Nationals Prospects: Brady House found his power stroke yesterday

Brady House’s signature power was missing at the big league level but the Nats third baseman found it yesterday

As an amateur and in the Minor Leagues, power was a big part of Brady House’s game. Most scouts considered his raw power his best trait. On MLB Pipeline, he has 60 grade power, which is very good. However, in his first 21 games in the MLB, that power was missing.

House did not hit any home runs in those games and was struggling to really drive the ball. After hitting 13 homers in 65 AAA games, this was a surprise. A lot of Nats fans who paid close attention to House’s development suspected he would struggle out of the gates offensively. However, the reason for that was not because of power, it was his high strikeout rate and low walk rate.

House’s plate discipline issues have unsurprisingly followed him to the big leagues. He is only walking 4.3% of the time and chasing 37% of the time. However, the strikeouts have not been out of control. A 22.3% K rate is about league average. He is actually striking out less often than he did in AAA.

There were more positives for House too. On the defensive side of the ball he has been outstanding. He already has 2 outs above average in just 22 games and has 0.4 fWAR thanks to that elite defense. You can tell that his defense gives him a solid margin for error and will buy his bat time to develop.

However, the lack of power was concerning and his OPS was lingering in the .500’s despite a solid batting average. Yesterday, that power outage finally ended. Brady House had his breakout game offensively. He made a statement that he is here to stay at the MLB level.

House walloped two no doubt home runs against two good Major League pitchers. The first one came off of Brandon Woodruff, who struck out 10 Nats yesterday. Woodruff hung a first pitch sweeper in the fourth inning and House jumped all over. It was a no doubt shot that went 427 feet.

This was great to see and it is the kind of homer I want to see House hit a lot of. He is always going to have some warts in his offensive game. However, I think he has the ability to be the kind of guy who absolutely punishes mistakes. Woodruff tried to sneak a first pitch breaking ball in for a strike, but House was all over it.

His second homer was almost a carbon copy of the first. This time Abner Uribe threw him a hanging breaking ball in a 2-0 count, and House launched it to nearly the same exact spot. It was insane how similar the homers were.

House has actually been a good breaking ball hitter in the big leagues. He is hitting .324 against spin and is whiffing at a 29.7% clip. That whiff number sounds high, but against breaking balls, that is quite good. It is a lower whiff rate on spin than CJ Abrams, who is not a guy who strikes out a lot.

House has had some more trouble against fastballs. He is hitting .250 against them with a 27% whiff rate and no power. 14 of his 21 strikeouts have also come on heaters. Most guys have better numbers against fastballs, so these are odd numbers. I have noticed that he can struggle to be on time against high velocity. For a guy as talented as House, this seems like a fixable issue.

Overall, House has been solid if not spectacular. After yesterday, his OPS is up to a respectable .691 and his average is good at .270. Hopefully the power is here to stay and given his track record, I think it is.

House will never be a particularly patient hitter and his OBP will be on the lower side. However, if he can tap into his plus raw power and his hit tool is solid like it has been so far, he can be an above average offensive player.

That is more than good enough for House to be a good starting third baseman because he has elite defense to go with that. Hopefully yesterday is just the start of something special for Brady House. We know he is a great defender and he has some good offensive tools. Now we will figure out if the youngster can put it all together to reach his very high ceiling.