At the end of this baseball season, two of the games best center fielders, Torii Hunter and Andruw Jones, will hit the free agent market. Both are looking to sign long-term deals even though they will both be over 30, and both will be looking for mega-bucks (presumably from their current teams, but perhaps not).

The big difference right now is that one of these guys is having a career year and watching those dollar signs go up and up, while the other one is Andruw Jones.

Partially out of sheer morbid curiosity and partially because I feel like I wasted a third round pick in my most competitive fantasy league on him, I wanted to examine this anomaly that is the 2007 Andruw Jones and see what is really wrong with him and if there are any signs of turning things around. I have a theory here, but I will share it as we get closer to the end. Here’s a clue, though….he really wants to see the money.

I hear people say all the time, “His batting average is so low, and his power is down - that’s why he is having a bad year.” Fine. But WHY is his batting average down and WHY is his power down? He doesn’t appear to be injured. He isn’t very old. It must be something else. Is he unlucky? Is he getting fooled more than he used to? Are pitchers pitching around him more? These are the questions I am looking to answer.

First let’s look at Jones’ production per year since 2000, and then his average year from 2000-2006, and his current 2007 pace for those same numbers:

So the numbers are right here in front of us and they are pretty glaring. Excluding walks, Jones is at least 15% worse than his average season in every one of the these categories. Now we need to start looking at why that is. What is causing a low average, low power, but more walks. For example, you can’t just say, “he has stopped hitting for power,” unless he is injured or old. WHY has he stopped hitting for power?

In order to not to get too confusing here, I am going to list a group of predictive stats where Jones has the lowest numbers of his career this year, and then pick a few to analyze:

Strikeout % - 27.6% (career 21.8%)
Isolated Power - .183 (career .236)
BABIP - .229 (career .284)
RC/27 - 3.77 (career 5.91)
GB/FB Ratio - .82 (career 1.03)
HR/FB - 13% (career 20.5%)
EqA - .245 (career .283)

Looking at these, combined with the fact that, despite his other struggles, he is on pace to draw the third most walks in his career, I think I have noticed a pattern. I truly feel like Jones has fallen in love with the idea that more homeruns will give him more dollars this winter and he is doing everything he can to get every last HR he can. Here are the reasons why I believe this:

Pitch Selection - The relatively high walk rate shows that he has chosen not to swing at bad pitches or ones he can’t handle well. Balls just inside or just outside that he may not be able to drive can’t help him, so he will lay off of them. Balls high or low might lead to groundballs or pop-ups, so he lays off of those too. This leads to more walks.

But, it also leads to the need to swing at almost every pitch in the strike zone, or every pitch that appears to be in the strike zone (sliders, sinkers, etc.). Jones is on pace for 1680 pitches that are strikes this season, the most in his career. Tinkering with your swing, trying to mash homeruns every time up, and favoring the back foot causes severe upper-cut swings (here is the most famous example from this season, a walk-off homerun against the Phillies on April 30) and an increased number of fly balls on balls put in play. Which brings us to the next step.

Ground Ball/Fly Ball ratios - Not mentioned above in the stats is the fact that Jones’ FB ratio is the highest of his career at 45.5%, and that his GB ratio is the lowest of his career at 37.3%. This translates into the number you do see above, which is his GB/FB ratio of 0.82, the lowest in his 10 years in the Bigs. So, almost half of Jones’ balls in play this year are fly balls instead of line drives and ground balls, where the majority of hits come from.

Compound this with the fact that his HR/FB ratio is also the lowest of his career at 13%, and you have a recipe for disaster. More fly balls in play equals more outs being made per time you put the bat on the ball, which brings up the next point; BABIP.

Batting Average on Balls in Play - This stat is becoming more and more popular to try and determine why a hitter has a certain average when it is so far above or below his career norm. A batter with abnormally high or low BABIP can usually attribute it to bad luck, and can expect some regression. But, the same light, high or low BABIP can almost always be directly correlated to success in batting average. We can apply this here to Jones. His BABIP is the lowest of his career at .229. This number is abysmally low, as an average number is somewhere around .290, and Jones is at .284 for his career.

In the second half, one would expect that number to rise just because the law of averages says it almost has to - it really is that bad. But more fly balls do lead to easier outs on balls in play, which leads to less hits and, in turn, a lower batting average. And on the at-bats where he does get a hit, the power is still not following, for reasons we talked about above, and further evidenced in my last point.

Isolated Power - Subtracting AVG from SLG can give an interested party a quick and dirty look at what kind of power a hitter displays beyond just what their batting average looks like. Before this year, Jones’ last time with an ISO number below .208 was his rookie season in 1997 when it was .185, still higher that he .183 he is displaying this year. A combination of many fly balls plus a Line Drive Percentage of 17.3% (below his career average of 18.2%) is leading to much less power for the famed slugger who hit 41 and 51 homeruns the past two seasons. So much so that Jones’ SLG% this year is more than 100 points below what his career average is (.382 to .499).

Now I am not a hitting coach by any means, but my remedy for Jones would be to expand the strike zone a little bit so he can hit to all fields (line drives to all fields, that is), while still keeping the selective eye that allows him to take the walks and get on base. Also, go back to the line drive swing that helped Jones so much in the seasons where he was hitting between 35 and 50 homeruns a year.

Homeruns might look like the key to the offseason treasure right now, but everyone is sure going to be second-guessing a 31-year-old center fielder with a batting average of .200 with no power if he ends the season that way. An all-around hitting approach would do Jones a world of good right now and, more importantly, would also allow him to help save my freaking fantasy team!