James Wood’s second-half track record is exactly why the Nationals are paying close attention now.
A year ago, the young outfielder looked like he was barreling toward stardom. In the first half of 2025, Wood hit .278 with 24 home runs and a .915 OPS, good enough for his first career All-Star nod.
Then the break hit, and everything changed. His bat went quiet, the strikeouts stacked up, and he finished the second half hitting .223 with a .690 OPS while whiffing 105 times in just 62 games - a 39% strikeout rate.
That history is why his current slump has at least a little noise around it, even if the sample is tiny. Entering Friday, Wood is hitting just .148 (4-for-27) in the second half, with 12 strikeouts in 30 plate appearances. After he went 1-for-14 with 10 K’s in three games against the Athletics, Nationals manager Blake Butera pointed to the timing that can get thrown off after the break.
“After a break like that, sometimes the timing can be off a little bit,” Nationals manager Blake Butera said on Sunday in West Sacramento, after Wood went 1-for-14 with 10 K’s in three games against the Athletics. “He’ll be OK.”
The bigger picture, though, is why Washington isn’t panicking. Wood has been better almost everywhere that matters in 2026.
He’s swinging harder, hitting the ball harder, walking more and striking out less than he did last season. His Statcast numbers place him near the top of the league in several key categories, and when you compare only his first halves from 2025 and 2026, the 23-year-old comes out ahead in expected batting average, expected slugging percentage and expected wOBA.
That production has helped drive one of the best offenses in baseball. The Nationals enter Friday leading the Majors in runs (567), slugging percentage (.443) and home runs (150).
“The offense has been outstanding, and James is leading that charge,” Butera said.
Wood’s run total is the number that really jumps off the page. He enters Friday’s series opener against the D-backs with 94 runs, well ahead of the Pirates’ Bryan Reynolds (71) for the Major League lead. At the end of the first half, his 89 runs were already 21 more than Reynolds’ 68, the biggest gap between No. 1 and No. 2 in runs at the All-Star break since Ted Williams (82) led Johnny Pesky (63) by 19 in 1946, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
At his current pace, Wood is tracking toward 147 runs. That would put him in rare air - just the second 150-run season since Williams in 1949. Only the Astros’ Jeff Bagwell, who scored 152 in 2000, has gotten there in nearly 80 years.
A lot of that comes from the way Wood is getting on base and staying in the middle of everything. He’s batting .270, has 28 homers and leads the Majors with 81 walks. He also scored in 11 straight games from July 1-17, the second-longest streak in MLB this season.
“I could say it’s crazy,” Nuñez said, “but it’s Woody.”
CJ Abrams sees the same thing. With Wood setting the tone in a lineup that keeps giving him chances, the runs keep piling up.
“It’s not a surprise at all,” Nationals shortstop CJ Abrams said. “He’s been swinging the bat well.
He’s on base pretty much every game, multiple times. Seeing him cross the plate is great.”
Even in the current second-half funk, there are signs the swing itself hasn’t gone far off the rails. Wood scored five runs in his first six games after the break, and when he has made contact, the ball has still come off his bat with authority. None of his 16 batted balls in the second half has been below 88.1 mph, and eight have been hard hit at 95 mph or better.
“Such a good hitter,” Butera said. “He gets pitched so tough.
Saw a lot of lefties for him in particular. He’ll be all right.”
That would matter after what happened in 2025, when the second-half slump lingered and Wood was also dealing with left knee and quad pain late in the year, according to Jesse Dougherty of NOTUS.
Nuñez knows how draining that kind of stretch can be.
“It’s awful,” Nuñez said. “You feel like the world’s ending.”
Wood, though, spent the offseason working. He went back to IMG Academy in Florida, his alma mater, and worked on his swing with hitting coordinator and former Major Leaguer John-Ford Griffin. The early returns suggest that work paid off: Wood is getting the ball in the air more in 2026 and hitting it harder overall.
Abrams said the approach around him has stayed steady no matter what the box score says.
“He stays where his feet are,” Abrams said. “He stays positive. No matter what happens, the results on the field, we kind of stay together and pay attention to the grind.”
The Nationals have also tried to keep him fresh. Wood has played in all 103 of Washington’s games, but the club has given him more time at designated hitter - 21 starts there compared with 82 in the outfield. The idea is simple: keep him on the field, but don’t run him into the ground.
“I think a lot of it is going to be learning from where the failure took place last year and making sure he makes those adjustments,” Butera said. “I think a lot of that is with his body, and he’s done a really good job of staying on top of that, staying on top of his diet, getting in the training room, making sure that he’s feeling good, because we’re going to need him these last 40, 50-plus games.”
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