Will Alex Get His Gordon?

This is a pretty new blog, so every time you read a take here, it’s probably going to be the first time you hear me make it.  For my buddies who have heard this next piece like a broken record for the past three seasons, please stay with me just one more time.  I PROMISE, this is going to be the last year I make it (and THIS TIME, I mean it).

 

I’m a sick man—don’t claim to be anything to the contrary.  I simply have not found a way to cure my (possibly) irrational belief that Alex Gordon will, some day, be a consistently successful major league baseball player.

 

LET ME QUALIFY THAT.  I’ve come to accept that Alex will never reach his potential, or more accurately, reach the level that all of us THOUGHT was his potential.  Coming out of Nebraska, everyone (not just Royals fans, but everyone who writes or talks about these things) thought Alex had the potential to be a future baseball hero.  A perennial All-Star.  A Triple Crown candidate.  His lone season in the minors (before the send-downs and rehab stints, but more on that later) did nothing but INCREASE his expectations—he ended 2006 as the Minor League Player of the Year and found himself at #2 on Baseball America’s list of top prospects in the game.

 

Even the most die-hard of all Alex Gordon apologists (and I’m not far from cracking the top 5 or 10 on that list) has come to understand that those expectations simply don’t fit the type of major league player Alex will ever be.  And I’m OK with that.  If you’ve read Michael Lewis’ classic “Moneyball*,” there are some Billy Beane comparisons there, in that Alex is a similar physical specimen who can’t wrap his own head around his abilities.  But I don’t think Alex is in danger of being demoted to minor league scout anytime soon.

 

*By the way, the film version of “Moneyball,” staring Brad Pitt, is scheduled for at September release, and this fact makes me a little bit moist.  I’m willing to forgive Pitt for being a native Missourian.  I’d even offer native Kansan Melissa Etheridge in a one-for-one trade for Pitt.  And if that’s not good enough, I’ll even throw in Amelia Earhart to sweeten the pot.  

 

For all that Alex needs to remediate in his game, let me concentrate for a few moments on the things he already does pretty well.

 

Alex hits dongs at an acceptable rate, especially considering the park he plays in.  In fact, if Alex had been able to be healthy to this point in his career (he has not), and if we could expect him to stay healthy for a reasonable-length MLB career (we cannot), Alex would be the Royals all-time home run king around the age of 40 or 41—roughly the age George Brett was when he retired (with Alex playing about 3 less seasons than George).  That would assume he hits dongs at his current career pace and did not improve, even though you would expect a player to hit dongs more often when he’s 28-to-31 than he did when he was 23 to 26.

 

For his career, Alex launches a dong ever 36.47 plate appearances.  That compares favorably to both Brett for his career (George launched one ever 36.67 PAs) and Billy Butler to this point (Billy hits one every 39.78 PAs).  BY THE SAME AGE (26), Brett had only been hitting a dong every 51.55 PAs.  So at a comparable age, Alex is actually pretty far advanced in dong-launching, compared to the greatest Royal ever.

 

Alex is also pretty darn decent at drawing a walk.  This is an area where he made a MASSIVE improvement from his rookie year to his sophomore campaign (improving from a walk every 14.63 PAs to one every 8.65 PAs).  He’s actually held steady in the walks category, never falling worse than a walk every 9 PAs in the past three years.  Even with his rookie year considered, Alex is averaging a walk every 10.13 PAs.

 

For comparison, Brett averaged a walk every 10.61 PAs for his career.  BUT by the age Alex is right now, Brett was only averaging a walk every 14.62 PAs.  Butler is currently averaging a walk every 11.7 PAs, and has never done better than one ever 11.39 in any single season.

 

SO IF ALEX GORDEN is on pace to be the greatest Royal dong-launcher of all-time, and is drawing walks at a more-than-acceptable pace, then what’s the modern stats-conscious baseball dork not to love?

 

Well, for starters, he just hasn’t been able to stay healthy.  Hitting is all about rhythm and confidence, and Alex hasn’t been able to find either at the major league level since his second year in the league.

 

LET ME BE PERFECTLY CLEAR.  I believe Alex Gordon had found his hitting rhythm by the end of his second major league season.  We weren’t yet seeing all he was capable of becoming, but we were seeing a fine major league player who was proving that he could adjust and improve.

 

People look at Alex’ rookie hitting line of .247/.314/.411 and say, “So what?  Slightly under league average.  Nothing to get excited about.”  But I, on the other hand, look at the hole he dug for himself through the first two-and-a-half months of the season (he was sitting at .173/.285/.281 at one point in June) and say, “With no send-down to work on things, he was able to turn THAT into .247/.314/.411 in a little over 4 months?  Now what’s not to appreciate about that effort?”  Then he followed it up with a sophomore campaign that saw him land on the RIGHT side of the OPS+ line at 109.  He walked more often, struck out a little less often, and even got a little better in the power area.

 

BUT he also saw his first stint on the DL in that second season, and it started the all-too-familiar string of Gordon injuries, some of which have been pretty darn severe.  Since Gordon’s first stint on the DL in 2008, here are the number of games he’s been able to play between RETURN trips to the DL, or trips to AAA to work on something broken from his injuries/time off:

 

19 games.

42 games.

12 games.

62 games (this is his active streak as of the end of last season).

 

In roughly the past two-and-a-half seasons, injuries have limited him to less than a full year’s worth of games played, and the very end of last season was the first time he was able to stay with the major league team for more than a quarter of a season at a time.

 

Simply put—he hasn’t been around enough to find that rhythm again, and even when he’s been here, he simply has not been anywhere near 100%, health-wise.  I’m CONVINCED that a consistently-healthy Alex can be an effective player at this level.  Whether he’s capable of getting and remaining healthy is an entirely separate question, and one that he’ll have to answer year-by-year.

 

The other side of his game that appears to be consistently bad regardless of whether he’s healthy or not is his complete inability to avoid the strikeout.  He did make a small improvement from year one to year two, and perhaps a healthier Alex might have progressed further to this point in that area.  But the bottom line is that Alex has struck out once ever y 4.53 PAs to this point in his career.  For reference, George Brett struck out once every 14.62 PAs for his career, and Billy Butler is currently striking out once every 7.48 PAs.

 

Alex is NEVER going to approach either of those numbers at any point in his career.  I see nothing to suggest otherwise—he’s a hard-swinger at heart, and he misses a helluva lot of balls.  Getting that number to one K every 5 or 6 PAs would be nice.  His batting average on balls put in play (BABIP) has never been GREAT, per se.  But it was above league-average for his two “healthy” seasons.  Putting more balls into play with a HOPEFULLY healthier swing would do wonders for his ability to stay in this league and be successful here.

 

BOTTOM LINE….This is it, for me.  I’m going to officially give up on Alex if either of two scenarios plays out this year.  The first “give up” scenario:  Alex proves he’s unable to get through the majority of the season without getting seriously hurt.  The second:  Alex actually stays healthy and proves me WRONG in my beliefs that he can be an effective player.

 

Here’s to hoping that we’re all pleasantly surprised by the career that Alex gives us from this point forward.