OK you stat mavens—-Has Santana lost bat speed?
I dont know if he's lost bat speed or if his timing is off, but he has been consistently late on fast balls.
If its a loss of bat speed, that often leads to cheating a bit...starting a fraction of a second earlier...which means swinging before he recognizes the pitch...which would make him vulnerable to anything that is off soeed, esp change ups.
In his four at bats last night, he made outs on three change ups...two routine flies to left and a whiff.
He saw seven fast balls in the zone...two were sinkers. He took two, fouled three, and missed two. He only got around on one
In his last at bat he ripped one just outside the bag, and then he saw two change ups.
Its a problem, but when you only have two or three guys hitting on any single night, switching the line up is merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
He certainly has a long and fairly consistent track record of heating up after cold starts, but the short season magnifies his woes. The big question is whether the folks that make the decisions and know more than we do see a major deterioration, or merely see the same old same old.
The second question is whether its better to stretch the lineup out, or put four black holes in the back half of our lineup...because thats what we would have right now.
We can hope that Naylor hits, starting right now...and that Mercado hits, starting right now...and that Berto returns and starts hitting, starting right now...but so far, none of that has happened...which is the exact same thing we have with Carlos.
And...which of those positive scenarios is most likely to happen, because we've seen it time after time before?
