He has always been a dreadful hitter, but earned his PT because of a good glove. Now he’s pushed into the outfield by Pudge and he’s on fire. It’s a small sample size, of course, but the interesting thing is that his strikeout rate is the same as last year. The HR rate and the 2B rate aren’t that much improved, but his walk rate thus far has doubled and that projects to twice as many Hits, Runs and RBI. Approximately.
He’s not going to keep this up, but if catching is such a burden there could be a little bit of a butterfly buried underneath the cocoonish tools of ignorance. A little bit.
And if not, well, it’s a heckuva nice start anyway.