What is wrong with Manny now?

About a month ago, people were all concerned about Manny Ramirez. Manny was batting .241, and everyone wanted to know "what's wrong with Manny?" I looked at it and showed that the answer was, basically, nothing.

Not a thing. He's hit into a little bit of bad luck. Period. Like Friday night in Seattle, where he hit a single to center and instead is credited with a fielder's choice because Nixon mis-read it and was forced at 2nd when he went back to first. Manny's demonstrating the same patience, the same ability to reach base, the same ability to hit for power. He's hit into a little bit of bad luck over the first six weeks, and that's all.

In the month since then, however, something HAS been wrong with Manny. He's been awful. And no one seems to have realized it.

Manny Ramirez

	AB	Runs	Hits	2B	HR	BB	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	PA/HR	PA/2B	PA/BB	PA/1B
Through 5/17	133	24	32	7	10	24	164	0.241	0.366	0.534	0.9	16.4	23.4	6.8	11.7
Since 5/17	98	15	28	6	4	5	103	0.286	0.32	0.469	0.79	25.8	17.2	20.6	5.7
Total	231	39	60	13	14	29	267	0.26	0.348	0.506	0.855	19.1	20.5	9.2	8.3

As I pointed out, his singles rate was bad, due, I thought, mostly to luck, but everything else was pretty good. Well, since then, his singles rate has significantly improved. I think I was absolutely right a month ago, but man, he's been brutal since. The big thing is, he's stopped walking. So his approach at the plate's been bad. He's not taking walks, he's getting himself out. Because of that, he's not hitting home runs and he's not hitting doubles. I strongly suspect that the batting average, and people harping on it, affected his approach. He was fine for the first 6 weeks, despite the lower-than-usual (for Manny) rate stats, because all that was missing was 8 singles. Fluke, luck, no big deal. But his approach went bad, and he was genuinely awful for 3 weeks.

Now, there's been some improvement in the last week.

Manny Ramirez

	AB	Runs	Hits	2B	HR	BB	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	PA/HR	PA/2B	PA/BB	PA/1B
5/18-6/9	72	8	20	4	1	2	74	0.278	0.297	0.375	0.672	74	18.5	37	4.9
6/10-6/16	26	7	8	2	3	3	29	0.308	0.379	0.731	1.11	9.7	14.5	9.7	9.7

But that 3-week stretch before they got to Chicago is very possibly the worst stretch of his career. It definitely is if you look at the patience/power combination. He hasn't had an 18 game stretch where his walks plus home runs totalled fewer than 4 since his 25th game in the big leagues.

Hopefully that's done. Maybe the increasing batting average will let him relax and get back to hitting like Manny hits. Whatever the cause of that stretch was, we can but hope that it's over. But it was really, really bad...