Previously: Chone Figgins and Brandon League by Scott, Ken Griffey Jr. by Conor

Coming into the season we knew the Mariners offense wasn’t going to be great– it wasn’t even going to be good– but as long as the few “big” bats Seattle had played up to expectations it looked like the offense might provide enough to accompany the great collection of pitching and defense on the way to another winning season.  Most of those bats didn’t play up to expectations, however.  Jose Lopez was one of them.

Lopez has plenty of shortcomings offensively– he doesn’t have great raw power, he doesn’t draw walks, he’s too slow to turn his high contact percentages into a high batting average, and so on– but one thing he has been very good at throughout his career is turning on middle-in fastballs and depositing them into the left field seats for 350 foot homers or right down the line for a double.  He hit 25 home runs and 42 doubles last year, and extra base hits are valuable.  His ability to squeak out extra base hits is valuable enough to bump a guy that approaches at bats like a minor league flame-out and make him into an average+ hitter. 

The .272/.303/.463 line Lopez put up last season wasn’t pretty, but the Mariners would have gladly taken that this year as well.  That, paired with the expected performances of the rest of the offense, might have been enough.  Instead, Lopez started the year striking out at rates higher than we’ve seen since 2006 and making generally weak contact on the way to hitting .239/.267/.324 with just 4 home runs through 285 plate appearances.   He’s been hitting a little better over the past month, but he’s still not hitting the ball with authority.

So what went wrong?

Some people like to blame the position switch for Lopez’s troubles.  There is no way of proving that, though it would be understandable for his defensive discomfort to translate into poor hitting.  And now that he’s looking more and more comfortable at third his numbers are starting to pick up.  I don’t think it’s that simple, however.

Can we chalk it up to bad luck?  His BABIP on grounders and fly balls is lower than normal for him, so maybe.  Or is that just weak contact?

Another possible cause for his struggles would be the pitching.  Pitchers have learned that Lopez can turn around a misplaced fastball and that he’ll chase pitches off the plate, so they’ve thrown him fewer and fewer fastballs and fewer and fewer strikes (see chart).  If Lopez is getting fewer pitches to hit without adjusting his game, that seems like a pretty good cause for his troubles.

The other day Lopez exited a game with tendinitis in his left knee.  Could this be part of the problem?  It could.  An injury here could cause a hitter to keep himself from getting full extension on that front leg, zapping some power.  A quick scan through some Lopez video doesn’t reveal anything definitive, but this could be a one of the reasons why he isn’t turning on pitches for home runs and doubles down the line like he normally does.

In the end, Lopez just isn’t a great hitter.  He didn’t have much room to fall after putting up decent seasons in 2008 and 2009.  Lopez can’t afford to play any worse than his very best.  No matter what it is that’s wrong with Lopez, it’s too much.

We’ll see how it plays out.  If he continues to struggle it could make for an interesting decision in the offseason.  Lopez’s 2011 option was supposed to be a no brainer at just $4M, even if he didn’t fit on next year’s team.  But he’s not worth $4M right now.  Right now he’s playing like a non-tender candidate.  That doesn’t mean they will cut him.  For just $4M they might decide to try and fix him up.  But right now that decision is looking a lot tougher than originally thought.