Nats' offensive numbers looking more familiar since break

Levelheaded ballplayers like to espouse the belief that everything will even out over a 162-game season, and numbers that may look subpar in May or July inevitably will resemble career norms come late September.

"They're called averages for a reason," these players will say.

If you believe in that mantra, you like what you've seen from several key Nationals of late. And you probably believe it's going to continue over the season's final two months.

Take Bryce Harper, for example, who entered the All-Star break sporting a .214 batting average and causing widespread panic throughout the DMV.

Well, with another big night at the plate Thursday (2-for-3 with a homer and two walks) Harper raised his batting average since the All-Star break to .359. His OPS in that time is 1.172. He has three homers, 13 RBIs and seven extra-base hits and has raised his batting average to .230.

Now take Daniel Murphy, who got off to a very slow start when he finally made his season debut in mid-June following knee surgery but at long last is looking very much like his old self. Since the break, the veteran second baseman is batting .366 with a 1.056 OPS, three homers, 11 RBIs and five extra-base hits to raise his batting average to .289.

And don't forget about Ryan Zimmerman, one of the most ardent believers in the "They're called averages for a reason" mantra. Though he's not playing every day, as are Harper and Murphy, he's still producing at a much higher clip of late. Since the All-Star break, Zimmerman is batting .292 with a .912 OPS.

"Any time you go through a long season, you have ups and downs, and at the end of the year I think your numbers are going to be what they're going to be," Trea Turner said. "We've played a lot of baseball. And if the numbers say that they're lower than their career averages, I would imagine by the end of the year they're going to be pretty close to those numbers."

That may hold true for the Nationals lineup as a whole. That group struggled regularly for much of the early portion of the summer, but it has flipped a switch in the last two weeks.

Since the All-Star break, the Nats as a team are scoring 6.92 runs per game (tops in the majors), batting .281 (second-best in the National League), reaching base at a .370 clip (tops in the majors) and posting an .864 OPS (tops in the NL).

Yes, that 25-run explosion Tuesday night against the Mets certainly skews the numbers a bit, but this team still has scored five or more runs in eight of 12 games since the break, scoring nine or more runs four times.

"It's huge," manager Davey Martinez said. "We are starting to string at-bats along the whole lineup, and that's huge. There's no stopgap. Those guys can continue to do that and take their walks, take their hits, drive in runs from third base (with) less than two outs, all those things."