[USML Announce] Why Berliners and Angries Will Not Be Damonized in 2013, Part I

[Brad Jansen]

FROM espn:

If the playoffs started now, the Baltimore
Orioles<http://espn.go.com/mlb/team/_/name/bal/baltimore-orioles>would
be in -- they hold a one-game lead over the Rangers (who lost
Thursday afternoon to the Yankees) as they go into their game tonight
against the Royals. That lead is obviously precarious, with the Yankees and
Indians trying to hang in there, and made even more precarious by the
doubts that Chris
Davis<http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/29170/chris-davis>and Manny
Machado <http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/31097/manny-machado> can repeat
their monster first halves.

Let's start with Machado. His defense is so superlative that it's easy to
overlook his offense, but he hit .310 with 39 doubles in the first half.
For most of the season, he's been on pace to break Earl Webb's record of 67
doubles, but that pace has dropped to 62 as he's struggled at the plate in
recent weeks. In fact, his offensive output has actually been sliding since
June. Through May 31, he was hitting .331/.363/.515; since then he's hit
.271/.293/.397 with 41 strikeouts and five walks in 47 games.

As Justin Havens of ESPN Stats & Information reports, "Machado's approach
has completely fallen apart since June 1 -- he's striking out more often,
walking less, swinging through pitches more often and chasing more pitches
out of the strike zone." Justin reports that Machado has especially
struggled with two strikes; through May, he was hitting .267 with two
strikes, but since then he's hitting .170 with a chase percentage that's
increased from 33 percent to 47 percent thanks largely to a heavy dosage of
sliders that he can't lay off. In other words, typical struggles you expect
to see from a kid who just turned 21 and isn't named Mike
Trout<http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/30836/mike-trout>.


Machado has also struggled against good fastballs since June 1; on pitches
clocked at 93-plus mph, he's hit .093 with a .230 OPS, worst in baseball.
The sample size is small -- just 163 pitches -- but all the indicators are
down compared to the first two months, with a swing-and-miss percentage up
from 15 percent to 23 percent and line drive rate down from 24 percent to 9
percent. He's just not hitting the good heat. Machado hasn't missed a game,
so while it sounds a little bit like a young hitter struggling to adjust,
it also looks like a guy who could use a day off.

As for Davis, Joe Sheehan pointed out last week …

Through the end of May, Davis was running the lowest strikeout rate (23%)
and best K/UIBB (2.3) of his career. Some of the improvement in his walk
rate might have reasonably been credited to the power he was showing --
there is some relationship between power and walks drawn, but by and large,
he looked like a more mature version of his established self. For
statheads, it was an easy story to sell. We love to make the point that
being patient at the plate isn't just about drawing walks, but about
getting better pitches to hit and producing better results on those
pitches.

What's happened since the end of May has put the lie to that. For while
Davis has continued to hit for power, with 18 homers and a .678 slugging,
he has gone back to being an even worse version of his old self. Davis
posted a 60/7 K/UIBB in those two months, striking out in 36 percent of his
plate appearances.



Joe wrote that a week ago. The numbers now read .261/.320/.636 since June 1
with 69 strikeouts and eight unintentional walks. That's still a huge
offensive force, as long as the balls keep leaving the park, but it's a big
drop from the MVP candidate hitting .356/.442/.749 through May and closer
to Raul Ibanez <http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/3504/raul-ibanez>
than Miguel
Cabrera <http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/5544/miguel-cabrera>. Like
Machado, Davis has started to expand the strike zone; he chased 28 percent
of pitches out of the zone the first two months, but that has increased to
35 percent since. As a result, his batting average and on-base percentage
have decreased.

The net effect is that Machado and Davis are now using up a lot more outs
to create runs. Through May, the Orioles averaged 5.1 runs per game; since
June 1, they've averaged 4.5 runs per game.

If Machado is a young player the league has figured out (for now) and Davis
is, as Joe wrote, a "35-homer guy having a year," then we shouldn't
necessarily expect them to reverse course back to what they did in April
and May. Which means the Orioles, if they want to hold on to the wild card
or catch the Red Sox and Rays, need some other players to step up.
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