June’s Five Worst Hitters
With wRC+ as our measuring stick, these five hitters have separated themselves from the pack in the worst way possible (we’ve included a few other statistics for good measure).
Stephen Piscotty was ready for June to be over, but not before it unfortunately ended with a knee sprain and trip to the Injured List. This lack of performance erased the solid start he had gotten off to (101 wRC+ in March/April, 113 in May). He’s also been non-existent on the road compared to being at home — Piscotty has an .865 OPS and 133 wRC+ in Oakland, but a .537 OPS and 45 wRC+ away from the Bay area.
Since posting a 78 wRC+ for the Cincinnati Reds in 2016, Billy Hamilton‘s season-long wRC+ has looked like this: 65, 69 (nice), 53. And after four straight years of 50-plus steals, the speedster collected just 34 last year and currently only has 16. It’s hard to steal first base, ya know. He’s really getting the ball in the air too often, and not just fly balls — we’re talking about infield flies. Since posting a 5.9% infield-fly rate in 2015, here’s how that number has progressed to the present day: 9.8%, 12.1%, 17.2%, 23.1%.
From a former Red to a current Red, Jose Iglesias has been as advertised: an asset defensively and not much else. His batted-ball profile hasn’t exactly changed for the better, either. After having a line-drive rate hovering around 29.0% through the end of May, it dropped to 19.0% in June, while his ground-ball rate has steadily climbed each month (46.3% to 52.2% to 53.4%).
And, jeez, another Reds player in Eugenio Suarez. A rough June really put a damper on a solid start. Through his first 238 plate appearances, he owned a 128 wRC+ with 14 home runs and 40 RBI before seeing what he did over the past month in the above table. Suarez has struggled against curveballs — after posting a 34.1% strikeout rate and 138 wRC+ when facing the offering last year, those numbers have worsened to 44.0% and 29, respectively, this season.
Ryan McMahon has now spent parts of three seasons with the Colorado Rockies, totaling 174 games played and 474 plate appearances. His career wRC+ is 70 and his career fWAR is a big goose egg. That’ll likely change in short order, but still worth noting given how much playing time he’s accrued to this point. The sample sizes are a bit uneven, but his quality of contact is consistently going in the right direction. McMahon’s soft-hit rate has gone from 35.7% to 18.6% to 13.9%, while his hard-hit rate has gone from 21.4% to 33.9% to 41.7%.
About Matt Musico
Matt Musico currently manages Chin Music Baseball and contributes to The Sports Daily. His past work has been featured at numberFire, Yahoo! Sports and Bleacher Report. He’s also written a book and created an online class about how to get started as a sports blogger. Check those out and more helpful tips on sports blogging at his website.
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