There’s no way to sugarcoat this, so I’m just gonna come right out and say it: Trevor Story might be done. What’s going on in Worcester looks far worse your typical “getting up to speed” struggles we sometimes see on rehab assignments. This has all the markings of a bat that’s cooked and an approach that’s washed.
In eight games with the WooSox, Story is batting .138 with a .305 OPS (yes, unlike a Trevor Story swing decision on a low and away slider, you read that correctly). And yet, as abysmal as that line looks, the components that make it up are somehow even worse. Story’s already struck out ten times in 30 plate appearances (so a whopping third of the times), has just one walk, and is still looking for his first extra base hit post surgery. Those aren’t concerning numbers, they’re straight up alarming!
But it’s the ten strikeouts I want to take a closer look at specifically, and that’s what we’re going to do today. So put on your hazmat suit. We’re going in!
First up is Story’s strikeout in Syracuse last week:
What makes this one so bad isn’t just Story chasing a pitch high and out of the zone when it was ball four, but also that he was facing a guy who couldn’t top 90 MPH. He failed to catch up twice. If you want to chalk this up to a guy early in a rehab assignment getting up to speed, that fine, but it’s already a troubling sign.
At least on this one all the pitches were all in the zone, but once again, the guy on the mound wasn’t exactly throwing lightning bolts. Story got the same pitch two times in a row and couldn’t make the adjustment. Again, a troubling sign.
The next game, things got even worse. Here he is striking out on two off-speed pitches below the zone. (Get ready, because this is going to become a running theme later as we continue to plow through this pile of excrement.)
This one’s a bit different as the pitcher never threw anything in the lower half of the zone or below it (did they temporarily lose the scouting report?). There was more velocity than we see Story facing than in pretty much any of these other at bats, but he also saw a trio of offerings in the middle of the zone and couldn’t do anything with it. Another bad sign, just coming in a different flavor.
Now here’s where we get into the true Trevor Story special. A slider low and outside with two strikes that he’s drawn to like a mosquito to a porch light.
Two pretty ugly swing and misses in this at bat too. One on a 75 MPH sweeper that was nowhere near the zone, and another on an 88mph offering he couldn’t catch up to on the outer half of the plate. This is soft, soft stuff and he was clearly overmatched. I’m running out of adjectives (but not expletives) to describe this.
This swing and a miss at a slider was so hideous, the ball is almost out of the picture on Gameday.
Another off-speed pitch Story can’t lay off. This one was ball four by almost a foot.
At least here we have some good news: Story made the right swing decisions. The bad news? He swung at four pitches in the strike zone between 84 and 91 mph and couldn’t put any of them in play.
And lastly, we appropriately have one more wave and a miss at an off-speed pitch that’s nowhere near the zone. Ghastly!
Once again, there is no way to sugarcoat this. These are trash at bats! Not only does Story look lost at the plate, but most of these strikeouts aren’t even coming against arms that remotely resemble major league quality pitching. Knowing this, I don’t think the Red Sox can seriously justify calling Story up to the big club right now. At minimum, they need to leave him in Triple-A until September 4th (which is where he’ll hit the 20 day maximum you can keep a player down in the minors on a rehab assignment) and re-evaluate from there.
As Alex Speier wrote early this week, so much of the Red Sox turnaround this summer has been about better swing decisions, and Story is the flaming antithesis of that philosophy. He’s aging, coming off surgery, looked awful in April and May, is starting to lack the proper arm strength to play short, and needs a telephone pole to reach some of the pitches he’s swinging at. He doesn’t fit!
All this makes it even more galling that Story had the gall to tell the world he’d be ready to rejoin the team after just three rehab games. Here he is on that subject ten days ago from Chris Cotillo:
Yeah, let’s keep re-evaluating until we absolutely have to make a choice in September, because you can’t send this lamb into the lion’s den of Yankee Stadium this weekend unless you have a death wish. At best, Story is taking weeks to recover and get back up to speed. But, more likely, he’s in his final chapter and the team’s obligation to his contract is the only thing keeping the pages turning.
If the top of the organization had the balls he does, they’d seriously consider eating the remainder of that contract and closing the book.
