A Tale of Two Sluggers

It was the best of starts. It was the worst of starts. Two all-or-nothing sluggers are providing their teams with a bit of all and a bit of nothing, and the contrast is instructive.

Mark Reynolds is now donning Indian garb, swinging his Three True Outcomes stick in Cleveland.  Reynolds is the owner of three 204+ strikeout seasons, four 74+ walk seasons and three 32+ home run seasons. 

He's following in the gigantic footsteps of 285-pound Adam Dunn, he of 409 lifetime home runs, 2055 whiffs and 1173 free passes. The Big Donkey is coming off a season in which he batted just .204 but gave the White Sox 105 walks and 41 home runs.

For both these players, it's really all about batting average. Even amassing big piles of walks and long balls, they're not real valuable without a few other hits sprinkled in. Dunn's hitting was 12% above average last year; add in his utter lack of baserunning or defensive value and he was pretty close to replacement level despite leaving the yard 41 times. With Reynolds, it's the same equation with a little more defensive and baserunning prowess, but fewer jogs to first.

With one-tenth of the season in the books, Reynolds is getting it done for the Tribe, collecting seven homers and an 1.128 OPS. Dunn is coming undone: three homers and a .454 OPS. One other detail is worth noting:

Mark Reynolds .298/391/.737, 8BB/15K, 7HR
Adam Dunn .108/.159/.295  3BB/26K, 3HR

Dunn is fanning in nearly half his plate appearances, which leaves little opportunity to be productive. Reynolds is making more contact, which leads to more of everything good.

This bodes very poorly for the White Sox, who are paying Dunn for his prodigious Big Fly tendencies accompanied by tolerable batting averages in the .230s. Since he arrived on the South Side in 2011, he's averaged .179/.307/.374, 28 homers, 95 BB and 219 K per 150 games. Not only is Chicago not getting its $15 million worth, it's not getting roster spot value. And the small sample size excuse doesn't work here because it's 289 games of data.

It's very early in 2013 and sluggers are notoriously streaky, so there's hope for Adam Dunn. The tables have turned and now Mark Reynolds is Dunn's guide. But he'll have to dig back to 2010 to turn things around.