Adrian Gonzalez's Power Outage and Previous 11 of 13 Next Jon Lester's Baffling Incon

[lesterkett]

Jon Lester hasn't been himself this season. He's shown flashes of his old brilliance here and there, but his 3-4 record, 4.64 ERA and 1.38 WHIP just don't reflect the kind of pitcher he really is.

 

 

If it seems like Gonzalez has hit a lot of weak fly balls to the outfield this season, that's because he has. Per FanGraphs, Gonzalez has a 37.3 fly-ball rate this season, up from 32.1 percent last year. The bad new is that he only has a 6.1 HR/FB rate, down from 16.4 percent last season.

[redsoxbeatz]

I weep.

[jung]

Agons has not drawn a walk in over three weeks...ridiculous!!!

 

I have no problem with forgiving him a slump and allowing him a slump. All players slump. I have no tolerance for stupid baseball. Agons is making stupid baseball into an art form.

[SoxSport]

Are these guys overpaid--and pampered?

 

The Yankees make too much money, too, but they aren't pampered. They know Steinbrenner will kick them in the ass if they don't produce.

[VA Sox Fan]

I really don't get why this thread was started or what it means.

 

Gonzo is slumping big time (contributing tonight). I have no answer for Lester. Weird s***.

[redsoxbeatz]

Adrian continues to suck. Maybe when we bought him he didn't realize his talent was supposed to be part of the package.

[Emmz]

You mean like leading the AL in hits last year, and having over .950 OPS? Because that's also part of the package, which you so conveniently forgot. Let's make an effort to be rational, okay?

[evilhand]

I'm honestly growing worried that he may have re-injured his shoulder last year. Or, perhaps his injury has simply left him more prone to inflammation in the shoulder which will crop up from time to time going forward, which would really suck. But ever since the home run derby, he's just been a little off. He can still be an extremely valuable hitter, even if his home run power is sapped by his shoulder acting up, but it's definitely frustrating to watch him struggle to get into a groove this year.

 

Of course, there have been no reports of him having a cortisone shot, so I realize my suggestion that he may have inflammation isn't supported by any reports. I just don't know what else might be going on.

 

I mean, he's not striking out any more often than he has throughout his career. His career AB/SO is 4.9 and this season he's at 5.0. His career strikeout % is 18.0 and his season rate is 18.2. He's also seeing a similar amount of pitches per plate appearance to his career rate 3.83 vs 3.63. That's down a touch, and coupled with his drop in walk rate (career 11% down to 6.1% this year) it suggests he's being a bit more aggressive at the plate.

 

Combined with the fact that his 48.2 AB/HR dwarfs his career mark of 20.2, I'm wondering if he's trying to slug his way out of the funk by getting away from his normal approach, which is just making the slump worse? His AB/RBI hasn't really suffered. 6.0 career, 7.5 in 2012, so even if you like RBI as a way to measure success for a slugger (I don't), he's still producing. He's just doing it in a way that looks bad.

 

The whole thing is really weird.

[jung]

I think Agons made a decision about his plate appearances somewhere along the way. He started to really, really focus on just going to left field. It appeared to me that he had decided for whatever reason that he would focus on going to left whether at Fenway or not. He could still tattoo the wall at Fenway and could still get to the gaps when not in Fenway. While his power numbers suffered, he was still hitting doubles and singles with regularity.

 

However it became to obvious to opposing pitchers and advanced scouts that Agons was really focused on going the other way. For the most part at least during the period I am talking about here, many of his early swings in at bats that I have complained about were early swings at pitches that he could take the other way. In other words if the first pitch a pitcher threw was something on the outer half or at times even outer edge, Agons was hackin' at it.

 

Once what he was doing became obvious to opposing pitchers they started to either keep going a little farther outside and a little farther outside to get him to chase or since he was still insistent on trying to go the other way even with two strikes on him, they would bust him inside with two strikes and Agons could not get his arms out of the way. He would just get jammed and usually hit a little dribbler someplace.

 

In the last couple of weeks he has faced Matusz, a guy he kills and he killed him again but other than that performance, has not done much.

 

He has started to lay off first pitches finally. Still not getting any walks but he is starting to see better pitches to hit. He did crush that HR the other night. That was the first low inside pitch I have seen him crush this year. Sunday he saw good pitches to hit just about every at bat but did nothing with them and that really does baffle me. Don't know what to think about that at all. Hopefully being more patient again will continue to get him better pitches to hit and will also gain him more free passes. I am not sure what is going to happen with his power numbers. While he hit that classic low inside pitch for a big HR the other night, it does look to me like something happened to his ability to drive the ball deep to the opposite field. The ball is not really carrying even to the wall in Fenway like it used to for him. He had that one HR that was truly a Fenway HR barely over the wall the other night. So, that is what I really worry about. He does not seem to be able to drive the ball the other way like he used to.