Nationals' Star Shortstop CJ Abrams Has Struggled in Second Half

The second half of the 2025 MLB season has been going just about as poorly for the Washington Nationals as the first half went, with the team continuing to struggle in pretty much every facet of the game.

There's a real argument to be made that things have actually been worse for the Nationals following the All-Star break, and this is mainly because the few productive offensive pieces the team had been relying on have all gone cold at the same time.

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Among this list has been Washington's star shortstop, CJ Abrams, who, after putting together a very strong first-half performance at the plate, has struggled to find any consistency over the past couple of weeks.

Across the 16 games the Nationals have played since returning from the All-Star break, Abrams has only managed a .200 batting average and a .647 OPS to go along with just two homers and nine RBIs.

Both of these lines represent stark declines from the .273 and .803 marks that Abrams put up across the first few months of the season, where he was one of the best hitters in the National League for Washington.

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Abrams hasn't been the only young National to stumble out of the gates to start the second half either, as fellow budding superstar James Wood has also largely been a non-factor for the team at the plate following his first-ever All-Star Game selection.

I don't remember a stretch like this for the Nationals.

On their way to a 6th straight loss. Allowed 70 runs and 103 hits over a half-dozen games. (Multiple times yielding 16 runs and 24+ hits). They've also committed 8 errors in their last five games. pic.twitter.com/9vncPPGkwk
— Grant Paulsen (@granthpaulsen) August 6, 2025

Abrams, for his part, has been markedly better at the dish than his teammate, but the overall trend has not been positive for a team that already has a serious lack of offensive output.

The glove has largely remained solid for Abrams up the middle, which certainly lessens some of the blow from his rough stretch with the bat in his hands, but Washington would like to see the 24-year-old get back on track offensively.

At the end of the day, there's not much that the Nationals are playing for at this point other than the further development of their young core, and that young core includes Abrams.

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If Washington wants to eventually get back to competing for postseason glory, then they're going to need their new star shortstop to figure out how to maintain his form over the course of an entire campaign,

As such, it will be very interesting to see what adjustments that Abrams makes to break out of his recent slump, and what his stats line ends up looking like comes season's end.

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