Yeah yeah, I’m sure you’re all familiar with Luke Scott’s hitting woes. Scott now holds the Rays franchise record for the longest hit-less streak, going 0-39 since his return from the DL. His quiet bat certainly isn’t what Andrew Friedman and Joe Maddon anticipated when Scott was acquired this past off-season. In short, a quick comparison between this point in his last healthy season (2010) and now show a drop in production across the board. That is, with the exception of this past April. Note, the charts below are separated into the following, from left to right:
| BB% | K% | BB/K | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | ISO | BABIP | wRC | wRAA | wOBA | wRC+ |
|---|
At this point in 2010, Scott had driven in 42 RBI, scored 43 runs, and hit 38 extra base hits including 17 taters. Compare that with this season. So far Scott’s driven in 36 RBI, scored 18 runs, and hit 18 extra base hits including 9 taters. Now, I’ll give Scott the benefit of the doubt, after all he was on the DL for a good amount of time. But, that doesn’t explain the lower production in May and most of June. I’ve come up with three theories for why he hasn’t been very Luke Scott-like:
A) He’s not putting the ball into play, not spraying the ball all over the field, or is striking out at a greater clip.
B) He’s not praying hard enough.
C) The BABIP luck dragon is nipping at his heels.
Let’s see if we can sort any of this stuff out.
He’s not putting the ball into play, not spraying the ball all over the field, or is striking out at a greater clip
Way back in April, Luke Scott looked as though he could be the Rays best DH since Jose Canseco in 1999. Then something happened, and Scott’s production started to drop. Just take a gander at the charts and graphs below.
The charts above illustrate this theory to a T. Scott’s grounding out and striking out more often, while hitting to ball to all fields less often. It isn’t as though, that opposing pitchers are throwing junk to Scott. Rather it seems more likely that he’s chasing fastballs and sliders outside of the zone, which can account for the number of weakly hit balls (either on the ground or in the air) that opposing pitchers have been able to induce. It also accounts for Scott’s four-to-one K/BB ratio.
DRaysBay said it best,
This looks like a hitter who is not seeing the ball very well these days as he is chasing pitches well out of the zone while taking a lot of fastballs for strikes over the heart of the plate. In fact, he has seen 43 four-seam fastballs during his slump, has swung at 51 percent of them, has come up empty on 19 percent of them, and has put just 12 percent in play. Pitchers have thrown him mostly fastballs and sliders during this slump as he has seen 133 pitches in that time frame and only 33 of them have been changeups or curveballs.
Scott’s not praying hard enough
Hmm this could be the case, though I’m not certain if praying is really going to pull Scott out of his current 0-fer slump. I mean, praying certainly didn’t help me in middle school, when bullies picked on me daily for being the fat kid on the bus. And I prayed every night! That’s beside the point. Scott was quoted in the Tampa Bay Times as saying,
I have sleepless nights, lots of sleepless nights. It’s brought me to tears, it really has. It’s something that really weighs heavily on my heart every single day. Every single day I wake up, I have this burden on my heart and I have this heaviness. I get on my knees every single day and I pray, I ask the good Lord to help me, to help me come through this. That’s where my trust is. I have peace knowing I’ve done everything I can humanly possibly do to be in a position to be successful. There’s no doubt about that, I’ve done everything and I’ll continue to do that. That’s the only thing I can do. Does it weigh heavy on my heart? Oh my gosh. I’d say if I wasn’t a Christian man, I’d be an alcoholic or something – this is something that would have driven me to drink.
The BABIP luck dragon is nipping at his heels
That leaves us with the last theory: Scott’s unlucky. I will give the idea of luck a little credence, but not much. There have been many occasions when he’s smoked the ball, yet right at a fielder. If the ball was hit a couple more inches in one direction or another, it would easily have gone for a hit… you know, the game of inches, game of feet theory. That doesn’t really explain the consistent slump that Scott’s been in. I will contend though, that if the BABIP luck dragon is nipping at his heels, the Rays are going to need to slay it, and quickly. See, the aforementiond dragon is also busy nipping at the heels of ‘Los, Upton, and Jennings.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8XEZlfwCT4]
