2011 wasn’t supposed to go that way.
For a guy who’d hit 38+ HR 7 straight seasons, a move from a neutral ballpark to one that improved power for lefties was supposed to keep that streak intact. Instead, Adam Dunn had a season he couldn’t have imagined even in his worst nightmares.
There has to be some explanation for going from a .260/38/103 line in 2010 to .159/11/42 in 2011 but for all the factors that changed for Dunn from 2010 to 2011, even when you combine them together you can’t fully account for that large of a drop in stats.
In most cases, large drops like this often occur when a player hides playing through an injury but in this case, the only thing we know that affected Dunn last year was an April appendectomy. Surely he would’ve healed and gotten back to full strength before the end of the season right?
Some will point to the fact that Dunn was unhappy playing DH full time, while others will look at his .240 BABIP. Obviously a 43% K% is really high, even for Dunn, a .064 BA against LHP (it was an absurd .019 in 1H) certainly hurt the production and an 11% drop in HR/FB% can explain the drop in HR, but we still have no idea why all this occurred.
While it would be nice to have some sort of explanation for Dunn’s drastic drop in performance last year, the real question keeper league owners want to know the answer to is whether or not he is a keeper for 2012.
I’ve talked about Ron Shandler’s findings regarding player’s regressing to their historical levels before on this blog, even talking about Dunn in that post. While most sites and analysts feel Dunn will be closer to the player he was in 2011 as opposed to 2010 and earlier, I’m going to go against the crowd and say Dunn’s 2011 will only live on in his nightmares after 2012.
Dunn may not be the 40 HR hitter he was a few years ago but at only 32, there’s no reason to think he can’t hit 30-35 over the next couple of years. If you’re a keeper league owner looking for a cheap option at 1B that can give you a nice profit, Dunn is the guy to target. Get him now while everyone is down on him and laugh at everyone else when he looks like the Dunn of old in 2012.
And if you own Dunn, you’ve made it this far, what’s a few more months?
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