On a beautiful night at Nationals Park honoring our brave men and women of the U.S. Marine Corps, a nice surprise greeted all the servicemen and women who had gathered behind home plate. To the naked eye, Jayson Werth crushing baseballs 400 feet during batting practice before a mid-summer game isn’t anything to write home about or stop the presses. But Werth has been on the DL since June 3rd with a toe injury and foot fracture and was moved to the 60 day DL on July 23rd to clear a spot on the 40 man roster. So it was quite a surprise to those around the ballpark when Werth came out for BP and crushed ball after ball after ball into the left field bleachers.
We caught up exclusively with Jayson after his BP session and he was in high spirits and very positive about his progress and rehab. When asked about a possible return in the near future, Werth responded, “Should be any day now.”
Werth’s position in the Nationals batting lineup has proven hard to replace. The coveted, and precious #2 spot has seen a revolving door of participants hoping to match Werth’s production, including Wilmer Difo, Stephen Drew, Michael A. Taylor, and Ryan Rayburn. While the bench players have produced admirably, none have matched Werth’s production before he went down. In 47 games, he was batting .262 with 8 hrs and 18 RBIs and had been just starting to find his rhythm after a slow start.
Only time will tell you how Jayson will respond to the long layoff and come back and find his niche in a Nationals lineup that is best in the MLB this season. While Werth is participating in baseball activities, but he still hasn’t been cleared to sprint and will go on a rehab assignment before rejoining the National League East-leading Nationals.
While Jayson was gracious enough to talk to us exclusively about his injury, one topic he was more than willing to discuss was our Game of Thrones recaps and his analysis of the season so far. He was quite intrigued with Arya’s reunion with Nymeria and predicts that Nymeria will meet up with her again and wreak havoc on the Army of the Dead. So I don’t know what will happen, but we’re going with the guy who’s got a beard that would put Tormund to shame.
Defeating the Curse 