Washington Nationals owned by a Cub you’ve never heard of

This is bound to happen. I mean, Bryce Harper is 9-18 with five home runs against his former high school teammate, Erick Fedde. What about Freddie Freeman, and his abuse of Washington Nationals pitchers over the years. Brutal. Players are going to get hot. They will have a night, they will have back to back games, they may even have a series. Rafael Ortega had a series.

In the standings, the Nationals came out winners, taking two-of-three from the Chicago Cubs. Fitting these two teams were paired together in the first series after the trade-deadline, as they had dueling fire-sales to see who would field the most minor league names after.

Therefore, when you see someone on the Cubs hit three home runs in one game at the expense of Nationals pitchers, you might think it was El Mago, or Kris Bryant, or Anthony Rizzo. Nope, none of those players suited up in DC this week.

Rafael Ortega. Who? Humberto Arteaga? No, that was the guy the Nationals called up when Trea Turner hurt his finger sliding into third base earlier this year. Rafael Montero? No, that was the guy the Seattle Mariners just traded to the Houston Astros. RAFAEL ORTEGA!

Nationals pitchers were throwing Rafael Ortega beach balls this weekend, and he was crushing them.

No disrespect to Ortega, he’s a Major League baseball player, he’s proven he can hit the ball. He can hit fastballs. He can hit off speed pitches. He can hit curveballs. And he was hitting them all against the Nationals.

The encore for Ortega was hitting three home runs in the series finale, but there was actually more than the home run barrage. In a 6-5 Nationals win, Ortega drove in all five Cubs runs. The Cubs, as a team had five hits, Ortega had four of them!

In game two of the series, Ortega had two hits and two RBIs, as he popped his first home run of the weekend. In game one, he had two hits, including a double, and plated another run. All told Ortega was 8-13 in the three game set, with five extra base hits and eight runs driven in.

This is a guy who is playing for his fifth team after debuting in 2012 for the Colorado Rockies. He didn’t surface again in the big leagues until 2016 with the Los Angeles Angels. The Cubs are his fifth team and he’s spent more time out of the league than in it, since first appearing.

Entering today he had six career jacks and 43 RBIs.

Remarkable performance by a guy you surely never heard of before this weekend.

While odds are he doesn’t become a household name in the league, I guarantee the Nationals pitching staff has taken notice.