Could this have been predicted?

Friday, August 13 2004 @ 10:54 AM EDT

Contributed by: Dave Till

At this point, it's obvious what's wrong with the Jays, occasional bullpen misadventures notwithstanding: they're not hitting. Their hit totals in their last eight games (shown in reverse order) are a frightening tale of futility at the plate: 3, 7, 5, 12, 4, 6, 8, 9. (The 12, oddly enough, was against the Yankees.)

The question: should J.P. Ricciardi have seen this coming? Does he deserve to be blamed for his team's offensive futility, or have injuries, bad luck, and unexpected declines in performance led to the Jays' offensive woes?

In an attempt to answer this, I looked up three sets of numbers (the source is the ESPN stats pages). First, I've listed the Jays' 2003 numbers from after the All-Star break. I've deliberately left out the Jays' first half numbers, in case they were hitting over their heads last June, back when they were kicking butt and taking names in the American League. The other two sets of numbers are 2004 season stats and this month's stats. All stats listed are AVG/OBP/SLG. I've paired Bordick and Gomez, and Myers and Zaun, since they were signed to fill similar roles, and I've paired Rios and Kielty.

Player2003 post-AllStar2004Aug 2004
Berg.217/.288/.317.266/.288/.353.357/.357/.643
Cash.142/.179/.198.195/.254/.308.167/.167/.167
Catalanotto.279/.365/.450.311/.357/.412.250/.314/.250
Delgado.284/.428/.538.232/.334/.456.300/.408/.575
Gomez/Bordick.304/.380/.393.282/.339/.345.250/.242/.313
Hinske.248/.343/.443.249/.313/.374.100/.163/.100
Hudson.247/.311/.374.256/.339/.414.314/.351/.543
Johnson.279/.344/.391.272/.326/.378.160/.222/.200
Phelps.278/.373/.528.237/.296/.4171 for 4
Rios/Kielty.233/.342/.376.285/.330/.398.227/.277/.341
Wells.344/.391/.542.283/.347/.460.244/.306/.378
Woodward.238/.298/.369.241/.280/.367.143/.182/.143
Zaun/Myers.252/.286/.412.280/.385/.407.185/.353/.370

As you can see, most of the Jays' big guns are way off from even last fall's numbers, let alone last June's. So, I think it's fair to say that the Jays' offensive collapse could not have been predicted, and therefore J.P. should not be blamed for it. (By the way, note Carlos Delgado's stats for this August – they stand out like a sore thumb. Carlos is back, finally.)

The question becomes: what do you do about it? Are the Jays' hitters likely to bounce back? Has this particular collection of players lost their collective confidence? Do the Jays need to swap some bodies around to keep the hitters from remaining in a collective funk? If you were J.P., what would you do at this point?



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