If it were still April, the “shaking off the rust” excuse would still apply to Jose Reyes. However, we’re now getting into mid-May, and Reyes is floundering with a .229 batting average and a .281 OBP. Those certainly are not the numbers you’d expect from the best offensive player on your team — a.k.a. the number-three hitter.
Could this batting third thing be getting into his head?
It seems to me that his plate discipline has gone out the window since moving to the #3 spot — but that’s just my old eyes and my unreliable memory talking. So, as much as I tend to eschew “the new math” of baseball, I took a suggestion (via Twitter) from Craig Glaser of Sabometrics and took a look at “swing rates” on Fangraphs.
Accordng to the numbers, Reyes’ “outside swing percentage” (or “O-swing%”) — the percentage of balls outside the strike zone that he’s swung at — is