Abrams and Wood share home run swing, and same bat

TORONTO – CJ Abrams knew the situation when he stepped to the plate with one out in the top of the sixth. The gigantic scoreboard in center field at Rogers Centre can’t be ignored altogether, and the zero in the Nationals’ hit column was right there in plain sight.

Abrams knew Bowden Francis was no-hitting the Nats to that point. He also knew it would do no good to let that fact creep too deep into his mind.

“I don’t want to think about that at the plate,” he said. “I just want to get a good pitch to hit.”

Abrams did get a good pitch to hit, a 1-1 changeup from Francis that stayed up and over the plate enough to ripe for the taking. And when he proceeded to launch that pitch over the right field wall, Francis’ no-hit bid was over in style.

“The at-bats before, I kind of swung at his pitch,” Abrams said. “I was a little early on the ones I swung at. So I wanted to go to left field, and I got a changeup and I got to pull it.”

By staying back in anticipation of driving a fastball to the opposite field, Abrams actually put himself in good position to pull an offspeed pitch. Little could he have known it would produce the hardest-hit ball of his career: a 112.7-mph scorcher for his first homer of the season.

“I just hit it perfect,” he said. “The ball was a little bit outside, I kind of pulled it. And I had James’ bat in my hand, so I think that kind of helped.”

Hold up. Abrams hit the homer while using James Wood’s bat? How did that come about?

“I used it in spring training a lot,” he said. “I’ve got some on the way. We’ll see what we can do. … It’s a little heavier, a little longer. So just kind of feeling the barrel, it just feels good in my hand.”

Wood, by the way, homered immediately after Abrams, giving the Nationals their first back-to-back blasts of the young season. He did not use the exact same bat as his teammate, though. It was merely the same model.

But the sight of Abrams hitting a ball with that much authority and rounding the bases as a result did serve as a morale boost to Wood and everyone else in the Nats dugout.

“I felt like we’ve been putting together good at-bats, but we were just struggling to put the barrel on the ball,” he said. “Seeing him do that, I think it definitely gave us a little juice.”

It had been a rough opening series for both young stars. Abrams entered Monday just 2-for-13 with zero extra-base hits. Wood came in just 2-for-12 with a double and seven strikeouts.

“There’s definitely a panic button you can hit,” Wood said. “But four games in, you’re a long way from that.”

Monday’s back-to-back homers weren’t nearly enough to lift the Nationals. They managed only three more hits in the game and fell to the Blue Jays, 5-2.

Perhaps Abrams and Wood, though, discovered something they can carry over into tonight’s game and beyond.

“There’s been some good at-bats, and some not-so-good ones,” Wood said. “I’ve just been trying to continue to focus on what I can do better, asking guys what they see. Trying to do more or less the same thing, but also look for little adjustments here and there.”