James Wood Hits Inside-the-Park Grand Slam as Mets Defense Collapses Against Nationals
The New York Mets just gave up the rarest hit in baseball, and they did it in the worst way possible.
James Wood, the 23-year-old Washington Nationals outfielder, smoked a first-pitch sweeper 379 feet toward the Mets bullpen in the second inning Monday night. The bases were loaded. His team was down 5-0. The ball came off his bat at 101.3 mph and looked like a routine fly out for a competent center fielder.
Then the Mets happened.
Left fielder Nick Morabito, in his MLB debut, ran the ball down at the warning track and crashed into the wall as it bounced off his glove. Center fielder Tyrone Taylor arrived too late and watched his teammate sprawled on the warning track. The ball rolled toward the bullpen. Wood, meanwhile, had not stopped running.
15.15 seconds after he made contact, he was crossing home plate. His first career grand slam was an inside-the-park grand slam. The first one anybody in MLB has hit since 2022. The kind of play you might see twice a decade if you are lucky.
The Nationals went on to win 9-6, completing one of the more humiliating fielding losses the Mets have produced in recent memory.
Wood was buzzing afterward. The kid is having a breakout sophomore season. He came into the year with hype as one of the best young hitters in the National League, and he is making good on the projection. He has power, plate discipline, and as he just proved, enough speed to circle the bases on a botched fly ball before any of the four New York defenders involved could pick up the baseball.
This is who the Nationals built around when they traded Juan Soto. Wood was the centerpiece. The other pieces from that deal have had mixed results. Wood is starting to look like the cornerstone Washington bet he would be.
For the Mets, the embarrassment is the part that lingers. Morabito’s MLB debut is the kind of moment you want to remember forever for the right reasons. Instead, the rookie’s first inning featured a wall collision, a dropped catchable ball, and a stat line that includes the most expensive miss of the season so far. He will get past it. Most young players do. But there is no good way to make your first highlight a YouTube clip of a four-run mistake.
Tyrone Taylor does not get a pass either. He should have read his teammate’s positioning, communicated on the play, and at minimum stopped the ball from getting past everyone. Instead, the Mets put two outfielders in the same square of the field and let a ball turn into the most painful kind of grand slam.
Manager Carlos Mendoza did not have much to say after the game. There was not much to say. New York’s outfield defense has been a problem all season, and Monday night was the day it finally cost them in a way that will get replayed in studios across the league.
The Mets need to figure this out fast. Otherwise the team that was supposed to compete in the NL East is going to spend the next month watching James Wood and the Nationals climb the standings while they sort through the wreckage of their outfield depth chart.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
