Is Gordon "fixed" or just finally healthy?

I know the popular thought is that Kevin Seitzer “fixed” Alex Gordon this off-season, and I’m not down-playing the hard work the two of them put in to get Alex to play the way he’s been playing the first month-plus of the season.  Alex was in a BAD PLACE last year, and he needed to be reminded of how good he is.

Nevertheless, I’ve been firmly in the camp that most of Alex’s problems stemmed from his lack of being able to stay healthy, and the shattered confidence that came from his poor play when he was unable to do any better.  It spiraled from there, but I’m convinced that Alex was well on his way to becoming an extremely productive player by the end of 2008.  Rany’s stats are in my court.

His blog from last night attempted to put the AMAZING Aprils that Gordon and Francoeur had into perspective, with regards to the rest of their careers.  It should be noted that he included Alex’ opening day 0-5 job on March 31 of this year as part of April, as apparently is tradition to do so.  So he ended up with a line of .339/.395/.541.

Rany noted that, due to injury, Alex has only had 70 or more plate appearances in 13 calendar months of his entire professional year.  In terms of calendar months, Alex’s April of 2011 is his best month ever.  HOWEVER, he also determined that it was NOT his best stretch over a similar amount of plate appearances.

Alex’s April of this year went .339/.395/.541, with 12 doubles, 2 triples and 2 Dongs, but uncharacteristically, with just 8 walks against 21 Ks. 

His BEST stretch over about the same period, though, was his last 133 plate appearances of the 2008 season.  For that stretch, he went .301/.400/.549 with 11 doubles, 1 triple and 5 dongs.  During that stretch he had 20 walks against 25 Ks. 

If it’s a question of which of those Alex Gordon’s you’d rather have, you’d clearly take either, BUT would probably lean towards the one who’s walking at a nearly one-to-one ratio with his strikeouts, AND is hitting dongs at a rate of 2.5 to 1 over the 2011 version.

BUT the bigger point is that this was how Gordon finished up his last relatively healthy season (he did miss 3 weeks in the middle of that stretch in 2008, but it didn’t affect his head to a significant degree).  He was WELL on his way to becoming what we thought he could be.  But in the very first game of 2009, he suffered a devastating hip injury, and he was never the same again.  Ditto, to some degree, with 2010, only with a hand injury that threw him off and caused him to lose heart (at least at the Major League level, anyway).

Again, I don’t want to downplay what Seitz has done for him.  But the truth is that a healthy Alex Gordon was going to be a productive Alex Gordon.  I’m glad we’re seeing that play out now.