At the time, he was hitting .266/.357/.560, with 43 home runs. He'd peaked on August 10, though, at .290/.378/.611, and then hit just .191/.291/.397 in the month and a half or so since. My point (clarified the next day, here) was that even considering how hard he hits the ball, and even assuming all that added home run power was real, it was going to be very difficult for Reynolds to continue playing at an All-Star level while striking out as often as he had been. Homers are great, but it's just very hard to be a productive player if you're cutting off 40% of your at-bats at the root and not even giving yourself a chance to get on base via the occasional bloop hit or bounder up the middle.
It was one of the first times that Rob Neyer had taken notice of my little old blog, and he wrote up a whole piece on the topic, in which he essentially tore mine to bits. A taste:
Mark Reynolds, in 1,450 career at-bats, has batted .345 on balls in play. Which doesn't even include home runs. As it happens, he's also batted .345 on balls in play this season.
Can he continue to do that? My gut tells me that it's a difficult number to maintain. But Reynolds' performance doesn't hinge on strikeouts; it hinges on home runs. When Reynolds hits 25 or 30 homers, he's a pretty good player. When he hits 40 homers, he's better than pretty good.Reynolds played the team's last nine games, and hit .154/.216/.273, with 1 HR. This season, in 142 games entering play tonight, Reynolds has hit .199/.320/.437. Since the (arbitrary endpoint alert!) highwater mark on August 11, 2009, then, he's hit .197/.317/.424. In 2010, he's hitting just .255 on balls in play, third-worst in the National League, dropping that lofty career BABIP all the way back down to .322. He's still got 32 homers, but even that is way off the pace of 2009's 44.
