Morneau’s “second half slumps” not as bad as you think
As the Minnesota Twins season winds to a close, either barely eeking into the playoffs or barely missing them, there is a lot of discussion about the second-half struggles of Justin Morneau. This idea has taken on legendary proportions about how Morneau is Harmon Killebrew-like in the first half, and Scott Stahoviak-like in the second half. I wanted to look at whether this was really the case, and whether Morneau really was significantly worse in the last 81 games than in the first 81. What I found will surprise many. I think these numbers speak to two points:
1) Morneau isn’t as bad in the 2nd half as people like to think. While his power numbers drop off in the 2nd half over the last four years, he’s still a .283 hitter averaging more than 10 HRs, more than 40 runs scored, and more than 50 RBIs in the last 81 Twins games of each of those four seasons.
2) Those numbers include this year, a particularly bad one, and it goes to show that this year was very likely a result of his back injury.
3) The Twins playoff hopes are fairly independent of a slight decline in production from Mauer and Morneau. Pitching is truly to blame or credit for the ups and downs from year to year, as we’ve seen the gamut run on good and poor years (by their standards) for Mauer and Morneau, and the Twins hopes have not correlated very well.
I provide you with the spreadsheet I put together (numbers as of early in the week). Just for reference, there is a tab on the spreadsheet (bottom left) that has Mauer’s numbers as well. While Morneau’s 2nd half production has dropped 18 points and a fair amount of power, Mauer’s decline has been even worse, dropping 33 points and, until this year, completely lacking the power numbers in the first half or second half. That’s not a commentary on Joe Mauer, but it does provide some perspective.
