BABIP.
That was easy.
Oh fine, we’ll talk about it more than that.
In the seventh inning yesterday, Slater came in to pinch hit for Wade Meckler against Colin Poche, a left-hander, with the bases loaded and one out. The team was down 5 runs at the time, and this was obviously their chance to get back in the game. It’s the exact move that is almost automatic for Gabe Kapler: the other team brings in a lefty to pitch to his left-handed hitting outfielder, and he puts Austin Slater in. This is Slater’s purpose on the roster. He is a lefty crusher, and you can’t crush lefties if you don’t hit against lefties. Easy, simple, no problem.
Slater grounded into a double play on the second pitch.
This has been going on for a solid month now. In the second half of July, after the All-Star Break, Slater hit .152/.200/.364, which was bad enough, but at least he mixed a couple of homers in there. In August, though, he’s 0-for-15 with one walk and one reached-on-error in 16 plate appearances. Even more to the point than that, he’s also grounded into two double plays, which means that so far this month, Austin Slater has made 16 outs in 16 plate appearances.
But why? What’s happened? The first thing that jumps out is that his strikeout rate has skyrocketed. In August (all stats from this paragraph on are through Tuesday’s game, so they don’t count his double play yesterday), he has struck out in 40% of his plate appearances, compared to 27% on the season. Because he hasn’t gotten a lot of playing time, Slater’s only hit 8 balls fair this month, and of those, 5 were grounders, two were fly outs, and one was a line drive.
He’s still hitting the ball hard: Slater’s average exit velocity for the season is 91.3 MPH, and for August it’s 91.4 MPH. League average is 88.4 MPH, so that’s not a problem. Two of his eight fair balls were barreled, which is an excellent ratio, but neither of them fell in for hits.
So what’s happening? Austin Slater is striking out too much, and he’s also hitting into some bad luck and hasn’t gotten enough plate appearances for it to even out this month. Now, it’s worth noting that he has absolutely gotten enough plate appearances for it to even out this year, considering his first half BABIP was a preposterously lucky .429. Generally it doesn’t work out like this, where a lucky stretch is directly mirrored by an unlucky one, but in this case that’s exactly what’s happened.
It’s been hard to watch Austin Slater since the All-Star Break, and especially this month. But he hasn’t been as bad as his results, just like he wasn’t as good as his results in the first half. It’s been a brutal stretch for him, just like for all the non-Wilmers on offense, but he should be better, just like all the non-Wilmers on offense. That’s cold comfort right now, when the entire team is stubbornly refusing to be better, but it does seem to be the case. The doldrums won’t last forever. They can’t. Baseball doesn’t work like that.
But, uh, if they do last forever this one time, please disregard this entire newsletter.