Washington Nationals’ No. 13, Starlin Castro, has a 13-game hit streak going...

Starlin Castro started Friday night with an 11-game hit streak going, over which the 31-year-old infielder was 17 for 38 (.447 AVG) with four doubles, one home run, 11 RBIs, five walks, and eight runs scored, with multi-hit efforts in six of those 11 games. Once again, he wasted no time extending his streak, singling to center field the first time up against San Francisco Giants’ starter Logan Webb.

A single in the seventh made it multi-hit games in 7 of 12 on the streak.

Even as he’s struggled for stretches at the plate this season, his manager, Davey Martinez, has consistently pointed to the back of Castro’s baseball card as the source of his belief that the infielder would straighten things out.

“He’s been good, he’s been really good, and I’ve said this all along with him, close your eyes and at the end of the year he’s going to have a whole lot of hits and he’s going to drive in 70-80-90 runs, and just do the things he’s doing,” Martinez said earlier this month.

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“The big surprise is the way he’s playing defense over at third base. He’s been really good over there, and he hasn’t done it much. Before this year he was over there for 55 games, and he looks like he’s been over there most of his career, so that’s awesome for us, we preach so much about playing good defense, and he’s contributed a lot on defense as well.”

As he started to come out of a slump last month, Castro talked to reporters about what was going right at the plate.

“I’ve been feeling pretty good the last series at home too, you know, I just continue to grind it out, I know there’s a lot of games to be played, so I just try to be ready, go out there and be ready to hit, the fastball especially.”

Castro went into Saturday’s game with a .299 AVG on fastballs on the year in 2021, which his manager said is another good sign.

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“His timing is really good, he’s getting ready a lot earlier and then he’s staying behind the ball really good right now,” Martinez explained.

“So, when he’s able to hit the ball to all fields the way he’s doing right now, I said this before about him the hits will come and he’s doing a great job right now.”

Going into Saturday afternoon’s game, Castro had a .276/.328/.367 line on the year, not far off his .289/.319/.412 career line, and he singled the first time up to extend his hit streak to a total of 13 straight games.