So the question in everyone's mind is what's wrong with Ike?
The first thing I'm seeing is that his timing is out of sync right now. With his high leg kick, its harder to keep your body in one fluid motion. So far this season his leg kick is coming down/starting too quickly which leaves his hands behind and late through the zone. This is causing him to foul off balls that he should be hammering.
When you combine the first thing with this second thing, it explains why he's striking out so much. The second thing is his inability to judge the strike zone aka his lack of pitch recognition so far. Pitchers are eating Davis alive on the outside corner and with back door curveballs. In fact the only curveball Ike has made solid contact with so far this season was the 5th!! straight curveball that came out of Tommy Hanson's hand. Then you factor in the amount of mouthing off Davis has been doing to the Men in Blue. Davis is starting to get a name for himself as a "strikezone whiner" and we all know what umpires do when a player complains about the strikezone.....they make it bigger.
Lastly, Davis is just having some dumb awful luck which still doesn't excuse him. The Mets have faced numerous tough pitchers, both left handed and right handed, who have dominant secondary pitches. Whether its been Lincecum, Strasburg, Johnson, Lee, or Hanson, Ike has been getting nothing but the good 'ole #2 from these guys. Until Davis can start making contact against the off-speed stuff he's not going to see a single hittable fastball.
I think that the problem with Ike is that he needed extra work in spring training in order to compensate for missing last year and because of the valley fever diagnosis he had to back off of everything. I wonder if the Mets will give Zach Lutz some starts at first against some lefthanders.
ReplyDeleteI like the comments from"anon".
ReplyDeleteHe's right about ST... they should have left Ike in extended until 4-15.
Instead, he came to Queens NOT at 100%, and had to hit next to Bay.
Every pitcher threw him nothing but curves and he started off horribly...
Now, he thinks every umpire has it out for him and the word is getting around with the umps that there might me a mini 'World Peace' here.
TC will let him work it out for around 5-10 more games, but no more than that.
Ike was brought up before he was ready, has NEVER played a whole season, and has had three med problems in 2 years...
The shame was Alan Dykstra could have helped this year but he broke his arm.
Next in line would be some combination of Lutz/Turner, Spin as UT#1 IF, Ike to AAA, and Flores starts playing 1B in Lucy or B-Town
But... what the hell do I know?
If this keeps up you almost have to put Davis into AAA to figure things out.
ReplyDeleteIf that happens I'll take Murphy at 1B and Valdespin at 2B.
Chris, everybody seems to play the wrong position in this organization.
ReplyDeleteThe Mets have a future all-star natural first baseman.
Lucas Duda.
You don't make Melo your point guard.
You put your best players on their best, natural position:
1B - Duda
SS - Tejada
3B - Wright
CF - Nieuwenhuis
C - Thole
Then... you go from there...