FanPost

FanPost Friday: Biggest Disappointments So Far

Biggest Disappointments (Hitting) - JD Martinez, Rafael Devers, Andrew Benintendi

  • I mean, to be honest do I really need to go too in-depth here? Benintendi right now is sporting a ferocious .059 batting average. Yes, slumps happen and the sample size is fairly small, but basically Benintendi has just 2 total hits in 34 ABs now. It's slightly encouraging to see 10 walks so far this season from him, but he's also struck out 15 times (which is half of his ABs this season). Though while it's easy to pick on just Benny, the truth is Devers and JD have also looked terrible. They've had a few good games here or there, but that's about it. JD's barely above a .200 BA and hasn't hit a HR this season. Not to sound harsh, but JD's already our primary DH and isn't in the OF often because of defensive deficiencies, so if he's slumping like this, how good is he for this team really? Devers did have a great game against the Yankees this past Sunday, but outside that he's been really mediocre. And just using the eye test (if you're watching the games), all three of them have been having a lot of putrid at-bats lately. Meaning they are swinging at bad pitches, don't look visibly comfortable at all and have almost lost all confidence. Hope they can improve, but in a short season we need it to happen ASAP. But if they can get going, this lineup will really start to feast. I think a solution would be to give Devers and JD a day off or two in the near future, or at the very least if they play, don't have them hitting back-to-back in the lineup until they break out of their slumps. Because otherwise, they are just inning-killers right now hitting 2 and 3 in the lineup. Keep Benintendi hitting at the 6, 7 or 8 spots in the lineup and Verdugo leading off.

Honorable Mention (Hitting) - Michael Chavis

  • I put Chavis as honorable mention because he actually hasn't played as often this season, and he has looked a lot better over the past 10 days. Since July 30, he's 6-16 (.375) with 2 HR, 3 RBI so there's signs he's coming around. That said, there's a reason Moreland is playing more than him nowadays. Chavis has faced 25 ABs this season and struck out in 10 of them. He did also start the season really poorly (2-13 his first 4 games with 7 Ks). But again, I wouldn't call him one of our biggest disappointments to date, though I'm a bit surprised he hasn't seen more playing time over the past week (even after going 3-4 with a HR this past Wednesday). Moreland has also been doing well though so that could be a contributing factor, plus I don't think they want Chavis playing much 2B now over someone like Peraza.

Biggest Disappointment (Pitching) - Ryan Weber

  • Let me preface by saying, my expectations in general for the pitching staff were really low to begin with anyways. That's why I don't have many "big disappointments" here since it was expected from a lot of them, especially those from our farm system or recent cheap signings/trades who were suddenly thrust into bigger roles due to injuries and COVID (ex. Hall, Covey, Springs, etc). I hoped Eovaldi and Perez would do well (which they have) and so would some of our better relievers like Barnes, Workman, etc. (who have been shaky at times, but done fairly well outside that one terrible appearance by Barnes at Yankee Stadium and one near disaster by Workman against the Mets).
  • Even for Ryan Weber though, my general expectations weren't super high but I had been hoping maybe he could pitch to a 5.00 to 6.00 ERA, eat up some innings and at least pitch decent enough to keep us in games against the mediocre/bad teams. Somehow though, he was worse than that, and a lot worse. In 2019, he made some good spot starts for us and good relief outings too, and typically was around a 4.50 ERA before a bad September pushed him to 5+. Sadly though, he was really "meh" in all his starts and extremely shaky. In 3 starts, he didn't go more than 3.2 innings in any of them, and only threw a combined 10 innings with a 9.90 ERA (yikes). Also surrendered 9 walks and only got 3 strikeouts total (double yikes). I thought maybe he could be decent enough, but guess not. And he got sent down recently which was the right move. Thankfully Godley looks a bit more promising, so maybe he can help us going forward behind Eovaldi-Perez in the rotation.