Smoak Splits

I don’t usually post much on Sunday. I try to keep it to Church and family. Once in awhile I’ll post some stuff on twitter.

People began talking about Smoak and him being moved somewhere else in the batting order. Here is how he current breaks down.

Split	PA	H	2B	HR	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	TB	GDP	HBP	IBB	BAbip	tOPS+	sOPS+
Batting 3rd	150	30	7	7	17	30	.227	.320	.439	58	5	1	3	.242	101	91
Batting 4th	66	9	4	0	9	14	.164	.273	.236	13	1	0	0	.209	38	32
Batting 5th	120	29	9	5	16	25	.284	.375	.520	53	2	0	1	.324	137	142

I’m not really big into line-up order and players needing to hit in specific positions so long as they can produce. I generally account stuff like struggles in specific positions, such as this, to mental issues. I think that’s important to look at the BABIP and see that some of this is luck driven.

I get that Smoak has struggled immensely but I don’t buy into the fact he needs to be moved out of the whole. His LD% over the last few months has steadily increased while his BABIP has decreased. See below.

	LD%	BABIP	SwgStrikes
April	12.3%	0.321	9.2%
May	11.6%	0.277	11.6%
June	12.8%	0.230	8.1%
July	16.7%	0.167	11.5%

Smoak to a degree has swung at some bat pitches and put himself in bad situations but to another degree he has just had some bad luck. The Mariners don’t need to be shuffling their already ravaged offense, they just need to give these guys some time to work things out.

I think Smoak is going to come out of this slump and in a big way, hopefully that happens soon.

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