In the offseason, Nick Senzel and the Washington Nationals took a chance on each other. Senzel signed in the hope that a change of scenery would do him some good after five years with the Cincinnati Reds. Washington, in turn, believed he could recapture the pop that made him the No. 2 draft pick in 2016.
With three swings in Saturday afternoon’s 7-3 win over the Atlanta Braves, that partnership looked pretty good. Senzel finished with three extra-base hits, the last of which — a two-run homer into the visiting bullpen at Nationals Park in the sixth inning, after which he rounded the bases stone-faced — capped a second straight win.
“I feel like I’m also my worst critic,” Senzel said. “I always think I can do better. But that’s the game of baseball.”
That humble approach has helped him blossom and also allowed him to focus on his plate discipline — a tenet Manager Dave Martinez credited for much of the 28-year-old’s success. Though he had always sported a walk rate around MLB average, it has climbed to 13.8 percent this year, putting him in the top 5 percent of major leaguers, per Baseball Savant.
Though a player’s eye for the strike zone can be difficult to change, Martinez said the Nationals just had to show Senzel how effective he is when he’s disciplined. He has a .992 OPS on the pitch that follows a ball, per the website TruMedia, the best mark on the team.
“When you don’t have the success of getting hits … walks can keep you afloat in a sense,” Senzel said. “Not like I’m trying to draw walks but just trying to understand, maybe situationally, what the pitchers are trying to do.”
His OPS began the day at .726 OPS; it ended the day at a team-high .793. He now is a key cog in Washington’s lineup and has worked his way into being a potential trade chip at the deadline.
Senzel’s production has come in bunches — he has six home runs, and his first five came in a five-game span in late April — and he could be entering another hot stretch now. He credits his success to calculated aggression.
“You try to shrink the zone into what your strengths are, and I think what I’ve learned over the course of my career is the more aggressive I can be, the less I swing at maybe bad pitches,” Senzel said. “You’ve got to be aggressive in this league.”
He walked in his final plate appearance for good measure. The Nationals (29-35) worked better at-bats as a whole against Braves righty Charlie Morton than they had in their previous two games, which put them up 3-0 after two innings. Eddie Rosario’s double pushed two runs across in the first, then CJ Abrams worked a seven-pitch at-bat and lined a single that scored Senzel in the second.
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Senzel brought Luis García Jr. home with a double in the fourth and drove in two more runs with his sixth-inning homer to make it 7-2 after Lane Thomas had scored after two errors and Rosario’s single in the fifth.
“It’s always important for us to get ahead early,” Rosario said through an interpreter. “It adds more confidence to our starting pitcher when we have the lead.”
That early offense gave MacKenzie Gore a nice cushion against the Braves (35-27) in what became a strong bounce-back start from the left-hander following a six-run outing earlier in the week.
Gore still had to battle in his five-plus innings — in addition to extricating himself from a bases-loaded jam in the first, the 25-year-old threw more pitches out of the strike zone than he had in any start since last August. And, sure, there was a grimace here and there. In the sixth, after he allowed two leadoff hits and exited the game after 99 pitches, he kicked a little dirt on the mound and let out a sigh.
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But there wasn’t any high-octane frustration — not after Ozzie Albies’s double in the fifth cut Washington’s lead to 4-1 or from the dugout when Derek Law’s wild pitch allowed an inherited runner to score.
“Night and day [from last year], right?” Martinez said. “He’s so much better than he was last year. Last year, he’s stomping all over the mound or screaming in his glove. This year, he’s been really good — which is awesome, which is one of the reasons he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s able to get out of high-leverage situations without getting blown up.”
Gore finished with seven strikeouts and got a handful of comical whiffs.
“I’m an emotional guy — I always have been since I was young,” Gore said. “It’s more being able to execute when guys are on.”
