MVN - Most Valuable Network

What’s Wrong With David DeJesus?

The Royals dropped their sixth straight game at home last night, during which David DeJesus went zero for three. I have been, for the most part, ignoring DeJesus’ recent slide and written them off as just a veteran player going through a normal slump. After all, David is really the only Kansas City regular who, because of track record and age, one can really project a logical and accurate season result.

Still, the decline of production out of DeJesus from April to May is dramatic:

	AB	XBH	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
APRIL	107	10	.308	.378	.486	.864
MAY	108	7	.222	.306	.306	.612

These numbers are prior to Wednesday’s nights game, by the way, and XBH stands for extra base hits. Anyway, for a player with David’s track record of consistency, that is a pretty dramatic fall right across the board. Essentially, his OPS has gone from 115 points above average to 137 BELOW average in the blink of an eye.

Generally, this kind of decline comes with a lot more strikeouts and a lot less walks. In this case, however, DeJesus in virtually an indentical number of plate appearances had the same number of walks (11) in May as he did in April.

DeJESUS IS STUCK (Charlie Riedel/AP Photo)

He also has identical strikeout numbers in both months (17).

The other place I often look is how a hitter is doing when ahead and behind in the count. Curiously, DeJesus is hitting better behind in the county in May: posting an .801 OPS versus .509 when ahead in the count. In April, DeJesus simply hit as he garnered a .790 OPS when behind and .861 when ahead. The numbers indicate nearly identical ahead and behind counts in both months, which indicates that DeJesus’ approach at the plate is still the same (i.e. he’s not jumpint at the first pitch more or taking too many pitches).

So, the problem, it seems is really what DeJesus is doing when he has the advantage. Is he trying to do too much? Is he just unlucky? Well, my ‘luck’ factors always come from The Hardball Times and they tell me that DeJesus is not unlucky per se. His line drive percentage of 18.9% is slightly above the league average and his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is .299 - again, just a touch about the league average. While those numbers are not bad at all, they are markedly below the marks David established in 2005 and 2006:
2005 - LD 22.3%, BABIP .335
2006 - LD 22.2%, BABIP .332

Basically, David’s past two seasons led to an above average .800+ OPS. Right now, his overall .737 OPS is right around average. Not horrible, but not near enough of what the Royals need out of DeJesus.

So, the question really becomes ‘is this just a slump?’. Well, given a three year record of performance, one might logically assume that it really is just a slump. You can reinforce that argument by the fact that David posted just a .643 OPS in May of 2005 (he had just 14 AB in May 2006 and only 7 in 2004). It could just be ‘one of those weird baseball things’.

Could it be a nagging injury? Ryan Lefevbre of the Royals Radio and sometimes Television Network, speculated during the Colorado series that David’s thumb may be an issue. He has had some period trouble with it throughout his career and Ryan wondered if the recent number of times that DeJesus had completely let go of the bat on missed swings might be an indication of this problem. If so, you can certainly make a case that a sore thumb is going to reduce the pop in your bat.

Could it be a technical problem? My uneducated eye tells me that DeJesus might have developed a subtle should dip. Probably five times this year, I have seen David actually get his trailing knee onto the ground chasing a low pitch. Is there a little loup there that would reduce good contact and lead to an excessive number of opposite field fly balls (as DeJesus’ hitting charts over at Royals.com show)?

Slump, injury or mechanical flaw…maybe even a combination of all three. Whatever the case, the Royals desperately need DeJesus to get hot. I liked Buddy Bell’s move of hitting David 5th last night, but know from experience that Bell will likely have him back in the leadoff spot tonight. A change of scenery, something new to think about might help considerably.

In losing six straight, the Royals have not even been close and DeJesus alone will not fix that problem. Even though Kansas City did win eight of ten while David struggled it is pretty obvious they will not do so again until their centerfielder gets back in the groove.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 6:20 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.