Kansas City Royals: What Is Wrong With Eric Hosmer

A quick glance at Eric Hosmer’s season with the Kansas City Royals shows the numbers of someone having a great year.

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Through 51 games, the fourth-year veteran is hitting .301 with seven home runs and 33 RBI.

If he kept up that pace he would finish with the same average, 22 home runs and 105 RBI. He also is third in on-base percentage (.376) and OPS (.874), and fourth in slugging percentage (.364), among American League first basemen.

Those are all-star worthy stats.

However, if we calculated on May 14, coincidentally the last day Hosmer hit a home run and the highest his batting average has been all season (.333), the numbers would look much different.

That mid-May night Hosmer when 3-for-5 with a two-run shot to help the Royals beat Texas and improve to 22-13. He then was on pace for 32 home runs, 134 RBI and a slash line of .333/.404/.580.

Those are MVP worthy stats.

However, no one in the Royals organization expected him to keep that pace. This is a guy whose best season was his 2011 rookie campaign when he hit .293 with 19 home runs and 78 RBI in just 126 games.

Now, he is coming off a nine-home run season where he hit just .270. That being said, it would be nice if his production was at least somewhere between those May 14 numbers and the massive slump he has experienced since.

In the 16 games since that Hosmer has played, which has seen Kansas City go just 8-8, he has just 12 hits in 55 at bats (.218) with zero home runs and four RBI. Even worse, he’s only recorded four extra base hits during that stretch.

So just what is it that is wrong with Hosmer?

The answer: It’s baseball.

Just like the team in general, every ball player goes through a slump during the season.

Heck, during Miguel Cabrera’s 2012 Triple Crown run, he went through a 14-game stretch without hitting a home run. Even crazier than that, Barry Bonds went 13 games without one during his record-breaking 73-home run campaign in 2001, and still managed to average a long ball nearly every other game.

Hosmer could certainly drag out this slump and end up with a disappointing season. However, don’t count on it. He’s a good enough hitter (.277 career average), to figure this out and get back on track.

At 25 years old he is just now entering his prime and this should be his best season yet. More than likely he, and the rest of the team, are just pressing at a point in the season where, for the first time, they are not playing like one of the best teams in baseball.

It will probably take a game with a check-swing single, followed by a double that bounces off the third base bag, before he is back hitting line drives and knocking in runs in his sleep.

There’s nothing really wrong with Hosmer, baseball is just funny that way.

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