Nationals’ Victor Robles is swinging a red-hot spring bat

“Hey media!” he yelled in the hallway connecting the field to the Nationals’ clubhouse. Told he was wanted for a group interview, he shot back: “Really? Wow.”

Maybe a half-hour passed. Robles, as he does, got in a postgame lift and then spotted the same reporters waiting outside Manager Dave Martinez’s office.

“Media!” he shouted. “Come on now!”

Martinez didn’t have to ask who it was. In just a few breaths, he praised Robles’s continued production and lamented another mistake on the base paths. After Luis García — the Nationals’ infielder, not the Astros’ pitcher — scorched a grounder to first, Robles didn’t realize it was a tag play at second and chose not to slide. On his second single, Robles picked up an extra bag on a lazy throw to the cutoff man between third and home. Overall, he poked two more hits after reaching twice in his previous two games. Against the New York Yankees on Wednesday, he singled and walked. Against the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday, he ripped a double and a homer off Jack Flaherty, both hits topping 100 mph in exit velocity.

Yes, it’s spring training, but Robles is beating major league starters in a way he rarely has in recent seasons. Since helping the Nationals capture the 2019 World Series, Robles has a .291 on-base percentage and .306 slugging percentage over the past three seasons. Those numbers include just 51 extra-base hits (36 doubles, four triples, 11 homers) and 59 walks. And this came after he finished sixth in rookie of the year voting in 2019, when he had 53 extra-base hits (33 doubles, three triples) and 35 walks.

That season, he set career highs in games (155) and strikeouts (140). There has always been good and bad with Robles, who’s a highlight reel in one moment and a blooper reel in the next. But no matter how rough he’s been at the plate, the Nationals have maintained, sometimes against all logic and reason, that a past version of Robles can be unlocked still.

A .995 OPS down here feels like a start. Just five strikeouts to three walks does, too, especially because Robles struck out 19 times during spring training ahead of the 2021 season. Now comes the challenge of carrying this into Opening Day at Nationals Park.

“You know, in terms of just the results themselves and the numbers, I really don’t care much about that,” Robles, speaking in Spanish through a team interpreter, said of his success in Florida. “Maybe partly because I’m on the team. It’s just a matter of making sure that I take the right approach.”

Robles is not the only player…