Jeremy Hermida played outfield for the Red Sox and Athletics in 2010, and currently seeks work via free agency. Hermida showed a great deal of promise young, posting a .296/.369/.501 slash line at the age of 23. His two full season following that, however, were a major disappointment. In 2010, his ability to draw a walk, his one remaining strength, disappeared. He’s going into his age 27 season trying to hang on instead of hitting a peak that showed such promise in 2007.

Hermida didn’t show much power in the minors until 2005, when his slugging percentage jumped above .500. He was still young at that point, and was developing as a hitter. He was drawing a ton of walks, but striking out about 20% of the time. Unlike a Rob Deer or Adam Dunn, Jeremy maintained a high batting average, as his Ks were not in the stratosphere. His 2005-2007 track shows a developing power hitter.

It looks to me like he fell in love with the home run, however, and pitchers exploited that. According to FanGraphs, in 2007, he only hit 35.7% fly balls, but 15.7% of those left the park and only 1.7% of those were pop ups. He fly ball percentage went up every year, but a lower percentage left the park and more and more stayed on the infield. Instead of the nice solid contact of 2007, he was getting under the ball.

At 27, it’s not too late for Hermida if he can fix his mechanics at the plate. He needs to get back to judging the strike zone and driving the ball, rather than trying to loft it out of the park.