Adrian Gonzalez is off to a hot start as he hit three home runs Wednesday night:
Gonzalez homered three times in a game for the first time in his 12-year career, powering the Dodgers to a 7-4 victory Wednesday night over the Kemp-led Padres at Dodger Stadium.
In doing so, the four-time All-Star became the first player in major league history to hit five home runs in his team’s first three games of a season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
For the Dodgers, that translated to two victories in the three-game series.
All three homers came off Padres starter Andrew Cashner, and took place in the first five innings. Cashner faced Gonzalez more than any other batter, Adrian is the only player to hit more than two home runs off Andrew. Gonzalez is slugging .880 against Cashner.
Gonzalez’s career high in home runs was 40 back in 2009, and he hasn’t hit 30 in a season since 2010. With a hot start, he’s given himself a good chance to reach the latter. He’s also slugging 2.077 at the moment. That means his average at bat ends in a double!
Buster Posey seems to be torching Cashner even more (.941 slugging).
Speaking of ex-Cub-phenoms, at some point you might want to take a look at the strikeout percentage of Cubs batters and their OBP under Theo. Intuitively I would have expected OBP to be the kind of metric “The New Cub Way” would prioritize, and plate discipline to be stressed. But since Theo took over, OBP has continued to languish and the amount of strikeouts have been going way way up.
Is this some Moneyball 3.0 stathead trend I’ve missed? Are strikeout levels approaching 40% now an acceptable byproduct of some other arcane win-shares stat I am unaware of?
Or is this just Cub Loserdom version 107.0?
Patrick Marren » My guess is that Theo was trying to build a farm system, not win with a major league club. I suspect that will change over the next two seasons.