Breaking down Adrian Gonzalez – A platoon player in waiting

Just in case you have also missed what Don Mattingly has missed, Adrian is what some might call a platoon player in waiting. Meaning, that his manager still remembers when he could hit both sides of a pitcher, however the stats now say something has changed, and eventually the winds of change will be upon Adrian.

Or not, maybe this is  just a one year anomaly.  The last time Adrian had an OPS below .700 against LHP, was 2008, and he bounced back quite well. He was also only 26 not 32, so I’m not sure how much I’d be betting on 33 year old Adrian to rediscover the magic of hitting the MLB southpaw.

I’m only pointing this out on Sept 19th, 2014 because the postseason beckons and given that SVS or Juan Uribe (Turner at 3rd) offer alternatives to giving away at bats against LHP, it might be best if Donny put his best team on the diamond.  Unless of course over the next 10 games, Adrian magically discovers how to hit LHP again, in which case you can use this for silly things bloggers have written fodder.

Besides not being able to hit left hand pitching, Adrian has been a very streaky hitter in 2014. I’ve created these data points by using the Bref game logs and taking the high and low OPS. For example on May 1st Adrian’s OPS peaked at 1.043 and bottomed out on July 20th at .735.

Every hitter has streaks of good and bad, but Adrian this year seems to have taken those streaks to Hee Sop Choi levels.