Austin fever, catch it! And we don't mean Texas, baby...

A guy we haven't talked much about is Austin Kearns. His 3-run home run last night propelled the Nats to a 4-3 victory over the Mets. You can see the home run here. As you'll hear in the video, this was the first time this season the Nats scored in the first inning. That's a pretty depressing stat.

Anyway, back to the subject of this post. Kearns is a good, professional hitter. He was better in Cincy (.274/.351/.492) than in DC (.250/.381/.429) last year, but we'll look past his post-trade slump. His numbers this year (.287/.367/.471) are better than both his Cincy numbers last year and his career numbers (.266/.361/.464). He's 27, so it's not surprising that he's improving, and we reasonably can expect him to maintain something near his numbers this year for the next few years.

Comparing Kearns to other players shows something interesting. The players with whom Kearns' stats are most similar are:

Bubba Trammell (966)
Jim Greengrass (964)
Kevin Mench (960)
Craig Monroe (959)
Johnny Rizzo (957)
Craig Wilson (954)
Dick Kokos (947)
Greg Norton (946)
Ben Broussard (944)
Butch Huskey (944)

Not exactly a list of all stars. But if we look at the players with whom Kearns is most similar when they were his age we find something quite different:

Frank Thomas (975)
Larry Walker (970)
Mike Marshall (963)
Torii Hunter (958)
Wally Post (955)
Kevin McReynolds (954)
Gil Hodges (952)
Mel Hall (950)
Preston Wilson (949)
Sam Chapman (948)

Now, that's much better, although it pains us to see Preston Wilson's name on this web site again. No one thinks Kearns is or will be a hitter like Frank Thomas (at least we don't), but it would be nice if he could continue his current trajectory.

The Kearns for Majewski deal was a steal for the Nats and the kind of deal Jim Bowden needs to make often for the Nats to turn this ship around over the next few years. Well done, Jimbo.