Yankees: What in the world has happened to Didi Gregorius?

In the month of April, there wasn’t a better player in baseball than Didi Gregorius. The Yankees shortstop was named the player of the month and was the early front-runner for MVP. However, in May its been a completely different story for Didi as he’s currently in the midst of the worst slump of his career.

What a crazy first two months its been for Didi. In April he carried the Yankees offense with a historic start to his season, batting .330 with 10 home runs and 30 RBI. He looked to be on the verge of superstardom and he was finally earning the respect around the league as one of the premier shortstops in the game today.

You could argue that’s still the case today but in May he’s done himself no favors to keep his name in those discussions. He’s batting .109 this month with 0 home runs and only one RBI. In his last 10 games, he’s 1-45 and his season batting average has quickly dropped all the way down to .248, following another 0-4 Friday night.

To put things into perspective it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen a Yankee go through this bad of a stretch in my 23 years of life. The worst one I can recall dates all the way back to 2004 when Derek Jeter went through a 0-32 slide in late-April of that season. Of course, that poor stretch was just a blip on what turned out to be another All-Star campaign for the Yankees Captain in which he ended up with a more than respectable .292 average.

For Didi, he can take solace in the fact that there’s still plenty of time to turn things around just as his predecessor did back in his heyday. He’s proven that he can get just as hot as he is cold right now, but for him, it should be all about staying consistent from here on out.

That’s one thing Didi has always been over the past couple seasons. Sure every hitter can be streaky at times, but as long as you continue to have quality at-bats that can help your team win games that’s all that really matters to players like Didi. That’s why it’s been so shocking to see him go through these struggles because lately his at-bats just haven’t been very competitive.

It’s not that he’s striking out a ton, he’s just he’s not making productive outs or working deep counts like he was earlier in the season. As Didi said of his struggles per Coley Harvey of ESPN:

“I’m not happy with the at-bats, because I’m not helping the team.”

In April, Didi was on pace to put up career-high numbers in walks and OBP with 16 BBs and a .422 OBP. He’s still on pace to do so, but he only has five walks in May and his OBP is an abysmal .155.

Part of it has been hitting into bad luck because he has been putting the ball in play. In recent days we’ve seen a lot more lineouts and deep fly balls to the outfield with nothing to show for. However, earlier in the month it was more groundouts to the right side of the infield and weak pop-ups.

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At the plate, Didi uses his aggressiveness early in counts to his advantage but during this slump, it seems he’s been a little too eager on the first pitch of counts. He loves to swing at that first pitch, but lately, he’s been swinging at everything, whether it’s in his zone or not and that has led to some weak contact.

As I said before his swings have been better of late, but the approach is still something he can work on. After his incredible April pitchers are obviously attacking him differently and trying to get him to expand the zone because they don’t want to give in with something he could do damage with.

That’s something he might not be used too, but now that he’s batting third in the Yankees lineup between Judge and Stanton it’s something he’s going to have to adjust too. He needs to get back to a more patient approach and realize that pitchers can ill afford to put him on base with a walk because he has Stanton and Sanchez ready to do damage right behind him.

No need for panic, Didi will be just fine

Despite his struggles, myself and Yankee fans everywhere should have no doubts that an adjustment will be made and a turnaround is soon to come. There’s no need to panic or talk about dropping Didi in the lineup because he is way too talented of a player for this to continue.

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Expecting him to hit .330 with 10 homers and 30 RBI every month isn’t likely, but it’s even more unlikely for him to continue hitting barely over .100. Every great player has gone through that one slump that will go down as the worst of their career, but they always come out of it at some point to produce at an elite level once again.

It’s only a matter of time before Didi gets back to that level and once he does watch out because this Yankees lineup could truly become unstoppable.