I thank Davey for kind of bringing me back down to earth before the game,” he said. “He brought me in and was talking about me being me. He was saying: ‘You know why you’re here. You’ve just got to play your game. We don’t need you hitting 450-foot bombs. We just need you getting on base and being a threat.’ So I have him to credit for that.”
Hassell played a key role in the Nationals’ 9-0 thrashing of the Mariners. He went 3-for-5, the first three-hit game of his career. He drove in the evening’s third run with a nice piece of two-out, two-strike hitting. And then he delivered the big blow late, launching his first major league home run in the top of the eighth to help put the game out of reach.
The homer, a 413-foot blast to right-center off a 3-2 fastball from rookie reliever Blas Castaño, capped off the night and outdid any other home run Hassell has hit in his baseball life.
“Oh, this is the best one, that’s for sure,” he said. “This is the best one. Something I’ve been waiting for, and you imagine what it’s like and all that. But it finally happened, and I feel blessed.”
The homer was nice, of course. And it was even nicer that the fan who caught the ball fired it back onto the field in disgust, allowing the Nationals to easily retrieve it and encase it for Hassell to keep forever. But the fourth-inning RBI single to left might have been the better example of Hassell’s true skills as a hitter.
A natural opposite-field hitter, he took pride in reaching out at George Kirby’s 2-2 splitter on the outside corner and poking it into left field for a two-out single to score teammate Luis Garcia Jr.
“If I’m able to do that instead of going down on strikes or whatever the case is, if I’m able to put the ball in play, and even if that shortstop gets a hand on the ball, I can use my speed and try to beat it out,” he said. “So that’s just what I want to do, for sure, right there.”
Hassell shared that insight not from inside the visitors’ clubhouse at T-Mobile Park, but from the Nats’ team bus on its way back to the hotel. Seems the kid didn’t realize reporters would want to talk to him, especially after he already took part in MASN’s walk-off interview on the field moments after the game ended.
Tracked down via phone by the Nationals’ PR staff, Hassell was apologetic for bolting to the clubhouse so quickly. But he had a valid excuse.
“I got my girlfriend back at the hotel,” he said. “I don’t want to have her waiting too long.”