The easiest pitch to hit, at any level of baseball, is the fastball. It’s often the only pitch young rookies and aging veterans are still able to handle. And the surest sign a hitter is finished is when he can no longer get around on the heater.

Over the past two seasons, Jason Kipnis is batting .248 against fastballs—a steep drop from his .329 mark during the 2015-16 seasons.

His .248 average ranks 198th in baseball among hitters who have seen at least 1,000 fastballs during that span. The guys below mostly fall into one of two categories: washed-up veterans (Jose Bautista, Alcides Escobar, Carlos Gomez, Ian Kinsler, etc) or all-or-nothing power hitters (Joc Pederson, Joey Gallo, Kyle Schwarber, etc).

It’s pretty clear which category Kipnis falls into, but to further drive home the point, check out a visualization of his struggles:

Predictably, Kipnis is especially struggling with the top-end power pitchers. His average versus fastballs 94+ mph has dropped from .303 during the 2015-16 seasons, to .194 during the last two  years.

It’s sad to see Kipnis fall apart like this and it is almost certainly due to the cumulative effect of his many injuries. But it’s time for Terry Francona to open his eyes to the reality that Kipnis is hurting the Indians every day he’s in the lineup.

If the Indians were a .500 team this year I would be perfectly content to continue to cheer for one of my favorite players, but this Indians team has World Series dreams. It’s time to admit that injuries have forced Kipnis into an early decline and he is no longer capable of helping this team. Some combination of Erik Gonzalez, Yandy Diaz and Francisco Mejia (potentially with Jose Ramirez shifting to second base) needs to replace him in the lineup on a daily basis.

Comments are closed.