Last season the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Joc Pederson looked like an early Rookie of the Year favorite before a brutal second half. Does he have the tools to turn things around in 2016?
The start and finish of Joc Pederson‘s rookie campaign could not have been any more different. If the first half of the 2015 campaign was a meteoric rise, the second was a staggering fall. The young slugger began the year as one of the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ hottest prospects and ended it not quite sure of his standing in the team’s future.
Through 77 games in 2015, Pederson slashed .241/.384/.529 with 20 home runs and 38 RBIs. He easily led all rookies in homers at the All-Star break and put on an impressive show during the Home Run Derby in front of a national audience. He seemed destined to lock horns with the Chicago Cubs’ Kris Bryant for the remainder of the summer for the rights to the NL Rookie of the Year Award.
Unfortunately for Pederson, the script took a very sour turn. Over his final 74 games of the campaign, his slash line plummeted to .175/.302/.287. He only belted six more homers and drove in 16 runs for the rest of the season. In a Rookie of the Year race in which he once looked like a frontrunner, he finished as a relative afterthought.
What was the cause of Pederson’s remarkable swoon? It could potentially be attributed to several reasons, but a chief one was an overwhelming tendency to strike out. This is not an uncommon problem among power hitters, but in Pederson’s case his lack of plate discipline appeared to wreak havoc on his overall approach as the season progressed.
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Pederson struck out in a whopping 29.1 percent of his plate appearances last year, a rate that was fairly consistent between the season’s two halves. The only problem was that he wasn’t swatting the ball out of the park enough after the break to make it all worth it. Pederson posted a strikeout rate of 22 percent in 2013 at Double-A and one of 26.9 percent the following year at Triple-A. However, he managed to produce 22 and 33 long balls in those two seasons, respectively.
In order to rebound in 2016 for an ambitious Dodgers club, Pederson will need to get the strikeouts under control, or at least start hitting home runs again at a decent enough clip to make his flaws more palatable.
Has his performance in Spring Training provided any promising signs? Yes and no.
In 58 Catcus League plate appearances, Pederson sports a .302/.362/.472 slash line. On the surface that looks respectable enough, and the Dodgers would certainly take the .302 batting average over the .210 mark he finished with last year.
The catch? Pederson has also fanned 21 times in that span for a bloated 36.2 percent strikeout rate. And he hasn’t been making up for it through any kind of power surge: he has hit a relatively modest two home runs this spring in 53 official at-bats. Last season he averaged a homer once every 18.5 at-bats. In addition, he’s walked only five times this preseason for a 8.6 percent walk rate, well below the 15.7 percent rate he managed last year.
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Spring results don’t necessarily mean much as far as the regular season goes. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Nevertheless, the Dodgers can’t feel particularly confident about Pederson looking like a new man at the plate this year. If anything, he seems to be demonstrating the same bad habits, albeit in a small sample size.
Pederson’s struggles might mean that his role on the team is not exactly a given either. A scout told ESPN’s Buster Olney, “He looks like he has no clue. He’s striking out a ton. The question for me is whether they will send him back to Triple-A to get some confidence and to get things right.”
A minor league demotion may be a bit of a stretch, especially in light of the recent injury to Andre Ethier. But if Pederson doesn’t get out of the gate in convincing fashion, outfielders Trayce Thompson and Scott Van Slyke could receive more opportunities in his place.
Pederson doesn’t need to turn into an on-base machine, but he needs to be far more productive than he was in the second half of 2015. If the home runs start coming again, things could easily fall back into place. But it’s hard to see that happening unless he makes and maintains some adjustments at the plate. Due to turn 24 next month, he definitely still has time on his side.
Next: What is Rusney Castillo's future in Boston?
Not too long ago it seemed that Pederson would be a prominent figure in baseball’s new generation of stars. That could still happen, but the road ahead is looking much less clear.