Eduardo Nunez Is Who We Thought He Was

Written by Greg Fertel | 15 May 2010

And we let him off the hook!

Towards the end of April, I penned a little blog post looking at the apparent improvements Eduardo Nunez had made. Well, Nunez sure fooled me, and reminded me not to fall prey to small sample sizes. Let's have some fun by splitting up Nunez's season down at Triple-A.

April 10 to April 22: 47 AB, 18 H, 4 2B, 1 HR, 3 K, 7 BB, .383/.463/.532

April 23 to May 13: 74 AB, 22 H, 3 2B, 11 K, 2 BB, .297/.316/.338

Well, that's a drastic difference, and one is much more representative of the player Nunez has been over the course of his career. When he started off with seven walks in his first 12 games, I was impressed. The fact that he wasn't striking out anymore suggested to me that maybe he had started to gain control of the strike zone.

I was wrong.

Since then, Nunez has walked just two times in 18 games, and it's not like he has been trading that plate discipline in for more power or contact: he has hit for less power, and has made less contact.

Whatever Nunez was doing at the start of the season, he needs to get back to it. In plain words, he has been terrible over the past 18 games. I doubt it's that simple and Nunez has changed his approach. It's more likely that this is just an example of the vagaries of small sample sizes in baseball.

Photo Credit: Mike Ashmore