Matt of Matt's Bats: Looking at Michael A. Taylor's contributions to the Nats

The Washington Nationals are in a tough position right now, having just been swept by the New York Mets to give up sole possession of first place in the National League East and they got blasted to smithereens by the Diamondbacks. The Mets blasted the Marlins too, and now the Mets are up one game. Aside from making the next two months of baseball really competitive and fun to watch, there is some good news for Nats fans. The injuries that haunted the team have mostly healed, and now the Nats are finally starting to field their opening day lineup. The only position player who hasn't come back from their injury is centerfielder Denard Span. His replacement, though, has been playing fantastically. Since everyone is talking about other Nats news, I thought it might be worth spending a few minutes to talk about rookie Michael A. Taylor.

He was expected to be a bench player and pinch-hitter, but Taylor was called up to fill in for Denard Span in center field on almost a full-time basis. He has played very good defense and lately has been raking at the plate. He is hitting .237 with 9 home runs and 41 runs batted in for the season. He is tied for fourth on the team in home runs and is third in RBIs.

Taylor was born on March 26, 1991 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was the youngest in his family after his four older sisters. He played baseball for Westminster Academy on the same team as future teammate Matt den Dekker, even though they were three grades apart. He was selected in the sixth round of the 2009 MLB draft. He played most of his first professional season for the Gulf Coast League Nats, and moved up to Class A Hagerstown Suns when the GCL Nats' season ended. In 2011, he started in Hagerstown and was promoted to the Class A Advanced Potomac Nationals in 2012. After two full seasons with the P-Nats, Taylor moved up to Class AA Harrisburg. In late 2014, he was sent to Triple-A Syracuse Chiefs, and then made his major league debut as a late season call-up on September 12, 2014 against the Mets. In that game, he got his first major league hit off Rafael Montero, and then he hit his first major league home run of Carlos Torres.

Taylor is having a great rookie year while filling in for Denard Span and Jayson Werth. He's had some spectacular defensive plays, very much like Denard Span often does. On July 20 against the Mets, Taylor made a catch for the ages, running 97 feet and crashing into the wall to save extra bases from Eric Campbell. Also, on May 25 against the Cubs, Taylor robbed Tsuyoshi Wada of a run-scoring double with a diving catch. He reached his glove behind him as he dove and made a spectacular catch.

Taylor also had the honor of catching the final out of Max Scherzer's no hitter this year, tracking down Josh Harrison's fly ball. Amazingly, even though it's his rookie season, he has been on the field for both of the no-hitters in Nationals history. Last year, he was a defensive replacement in center field during Jordan Zimmermann's no-no. With one out in the ninth in Zimm's no-no, Taylor caught a ball deep to center hit by Jarrod Saltalamacchia. He chased after Christian Yelich's gapper for out number three, which Steven Souza, Jr. caught and was the first to celebrate with Souza.

Taylor also has come up with some big hits. Probably the one fans this year remember most is May 9 against the Diamondbacks. After Harper was ejected from the game, Taylor came in as a replacement and found himself with bases loaded. He hit a grand slam in the 9th inning to straightaway center field. It so happens that Chase Field's batter's eye is four feet taller than the Great Wall of China, so when Taylor's go-ahead home run landed right over the home run marker, you can say he hit it over the Great Wall.

Given his natural talent, speed and pop in his bat, I think Michael is the Nats' center fielder of the future. With Denard Span likely becoming a free agent next year, I'm excited to see Taylor develop into the Nationals' everyday center fielder and watch him continue to excel.

Ten-year-old Matt blogs about the Nationals at Matt's Bats. Follow him on Twitter: @MattsBats. He shares his views weekly as part of MASNsports.com's initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.