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Again, let’s start with the basic question of the day:
For right now, there hasn’t been anything Stott has done of late that would suggest the current amount of time he’s getting is justified.
Since May 1, he’s hit .204/.264/.284. That’s an OPS under .560. Read that
again. An OPS that is under .560. That’s not just below major league average, that’s a number that is worthy of a demotion.
He’s got a 76 OPS+ on the season. He’s gotten steadily worse since 2023, a season in which he had a 103 OPS+. We’ve reached the point where, even with his above average glove at second base, the team needs to start thinking about what kind of production is the lowest possible point they’ll tolerate before ceding more and more playing time to someone else.
Maybe that someone is Edmundo Sosa. We’ve written in these pages about Sosa going in cycles where he’s very good, usually followed by stretches where he barely playable himself. But it’s not hyperbolic to say that Sosa has earned the nod more often than not based on the season he is currently having. On a team that needs offense from the bottom of their lineup, adding another bat, particularly one that is right handed like Sosa, can lengthen it that much more.
One could argue that Stott is merely stuck in a rut, that what we’re seeing out of him is just a player that cannot shake his slump, but his data would suggest otherwise. Baseball Savant sees a lot of blue on the stuff that counts when it comes to actually hitting the ball. Sure, his chase rate and whiff rate are still stellar; that’s an area where he has done well in his career. But the data that one looks at when Stott actually makes contact is near the bottom of the league. When he does hit the ball, he isn’t doing anything with it.
That’s got to change.
And soon.
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