It’s one of those things that no one likes to talk about, especially Dodgers fans when it involves one of their favorite players and even more so a rookie player who began his major league career in Rookie of the Year fashion – a horrific batting slump.

Even without mentioning his name you immediately know who I am referring to.

It the simplest of terms, a guy who has 83 strikeout in his (thus far) 198 official at-bats for an atrocious 41.919% strikeout rate does not belong at baseball’s highest level. In fact, and according to the great folks over at FanGraphs, here are the MLB strikeout (and walk) percentage ratings:

If 27.5% is awful, what does that make 41.919%?

In a word, unacceptable.

If you haven’t figured out who I am referring to (and how could you not), it is extremely popular 26-year-old Dodgers outfielder James Outman, who struck out in three of his four at-bats in Thursday’s exciting 5-4 Dodgers walk-off win over the American League Central third-place Chicago White Sox in front of a screaming Dodger Stadium crowd of 48,655. He did, however, single to center in his third at-bat of the night and scored on Chris Taylor‘s (then) game-tying grand slam home run, so there’s that.

Please understand that this is not a trash-James-Outman piece. In fact, I am among those ‘one of their favorite players’ guys. But the simple truth is that the extremely popular Redwood City, CA native and Dodgers seventh round draft pick in 2018 out of Cal State Sacramento needs to spend time at Triple-A Oklahoma City to figure out his issue(s), not under the lights at Dodger Stadium.

Play Ball!

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