Albert Almora Jr. had an impressive May, producing 8% more runs than an average hitter, but his production has fallen off a cliff since the calendar turned. The centerfielder with a perfect Welcome Back Kotter coif has created 80% fewer runs than the MLB average in June thanks to lots of weak contact.
At his peak, nearly 40% of Almora’s contact was classified as hard, well above the league-average (35%). In his last 50 batted-ball sample, however, the 25-year-old has only made hard contact on roughly 22% of the time.
If this was just a matter of Almora’s plummeting hard-hit rate, there’s wouldn’t be cause for concern.