You already know that Adam Dunn is hitting .161 this year. Well, I want to show you something amazing. At least to me.
Here is Adam Dunn's batting average split up every 10 games:
First 10 games: .162
Games 11 to 20: .147
Games 21 to 30: .250
Games 31 to 40: .205
(This included a four-hit game)
Games 41 to 50: .114
Games 51 to 60: .133
Games 61 to 70: .061
Games 71 to 80: .103
Games 71 to 90: .212
Games 91 to 99: .129
I was thinking about this while watching Dan Uggla go on his odds-busting hitting streak. I was thinking how unlikely it is for an every day big league hitter -- especially a previously good hitter like Uggla or Dunn -- to hit THAT low for a season. It has to take almost inconceivable consistency. You can't ever get hot. Ever. And by "hot" I mean even a 10-game stretch of hitting .290 or something.
Dunn has been known throughout his career for consistency -- after all, he he hit exactly 40 home runs four years in a row and followed that up with back-to-back 38-homer seasons. But this kind of awful consistency … well, hey, it's history folks. And it might never happen again.
Circle me, Onix Concepcion.
ReplyDeleteI keep coming back to his (and the Sox') denial of his need for recovery time after the appendectomy. That's major surgery. What were they thinking?
ReplyDeletedoc I agree. It's really weird. I was rooting for him to have a dynamite year too in that park, I thought he'd be good for 40 home runs.
ReplyDeleteThis is just crazy though, and he's striking out in about 35% of at bats, while below his career average in EVERY category too.
I am hoping for a rebound year for Adam next year.
Major surgery? Holliday went bananas less than 2 weeks after returning from an appendectomy.
ReplyDeleteAs the most similar player to Dunn at his age, Baseball Reference lists Darryl Strawberry every year from age 25 to 29. And Strawberry's career fell off a cliff at just about the same age that Dunn is now. The other two names that come up in both of their similar lists are Reggie Jackson and Jose Canseco. I guess it just goes to show, for every Reggie there are 3 Strawberry/Dunn/Cansecos.
ReplyDeletenpm, it's not a standard surgery. Not one size fits all, and different people have different recovery times. And, not for nothing, it's muscle-splitting, and the fact that Dunn swings left-handed while Holliday swings righty (but, obviously, the appendix is in the same area) makes their recoveries inherently different, because it will affect their swings differently.
ReplyDeleteAnd considering how I felt after mine, I'd never doubt that it could affect an athlete's performance.
How brutal is it for Ozzie to be writing Dunn's name on the line-up card most days? I can see better now why Guillen is about to explode after yet another WSox loss.
ReplyDelete"And by "hot" I mean even a 10-game stretch of hitting .290 or something."
ReplyDeleteFrom games 25 through 34, Dunn DID hit 333. You just split the season up into arbitrary ten-game chunks and state that he never put ten good games together. It's not quite so simple.
However, I will admit that both sides of the ten-game streak I mention do include some 0-fors, so ten straight good games? No. But a ten-game slice of the season in which Dunn hit well? YES.
On a similar note, Jeff Mathis has only had one "month" (i.e. 10 games in March/April of 2010) in his entire career in which he succeeded in hitting above .300.
ReplyDeleteSomehow, he too still gets significant playing time.
So frustrating to be an Angels' fan right now.
He's hitting .038/.206/.038 against lefties this year.
ReplyDeleteThat makes me want to cry.
Mike Moustakas is in the neighborhood. With much, much less power.
ReplyDeleteMoustakas is going to play better; he has an awful BABIP, ridiculously unlucky flyball rates, and an better-than-average K rate.
ReplyDeleteDunn? Uh...
I dunno Nathan, Mathis plays the most important Defensive position, while Dunn plays the least important.
ReplyDeleteDunn is painful to watch. Depressing even. He makes me miss Mark Kotsay (last year's "DH"), and that fact alone is just pathetic.