Not as much as it seems. His June ops is only 726, so he’s just been barely above average this month (in fact Dubon has been a better hitter than Diaz since May 1st, and Diaz has been about as good as Walker this month). I think he’ll be fine, but he hasn’t been what we all hoped/expected, even since he turned a corner in May.
On the surface , if you look at a 3 year trend for yainer ... It's not good 128 ops , to 116 , to now 98 . Even if we think he bounces back it will likely be in the low 100's His slugging has been the main decline . Last year he had a slight boost in OBP to counteract his slugging loss . His k% has stayed steady , and his EV is even up (probably negligible) Maybe a launch angle as that's the hot topic . I haven't been able to watch too many games this year , mostly the condensed versions on YT. The only thing I can really see in the stats is that he's hitting too many balls up the middle . My advice for yainer for the time being is focus on taking balls the other way and work some counts. Maybe catching is catching up to him . It's definitely a heavy load
I suspect he is still above league average for catchers. I'm just guessing on that Problem is we value him as a bat first kind of guy. He's only 26 years old folks
He's just getting unlucky. Yainer isn't a cerebral hitter, and at this point I'm pretty confident he never will be. He just goes up there to hit the ball as hard as he can. His expected SLG% is 485 and his actual number is .398. By years end his OPS will be in the mid to high .700's. When you start the season 2-33, it can take a while to dig out. He's posted a .750 OPS since then.
Can you say that anymore with how well all the pitchers have been pitching? Maybe the dugout is calling all the pitches with pitchcom.
Keeping these young pitchers on point and pitch sequencing bodes very well for his game management behind the dish.
I just did a temperature check and the first guy I talked about was Diaz. He's fine man. I'm doing expected vs actual and he's got it worse than anyone on the team. He should be at 115 OPS+ instead he's at 85. By the way- the entire Astros staff for the month of June has numbers that are better than each of last years CY Young winners. As does Hunter Brown over the last calendar year...
If you look at his X slug and his x BA it profiles as an 800 ops type guy. He is hitting a ton of line drives up the middle. I'd rather see him go the opposite direction from your prescription and cheat to pull like Altuve and Paredes b/c pull side at home is a happy place. Betcha he ends up close to 115 again. this year if his luck evens out even a little. But yeah- he should stop hitting piss rods right at the CF- that would be a good strategy.
This is what I see happening, Diaz is a natural hitter and it takes awhile to recover from a 2-33 start.
Just did a deep dive on expected stats vs actual that I will post tomorrow once it gets spiffed up. Takeaway is even without Yordan this team should perform better coming down the stretch than they have going out. If Yordan comes back I'd expect us to go from the 105 ops+ team we are today to around 115 or 120 coming down the stretch- with our best 9 anyway. The flotsam at the bottom of the roster is a little hard to deal with.
Can Pena still make the All-Star team if Witt Jr. and Wilson are voted in over him? Assuming neither gets injured and they don't decline the invitation.
