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If it happened to anybody else, it would’ve been notable. Because it happened to James Wood, it was downright shocking.
A prolonged slump? By one of the most consistent offensive players in Nationals history, one of the most consistent 22-year-olds the sport has ever seen?
“It’s just baseball,” Wood insisted. “It can’t all be rainbows and sunshine all the time. It happens. You’ve just got to work your way out of it.”
Since the day the Nationals called him up from the minors 1 year and 3 weeks ago, Wood has never been through any slump that lasted more than a handful of days. His longest 0-fer made it to only 15 at-bats during a four-game stretch in late-July 2024.
This one, though, made it to 20, stretching over more than five games sandwiched around the All-Star break. When it began, Wood was batting .287 with a .939 OPS. By the middle of Sunday’s game, those numbers were down to .271 and .895.
Perhaps more concerning than the 0-for-20 slump were the 13 strikeouts that came with it. At one point, he struck out in seven of eight at-bats.
“It happens to everybody. It’s inevitable,” he said. “You play 162 games, you’re not going to feel the best all the time. You’ve just got to take it one day at a time and find ways to help the team win.”
It was perhaps a small step, but when Wood lashed an inside fastball from Padres right-hander Nick Pivetta to right-center for a sixth inning single Sunday, he not only snapped his hitless streak. He did so with a swing that looked more like himself again.
“Sometimes you’re going to go through that rough patch,” interim manager Miguel Cairo said. “The pitchers make adjustments on you. So now you’ve just got to make adjustments on the pitchers, how they’re pitching him. That was nice that (on) an inside pitch, he stayed through the ball and he got a base hit to right-center.”
The 0-fer lasted five-plus games, but Wood’s downturn has lasted longer than that. Since going 5-for-5 with a homer July 3 against the Tigers, he’s 4-for-40 with four walks and 18 strikeouts. There’s one homer in there (July 9 in St. Louis) but that’s his lone extra-base hit during this stretch.
The cynics – and there are plenty of them out there – will point out this all happened as Wood was beginning to prep for his first-ever Home Run Derby, taking a couple of practice rounds in the week leading up to the event in Atlanta. He hit 16 homers at Truist Park, falling one shy of advancing past the first round. He hasn’t looked the same since.
But for all the anecdotal evidence of sluggers’ swings getting ruined by the Derby, the actual statistical studies that been done on the subject have debunked the theory. Some players have slumped coming out of the Derby. Others have soared. There doesn’t appear to be any true correlation between participation and second-half performance.
Wood, for his part, shot down any suggestion his current funk is related in any way to the Derby.
“No, I don’t really buy that,” he said. “It’s just baseball. Just like I said earlier, you can’t always be feeling the best in the world. You’ve just got to come in the next day, lace them up and just do better.”
