For all the heroics in last night’s 19-inning game between the Angels and the A’s there was a good deal of ignominy as well. Mostly from Josh Hamilton who put up the snowman in the box score: an 0 for 8 performance. He struck out three times and had eight swinging strikes in all. His best at bat: a sac fly. But he failed to reach base in any of his nine plate appearances.
Hamilton is now hitting 202/.246/.298 on the year. As Marc Normandin of SB Nation points out in his dissection of last night’s performance, Hamilton is now hitting .236/.306/.446 in his last 543 plate appearances dating to June 1, 2012 and he has struck out 29 percent of the time over that span.
Small sample sizes are one thing. This one is getting large.