In the eight games since my September 16th post about the ongoing saga (and my defense) of J.D. Drew, the Sox’s much maligned right fielder has gone 7-for-25 with 2 doubles, 2 homers, and 6 RBIs. (That’s good for a hitting line of .280, .357, .643, .1.000.) That’s actually a fall-off from what he’s done overall in the month of September, in which his line reads .323, .443, .565, 1.008 with 3 HRs and 12 RBIs. Here’s one more way to slice this pie: in about 13 percent of the season’s games, he’s hit 30 percent of his home runs and racked up 20 percent of his ribbies.
Granted, that only works out to about 20 homers and 88 RBIs over the course of a full season - but his 15 runs works out to 110 over a full 162 games…and having a guy with a slugging percentage in the mid-.500s hitting in the 5th spot offers a decent amount of protection to whoever is in there batting clean-up.
Two things I’ve noticed—both of which Remy pointed out in last night’s broadcast—were that J.D. seemed to swinging more, and more aggressively, at the first fastball he sees and that he’s using some of his opposite field pop to take advantage of the Wall in left. Whatever else is going on, if it continues it bodes well for the Sox in the playoffs.
I had this theory that Daisuke was going to wait until the post-season to bust out the gyroball and steamroll over the competition (which could still happen, I guess) and maybe JD Drew has also been sucking on purpose all year to give the pitchers a false sense of security. Yeah, that’s it. Or maybe he’s pretending like it’s a contract year in order to psyche himself up. Either way, keep it up dude. Increase that trade value!