J.J. Hardy has picked a bad time to forget he’s a power hitter. With free agency around the corner this offseason the Orioles shortstop has yet to homer in 47 games and 193 plate appearances this season, which is awfully strange considering he smacked 25, 22, and 30 homers in the previous three years and has averaged 22 homers per 160 games for his career.
Dating back to last season Hardy has now gone 70 games without a homer. Also odd: Hardy, who’s a career .262 hitter, has a .306 batting average and is within shouting distance (.702) of his lifetime OPS (.738) despite the lack of pop.
Eduardo Encina of the Baltimore Sun asked Hardy what’s going on:
I’ve got no explanation. Yeah, obviously, it crosses my mind, but I try not to think about it as much as I can. I think the same approach, hits will keep coming. Honestly, whenever I’ve hit homers, it’s always come in bunches. I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes. I’m going to continue to try to put good at-bats together and get on base, and hopefully, the homers come. ... I feel pretty good physically.
Baseball is weird.
