Alex Gordon has not exactly fired out of the gates this season. Twelve games in, that is hardly an ‘Oh My God’ situation, especially given that Gordon is a rather notorious slow starter. For that matter, that a guy who has struck out 21% of the time for his career has fanned in 40% of his plate appearances during a twelve game rough patch may or may not be relevant. Quite frankly, it feels much less like impending doom and much more like Gordon is about to break out on one of his well documented hot streaks. One thing is somewhat noteworthy to Alex’s 2016 start: for the first time since the end of the 2010 season, Gordon has struck out in twelve consecutive games.
I stopped perusing game logs for Gordon at that point as one can divide his career into two pieces. There is the 2007 through 2010 beginning years and then the 2011 on campaigns that made Alex Gordon into ALEX FREAKING GORDON. In between the 2010 and 2011 seasons, Gordon and then-hitting coach Kevin Seitzer broke down and rebuilt Gordon’s swing and approach at the plate. It was also in that off-season where the conversion from third base to the outfield fully took place. Reasons and credit due can be assessed however you wish, but comparing 2009 Gordon to 2016 Gordon seems pretty pointless.
Anyway, we all agree that Gordon strikes out regularly whether he is hot or not, but is this twelve game run that has perched him second in the league in strikeouts unique? Yes, no, kind of….
This stretch is not, in fact, the worst strikeout run of Alex’s post-2010 career. Before you breathe that big sigh of relief, it should be noted that said worst stretch was just last September. From the 15th through the 30th, Gordon struck out 20 times over a 12 game span covering 53 plate appearances. There is a whole bunch of cool things that happened to Alex and the Royals between September 30th, 2015 and the start of the 2016 season, but you have the two worst twelve game strikeout spans of Gordon’s last five plus seasons perilously close together.
During the 2014 season, Gordon struck out in 11 straight games and fanned a total of 15 times in 48 plate appearances between June 7th and June 20th. He flailed through another dozen game stretch from September 14 through the 26th: 15 strikeouts in 44 plate appearances.
The closest Alex got to his current strikeout mark in a twelve game stretch came in early 2013. From April 17th through May 1st, Gordon fanned 17 times in 56 plate appearances. That year also saw Alex suffer through another dozen games (July 2nd through 19th) where he struck out 16 times in 53 plate appearances. That particular stretch included 11 consecutive games with a strikeout, and branching out a bit on either side of that run, we see that Gordon struck out in 13 of 14 contests and then 18 of 20.
Here is a fun one. To start the 2012 season, Gordon struck out in 10 of his first 11 games and 14 of his first sixteen. In the season’s first dozen games, he fanned 16 times in 53 plate appearances on his way to starting the season with a less than optimal triple slash of .149/.245/.234. Now, starting on April 20th of that year, Gordon proceeded to hit .365/.452/.603 over the next couple of weeks. The 2012 campaign also included another 15 strikeout run over the 12 games between July 20th and August 1st. It is worth noting that Alex did notch 17 hits over his 57 plate appearances during that stretch: one of only two times in our discussion that he hit above .250 during a big strikeout run.
Even during Gordon’s breakout season of 2011, he endured a similar stretch. From July 5th through the 20th, Gordon went down swinging (or looking) 15 times over a twelve game run spanning 54 plate appearances. You can mess with the start date and give him a 16 strikeout run between July 9th and the 25th, spanning 56 plate appearances.
This is an off-day column. Information, not analysis. What it tells you is Alex Gordon strikes out a fair amount and has had stretches where he strikes out a lot. This one happens to have occurred at the start of the year when it is very noticeable. Do we read something into the fact that the two worst strings of strikeouts in Gordon’s recent history have happened in his two most recent regular season months? Probably not.
How many more games, however, before one should be concerned about Gordon’s strikeouts and, more importantly, his production? How long before we actually do dive into the pitch types and grids to figure out what has gone wrong? I say we play out the month before we tax our brains too much on this issue, but let’s be cognizant of the fact that this strikeout run is a little worse than the usual.