Scooter Gennett Needs To Bounce Back

Everyone knows that the 2015 Milwaukee Brewers season was very bad. 2015 was a year in which their division rivals, the Cardinals, Pirates, and Cubs all had the top three records in baseball. It also did not help that some of the Brewers most important contributors from the 2014 season like Kyle Lohse, Matt Garza, Jonathan Lucroy, Wily Peralta, and Scooter Gennett performed poorly in 2015.

2015 was not the year all these players imagined they would have, but this is especially true for Scooter Gennett. It was a year in which Gennett was supposed to get rid of his platoon label and finally play every day against both right handed and left handed pitching. He was supposed to solidify the notion that he was the Brewers second baseman of the future.

None of this happened.

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From April 6-May 17 Scooter hit .154 and had an OPS of .403. If Gennett thought it couldn’t get worse, it did.  Gennett went on the disabled list with a hand injury during that time span, too.   Due to this poor start, Gennett was demoted to AAA.  He was recalled on June 11 and from then on he did much better. From June 11 to the end of the season he had a slash line of .287/.314/.419. Those stats are very similar to his 2014 stats. But if you dig deeper into his stats, you will see the production wasn’t the same.   Scooter Gennett is notorious for crushing right-handed pitching. In 2014, he had a slash line of .307/.338/.464 against right-handed pitching.   All of his RBI’s and home runs were against right-handed pitching, too. In 2015, his numbers against right-handed pitching took a step backwards.  For a player whose calling card is how well he hits right-handed pitching, a slash line of .279/.310/.403 just isn’t going to cut it.

If Gennett can get back to his 2014 stats, he gives the Brewers options to either trade or keep him. Either option could make sense. If he gets off to a good start in 2016, they don’t have to trade him at the deadline, they can wait until the offseason given he isn’t a free agent until 2019. By this time, he would have put together a solid track record in the major leagues and could net a solid prospect or two in return.   But if they plan to hold on to Scooter, it would make sense also.   A solid middle infielder who carries a solid bat playing during the prime of his career is not easy to come by.

Scooter Gennett’s progress is something for Brewers fans to look out for. Either way, it is in everybody’s best interest for Scooter Gennett to have a bounce back season.

*All stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference