At the plate, anyway …
Yankees Slugger Alex Rodriguez was absolutely sick the first 18 games of the season …
- 14 Home Runs (Tied April Record)
- 5.36 AB/HR Ratio
- .400 Batting Average
- A Godlike 1.507 OPS
- Sports Illustrated and the NY Times praising his offseason work on his swing
… but as soon as he hit that record-tying 14th Home Run with seven days of April to go, with all the eyes and all the pressure of getting at least one more Home Run by the end of April, A-Rod went out and shat the bed. Check out the following splits …
| A-Rod | G | AVG | SLG | OBP | OPS | BAPIP | HR | XBH | AB/HR | BB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/02-4/23 | 18 | 0.400 | 1.053 | 0.453 | 1.507 | 0.381 | 14 | 21 | 5.36 | 7 |
| 4/24-4/30 | 5 | 0.167 | 0.167 | 0.250 | 0.417 | 0.214 | 0 | 0 | 2 | |
| 5/01-5/06 | 6 | 0.348 | 0.435 | 0.423 | 0.858 | 0.400 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
Looking at May-to-date, A-Rod is still hitting pretty well. But it’s nowhere near the slugging seminar he put together in the first few weeks of April. And the biggest question has to be where his power went - to which a mere two doubles the past 11 games will attest.Â
And what happened the last week of April? After that 2-HR game vs the Devil Rays, A-Rod’s Ruthian slugging show turtled itself off the frigging map. A .167 BA and a .214 BAPIP? Neifi Perez hits better than that.Â
I know it was a slump - and one that was probably due - but a slump like that jumps out a little more after you’ve been making nearly every American League pitcher your personal batting practice stooge the prior three weeks.
Which makes me wonder if pitchers have started avoiding Rodriguez’ wheelhouse.  In 2006, it took NL teams nearly five months to figure out they shouldn’t pitch anything fat to Ryan Howard - and that’s continued this season. So are AL pitchers changing how they pitch to A-Rod?Â
Over the past 11 games, A-Rod has seen about 162 pitches, of which about 46.3% were strikes. The average pitcher throws about 61% of his pitches in the strike zone, so A-Rod is seeing worse pitches than the average guy. In that same span, however, he’s walking less than when he was on fire (.39 Walks/Game early; only .27 BB/G since). Is A-Rod chasing junk pitches?
And it seems that A-Rod’s just not hitting balls in the air as much … For the Season, A-Rod has a .95 Ground Ball to Fly Ball Ratio. But over the past 11 games, his G/F is around 1.83 - and it’s tough to hit a Home Run when you’re killing worms.
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