When a player starts to suck, there are three things that could have happened:

1. Actual talent level or approach to the game changed

2. Previous success was either fluky or unsustainable

3. Recent lack of success is result of fluky or unsustainable properties

I don’t even know what I think.

He’s never been good at drawing walks, but it looks like he was quite a bit worse this year than it had been in the past two. I’m mostly interested in the gap between average and OBP, which tends to stay pretty constant.

Minors
.041
.059
.060
.038
.062
.069
Majors
.045
.058
.032

You can fault his poor average— somewhat at least— on the lower than usual BABIP he had this year, especially in the second half. But the BA/OBP split is pretty much immune to luck— so the question is, did he specifically change his approach to hacker this year, or is it just a random fluctuation?

Given that he’s had a low gap before (though not this low), I wouldn’t expect it to stay that low going forward. .045 is probably a good guess. If the BABIP gods allow his average to return to the .280-.290 range, we’re looking at a .320-.340 OBP guy going forward, unless he can magically return to his form of ‘07 or ’04-’05 in the minors.

The more interesting part is his batted ball tendencies:

…confirming what I thought I saw, a jump in ground balls and a drop in fly balls. Less flyballs=less home runs. It’s too bad MLS only doesn’t go back to the Hart era, because I can’t draw any conclusions based on that graph— you could make the case that ‘07 was an outlier, because ’06 and ’08 are alike. ’06 is only 230 at-bats, so that’s not too solid of data. I’d be curious as to his batted ball splits in AA in ’04 and ’05, if they were drastically different than what he has now.

One more section— his k rate and bb rate both decreased in ’08, suggesting he hit more balls/less selective and sacrificed power for contact. His hr/fb ratio was down to about 9% from 13% the past two seasons, so that could rebound. His swing rate in general has increased from 45—>50—>55 in three major league seasons, and his outside swing % was 30 this year, a career high.

I don’t expect him to hit .260/.300/.450 going forward, no. I don’t expect .290/.350/.550, either. I’ll split the difference and say .280/.325/.500, which isn’t too terrible but certainly isn’t what we expected from him. If he can improve the plate discipline and go back to what worked, maybe we can go back to the high expectations we had coming into this year.