With regular reps, Werth finally becoming comfortable in left field

It was a really nice play. Not a spectacular one that ends up on endless highlight-reel shows. Just a really nice play that leaves fans applauding.

Jayson Werth's catch last night of Stephen Piscotty's second-inning sinking liner to left-center, requiring a lot of ground covered and then a slide to complete the maneuver, was the best defensive play of the Nationals' 2-1 victory over the Cardinals.

It also represented merely the latest in a string of really nice plays Werth has made over the last few weeks, underscoring the positive progress he's made in the field this season. After a few notable missed catches in early and mid April, Werth has found his defensive groove.

"I'm not surprised," manager Dusty Baker said. "He's an older engine, and it takes longer. I'm convinced of that. It takes longer to get your act together. And once you do get it, you keep it longer, generally speaking, compared to a younger player. A young player gets it quicker, but they don't tend to keep it as long."

Werth, who turned 37 last week, has looked better and better in the field as the season has played out, to the point where he essentially has proven himself to be an average left fielder. According to both FanGraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com, he has a rating of minus-1 defensive runs saved, which ranks 12th among major league left fielders. This after he finished with a minus-10 rating in 2015, worst among all NL left fielders.

For Werth, the reason for improvement is simple: He's been healthy enough to practice and play the position every day since the start of spring training.

That wasn't the case last year, when he missed the vast majority of spring training while recovering from shoulder surgery, then missed two months in-season with a broken wrist, making his conversion from right field to left field significantly tougher.

"I played right field for like eight years, and then I moved over to left," he said. "Last year I didn't really get too many looks over there until I started playing there (once healthy). But at the end, I thought I was pretty comfortable. And then the start of this season, it's just a matter of getting some reps. The problem with left is, it's a hard place to practice. Because in BP, you don't really get too many looks. And it's a little bit different, the balls that are hit in BP vs. during a game. I just needed some looks. I knew I'd get it at some point."

Conventional wisdom has always suggested left field is the easiest of the three outfield positions, the place they stash away the guy with a good bat but few (or declining) defensive skills. Neither Werth nor Baker subscribes to that belief, though. Both actually insist left field is tougher than right field, aside from the shorter throws to third base.

"I played left field, and that was the hardest field to play," Baker said. "Everybody can hit the ball hard to left field. The ball's slicing toward the line, and it's usually toward your backhand side, which is always the hardest in every sport. I don't care what you're playing. So I explained my degree of difficulty I had in the beginning (to Werth), and I told him I ended up having to work and I got a Gold Glove. ... And he explained to me that he didn't really have any time to work in left field last year because he was hurt all spring. So he was learning while he was playing. That was tough. I know it was for me. Especially going from right field, which is kind of easy to me. If you can throw, everything's going toward your forehand. Most balls are slicing. A slice is slower than a hook. Versus everything's always hooking toward the line. Left field is very difficult to play."

So why do we all traditionally think of the guy in left field as a weak link?

"You can put anybody in left because it's so difficult it doesn't really matter if you're good or bad," Werth said. "It doesn't really show up as much. Because good outfielders can get twisted around in left just as easy as a bad outfielder, or a non-outfielder. But I would agree that it's the toughest one to play, just for that reason. There's so many unknowns. Right and center are pretty equal in terms of difficulty level. But I think left is clearly the toughest one of them all."

The Nationals won't be moving Werth back to right field, not as long as Bryce Harper is on the active roster. But if the improvement he's shown over the last month is a sign of things to come, Werth might yet prove to be a reliable commodity on that side of the field.

"I feel like I've been a good outfielder my whole career," he said. "Switching sides, it just takes some time to getting used to. But I've always gone back well, I've come in well. I've never won a Gold Glove, but I don't think that's really been a true guide of where my defensive skill set is."