I am wondering how optimistic folks are that Jake fixes his offense. Sure, there is more going on than just a high SO rate. Thought a good measure for any progress he makes never the less.
He was at 40% last year even when he was decent with the bat, no? It seems unlikely he's every going to be a sub-30% strikeout guy, especially given that strikeouts are up across the board in baseball this year, for whatever reason.
You might be right. But a 40% SO rate would still be WAY higher than anyone else on the team (Gattis 2nd @ 26.7%). At 30% he would still be the worst. https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/HOU/2018-batting.shtml
Yeah, it's crazy just how bad he is at making contact. Last year, he was at 35% (sorry - my 40% didn't include walks). Next worst on the team was Beltran at 20% (ignoring part-timers like Fisher, etc). League average was 21.5%, so every full-time player on the team last year was better than average in that category. This year, MarGo, Gattis, and Correa are all worse than league-average (22%), but not by huge amounts. .
I hope we never see him again. He should have always been the 5th outfielder that rarely gets a start and is basically a pinch runner and/or late inning defensive replacement. Unfortunately, Fisher, Gattis, and Marwin all struggled early as well and Jake received too many ABs. He hit 16 HRs last year and was given too much playing time because of it. Even last year in his "best" year he struck out in almost 35% of his plate appearances. We need a guy that can make contact and move runners with less than 2 outs. Hopefully Kemp can do well in that role.
He’s definitely been given enough opportunity. Last year seems like the outlier. Change of scene may end up serving him well.
His mlb career k% is 29.8%. There’s no good reason to doubt he can get back to the player he was from 2014-2016. Over that stretch his numbers were very consistent. Walk rate hovered between 4.5 and 5.1%; K rate between 26.7 and 28.3%. Over that stretch he contributed 2.7 fWAR over 316 games. That’s a fine 4th OF. He is going to age poorly because so much of his value is tied to defense and base running, so he won’t fare well in free agency as he crosses over age 30 and will likely be retired by 33. But while Houston controls him over the next 2 years he can provide good value.
Sucks to say, but I think we've seen the last of Jake. I mean, at this point, he is what he is. He's had over 1200 MLB ABs. He made solid adjustments last year, but the league has him figured out yet again. I hope he turns it around. Who knows...maybe he will. I always liked him, and he seemed to gel well with the clubhouse. That said, I wouldn't hold my breath. With the depth of our farm, I'm happy to see Kemp and co. get a shot.
JD Davis hitting (4 for 4) for the cycle with 5 rbi, BB, no SO's, last night is what i would call tremendously better
Based on the poll and the rhetoric, not many optimistic around here that Jake will ever get his stroke back, if he ever had it to begin with. While he is streaky and can get hot for a couple games or maybe weeks, His black hole streaks by far outweigh anything else. It comes down to whether we want to hold a 40 man spot for a guy who essentially is only a late inning defensive replacement and pinch runner.