Zimmerman trying to stick to simple tweaks during slump

PHOENIX - It's no secret Ryan Zimmerman has been in a prolonged funk at the plate, masked only by the MVP-caliber first 2 1/2 months of his season, a start that allows him to take the field tonight at Chase Field still sporting a .319 batting average and .939 OPS.

That batting average, though, stood at .372 back on June 13, his OPS at 1.140. In the five weeks since, he has hit a scant .210 with a .528 OPS, only one homer and three doubles.

Zimmerman knows this. He doesn't like it. But he also has been through the meat grinder enough to know when it's time to worry and when it's time not to worry.

And right now, neither he nor the Nationals are worried, recognizing two simple facts: 1) He was never going to hit .372 for an entire season, and 2) he has been prone to lengthy streaks his entire career, even during his best seasons.

"I've always been sort of a streaky hitter where I'll have one or two bad stretches and then come back with a really hot stretch for two weeks or a month," Zimmerman said. "I think I've learned that I hit the way I hit. And if you try to do something drastic, you do that for four or five games and then you just end up going back to what you were doing before, and you just waste another five games. Obviously, nobody likes to struggle, but not many people make it through an entire season without going through one or two periods like that."

Which isn't to say Zimmerman and the Nationals aren't trying to make some tweaks right now to get him back on track. He has "two or three keys" to his swing that he tries to focus on when things aren't going well. But he's also careful not to start tinkering too much or overhauling something that was working splendidly not long ago.

Hitters like Zimmerman, who use a high leg kick and pre-swing hand movements, can be tougher to fix in short order than those with simple, compact swings (like Anthony Rendon, for example). They also have a tendency to - once they get hot - stay hot for a long time, something manager Dusty Baker has seen in plenty of hitters over the years.

"He's like a fine-tuned, 12-cylinder engine," Baker said. "You get a couple of cylinders off ... he reminds me a lot of Matt Williams. When he was on, he was on. I was Matt's batting coach at the time (in San Francisco), and when he was off, he was really off. And you don't really know sometimes where to start to fix it. Because he has some many moveable parts."

From a psychological standpoint, Zimmerman is in an advantageous position. In recent seasons, he has struggled in April and May and found himself needing to go on a major hot streak over the summer to get his numbers back to a respectable level.

This time around, he got off to the best start of his career. That earned him not only a starting spot in the All-Star Game, but the ability to look up at the scoreboard right now and still see All-Star-caliber stats even when he's been slumping for a month.

"Yeah, usually this is right around the time I go through one of those runs," said Zimmerman, whose two best months over his career have been July (.857 OPS) and August (.881 OPS). "But I'm usually hitting .240. So I'm ahead of the game this year. I don't know if it makes it easier. It's never easy to struggle. But I think if you're lucky to be in the big leagues long enough, you know at some point in the year it's going to happen. In the really good years, you only have one or two of them. The bad years, you have three or four of them. It's just how it goes."