In much of Spring Training, he couldn’t hit (.150 BA) water from a boat against a legit pitcher. Now he can’t miss!

Photo by Jake Stephens/TalkNats

Sometimes you can’t explain a molten hot streak and setting records, and when the assembled media asked Joey Wiemer, he said he had ❝no idea.❞ He hit a 3-run homer on a pitch well below the zone at his soleus with a bat angle that golfers use on their short irons. It worked. It should not have worked on that nasty splitter by Shota Imanaga. That’s baseball. The batters get paid too. Wiemer finished the game on Sunday just a double shy of a cycle.

Wiemer has reached base safely in his first eight plate appearances with the Washington Nationals that set a team record. Six of those were hits, and two of those were homers. He describes it all as a lot of perseverance and searching for answers — and here are some snippets from his postgame interview: ❝Spent some time staring at the sky in Omaha. It’s been a windy road [to get here], keep going, put in a lot of work, effort, work ethic, and never give up.❞ Sounds like Omaha is not a place he wants to go to again!

After 72 rough games in Triple-A Omaha, Joseph Daryl Wiemer was DFA’d on Aug. 4, 2025. Whatever happened in Omaha just had him staring to the sky looking for answers. He didn’t forget how to hit, but something wasn’t working in his nearly 300 plate appearances there. Miami picked him up, and he immediately got hot in Triple-A Jacksonville and earned a call-up to the Marlins.

Wiemer spent parts of five years in the Minors after college at the University of Cincinnati (4th round pick). The Nats claimed Wiemer after a DFA on Jan. 5, 2026. Most of Wiemer’s prolonged minor league career was good until his deep struggles at Omaha. He did well in college, and showed big in the Cape Cod League the year before he was drafted. Then his Arizona Fall League showcase was promising, and he debuted on Apr. 1, 2023 and that was no April Fool’s joke as he hit a double on the first pitch he saw — and went 1-for-2 against the Cubs for his rival Brewers. This year was Wiemer’s first Opening Day roster as he didn’t make the Brewers out of camp in 2023 — he was their first call-up after an injury to Luis Urías.

In Spring Training, Wiemer was struggling with nothing happening against good pitchers until the final week of camp he showed something. He already has matched the number of hits (6) that he had in all of Spring Training. The team demoted both Dylan Crews and Christian Franklin to Triple-A, and Wiemer was tabbed as a righty platoon bat. Fortunately for the Nats, they were facing two lefty starters in the 3-game series at Wrigley Field, and Wiemer basically carried the team to the two wins and a series win against the Cubs who were close to beating the Brewers to advance to the NLCS last year.

Speaking of Nats’ records, Wiemer’s eight consecutive plate appearances reaching base safely is a streak that ties the most to begin a tenure with a new team in the Expansion Era (1961), joining: 2017 Jeremy Hazelbaker AZ 1983 Steve Henderson SEA. H/T Sarah Langs via @EliasSports

When you see Wiemer standing by himself, he doesn’t look like a big man. Put him next to Jacob Young and Daylen Lile in the outfield, and you can really see Wiemer’s 6’4 frame. If pitchers weren’t scared of him before — they might be now. Will the Nats give him more playing time or will he continue as a platoon bat against lefty starters?

Wiemer attended Bedford Senior High School in Temperance, Michigan, a small city of about 7,500 in the southeast part of Michigan near the border with Ohio. Baseball isn’t the sport of choice for most there. Tim Fleck has known him since he was 9-years old and coached him for travel ball from 13U through High School on teams in the Ohio/Michigan border towns.

Wiemer’s Opening Day opened eyes and you wondered if he could get anywhere close to that success and he surpassed that in his second game with three key RBIs. He became the first Nationals player to hit a home run in his first plate appearance as a member of the team since Adam Lind (April 3, 2017), per Elias Sports Bureau. Wiemer joined Daniel “Hits” Murphy (2016) as the second Nats player to reach base four times on Opening Day, and the Nats’ outfielder also was the first player on the team since Ian Desmond (2012) to have three hits on Opening Day. None of them could match Wiemer’s six hits and eight consecutive plate appearances reaching base safely as he added two walks to the mix.

As they say, at some point every hitting streak ends, and Wiemer’s hot start will cool off. He just doesn’t want the trail to go cold. He never wants to go back to a place like Omaha. The righty made that crystal clear. No telling on how the rest of Wiemer’s story will be written. He just turned 27 in February.