John Matthews
WMAL.com

WASHINGTON — (WMAL) Anthony Rendon began Sunday afternoon’s game against the New York Mets as a relative weak link in Washington’s potent offensive lineup.

A month into the season, the veteran third baseman had yet to hit a single home run, had only five runs batted in to his name, and was batting a measly .226.

All of that changed dramatically by dinner time Sunday.

Rendon batted a perfect 6 for 6 – including three home runs – and knocked in 10 runs, as the Nationals crushed the Mets, 23 – 5. In doing so, Rendon joined Walker Cooper of the 1949 Cincinnati Reds as the only players in Major League history to reach those lofty totals in a single game.

By the end of the game, Rendon had tripled his home run and RBI totals for the season, and saw his batting average rise to .278.

The game was not only Rendon’s first multi-homer game of his career, but in knocking three round trips, he became the fifth National to do so in a game, along with Bryce Harper, Ryan Zimmerman, Adam Dunn, and Alfonso Soriano.

“I may have had three home runs in high school,” Rendon said of his historic game, “but never like that with the RBI.”

Rendon’s day was certainly one for the record books, but he was only the biggest cog in an offensive machine that has taken baseball by storm over the first month of the season. Matt Wieters hit two homers of his own Sunday, while Bryce Harper and Adam Lind each added one.

The blowout win produced a number of fascinating factoids:

• Harper scored four runs on Sunday to finish the month with 32, breaking a major league record for runs scored in April previously set by Larry Walker in 1997.
• Ryan Zimmerman continued his torrid hitting pace by knocking in his MLB-leading 29th RBI – a Nationals record for a single month. Zimmerman is tied for the major league lead with 11 home runs on the season
• The Nationals have scored 170 runs this season – 31 more than any other team in baseball. The Nationals have already scored 15 or more runs in three games this season, one more than the rest of the other 29 teams combined.
• To put their prolific season in perspective, the Nats have scored 73 runs since last Tuesday.  The Kansas City Royals have scored 63 runs all season.
• The Nats also lead baseball in hits (265), walks (102), OBP (.369), slugging (.510), and doubles (58). They are second in home runs (45).

After all of that base-running, the Nats could use a day off, and they’ll get one Monday. They’ll open a three-game set Tuesday at home against the Diamondbacks.

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