NEWSLETTER
Christopher Morel did not homer last night, which makes me pretty sure we splintered off into an unreality. The world is now an uncanny facsimile of itself; I know something is wrong, but I cannot identify it precisely.
I kid, but I enjoyed Seiya Suzuki’s joke to the Sun-Times about what happens if you’re constantly hitting home runs, and the expectations it creates.
‘‘Morel is an amazing player,’’ outfielder Seiya Suzuki said through an interpreter. ‘‘There’s a lot of reasons why he’s able to do that, and stat-wise he’s performing really well.
‘‘But when I hit a home run, I don’t want people to know that it’s always going to be there for me. I want some people to praise me a little bit.’’
Heh. In other words, Suzuki doesn’t want homers to become so routine and commonplace that he stops getting love when he hits them. Not seriously, of course. I’m quite sure Suzuki would be happy to hit 55 homers in a row (and I am also quite sure I would praise him for every single one!).
As for Morel, he loves the homers, but he’s still going to be harder on himself than others are on him.
‘‘Everybody only sees the home run [and] is super-happy with this,’’ Morel told the Sun-Times. ‘‘In two days in Houston, I got [seven] strikeouts. What happens if I put the ball in play? We can be better. I can help my team. We can get a ‘W.’ ’’
Hey, if it doesn’t come at a substantial sacrifice of power, then more contact is all good by me. So far in his 13 games up in the big leagues this year, Morel has yet to have a game without a strikeout. But he also hasn’t had a game without a hit, and there are the nine homers.
And if you want to give some love on the contact side of things, it looks like this: after the two games he referenced in Houston, Morel has struck out just 30.8% of the time. Elevated for sure, but that’s absolutely a rate where he can still have overall offensive success (especially when his walk rate is 11.5% during that time, and his ISO is .696 (lol)).
As for Seiya and Christopher, they’re just a couple of buddies who are currently on fire and no doubt appreciate the jokes.
