I am starting to feel that same way about Carlos Gomez, it's tough seeing him swing and miss. I love Gomez, he's a nice guy, he's a fun guy and he's hella entertaining. in 2015 when the Astros traded for him, he brought some flare and some juice to the team. When he's on and you see him playing the game you can see the energy he provides the team.
This year, it has all just went off the train tracks. When looking at all the advanced stats and anything else that can be tracked, Gomez is having pretty much the same year as he always has, except in one place. Gomez is swinging and missing at an alarmingly high rate, a career high for him and among the worst in baseball.
Per FanGraphs his K% of 34.9 is the third worst in baseball this season. Before now the last person to have a higher K% in the majors was former Astros first basemen Chris Carter, in his 2013 year here he had a K% of 36.2.
Gomez's BABIP (Batting average on balls in play) is over .300 so it tells you when he can actually connect with a ball, he's an average hitter this year. Again the problem is he isn't connecting often enough.
How many times have you seen him swing out of his shoes getting fooled on a breaking pitch? How many times have you seen Gomez swing as hard as he can to try and catch up with a fastball only to miss? The answer to both of those is way too many to count.
It's getting worse too, in 24 games during April, Gomez had a .213 batting average with 24 strikeouts. 11 games into May and he's batting .132 with already 21 strikeouts. On the season, he has a little more than double the number of strikeouts as he does hits.
Below is a graph from Brooksbaseball and you can see how Gomez is doing against all types of pitches this season.
Gomez is having a very tough time at the plate, you can tell it's eating him up inside. A few games back after a strikeout he broke a bat over his thigh. During the last homestand, he was ejected from the game for arguing balls and strikes (that might not have been 100 percent on him, it was an awful game).
This is a guy who's been part of the 20-30 club (20+ homers, 30+ stolen bases) for almost three straight seasons. You may be booing him in the stands but you can bet no one is more upset about his job at the plate than Gomez.
At the moment, there are not very many things you can do with Gomez. You aren't going to DFA him, you aren't going to trade him, you could have him bat in the order higher to see more fastballs (he's batting about .350 on four seem fastballs this year), but they don't seem willing to break up the 1-2-3-4 of Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Correa and Colby Rasmus.
Another option is to have Gomez ride the bench for a while so he can try and find himself. If not you are kind of doing a disservice to him and the rest of the team. Leaving him and letting him work through his problems is like letting a starter who's already given up seven earned runs in the second inning, keep on working. The team is counting on the bottom of the order to drive in runs and get on base for the top of the order. Right now, not having normal Gomez is one of many reasons the team has had problems driving in runs.
"He's had a tough go, that's been documented," A.J. Hinch said of Gomez via MLB.com's Brian McTaggart before the game Saturday, "I feel him cause he's working his tail off to make it better, he's putting in a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of energy, he cares a lot, things aren't going his way and he hasn't really gotten any luck along the way."
On Saturday, the Astros did bench/rest him because Clay Buchholz was on the mound, and he's normally a pretty tough pitcher. In the eighth inning, they did call on him to enter the game to pinch run. When the game went to extra innings, he did get an at bat, and he struck out.
You want to Gomez to do well, his energy in one of a kind. I mean how many players say they play sexy? Zero, just Gomez.
I understand the position Hinch is in. Look you got to play someone out there, but no one is really producing so why not just let Gomez keep playing? Who's better? It's not like Jake Marisnick is batting .300, .200 or even .150 (he's batting .100 as of 5-15), but he's another problem for another day.
Hinch uses the ingredient's that he has in the pantry, he isn't the one going to the story and getting what he needs. So if he doesn't have sugar, it's his job to still try and make a cake without sugar. Astros G.M. Jeff Luhnow is the guy that is shopping for the ingredients. Hinch might tell Luhnow, he needs sugar, but it's up to Luhnow whether or not he wants to go get it.
You can't be upset at Gomez, he's trying, he's working. You can't really be upset with Hinch, what else is he going to do, his hands are tied. For now, maybe the best thing is to keep running him out there, either he gets better and finds his swing, or maybe Luhnow finally decides it's time to head to the store and start shopping for sugar.
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