The Kansas City Royals have struggled this season, and sone of the biggest struggles have come from one of the most important pieces to the team.
Vinnie Pasquantino is typically a slow starter, but when does a slow start become a bad season?
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Through 46 games, Pasquantino is batting .198 with five home runs, 22 RBIs, 39 strikeouts, a .279 OBP, .331 SLG, .610 OPS, 73 OPS+, a 19.8% strikeout percentage, which is the highest of his career, and a -0.1 WAR. These numbers are much worse than what the Royals expected, and that has had a huge negative impact on a team that relies on him to have another 90-plus RBI season.
The biggest question amongst fans is what needs to happen with Pasquantino.
There are three prominent options. Option one is moving Pasquantino down in the lineup, which we have seen in past years. The last two years Pasquantino has started off slow, the Royals have moved him down in the lineup, and he quickly turned his season around.
So far this year, Kansas City has yet to fully commit Pasquantino to a stint in the bottom half of the lineup. Out of 46 games, he has batted sixth only four times. It would make sense to try it soon to see if that would fix him once again.
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Matt Quatraro did move Pasquantino down to the seventh spot in game two against the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday, now the Royals will have to see if that sticks for a while.
An unlikely option, but one worth mentioning, is considering a stint in Triple-A. For some, it seems crazy to send down a proven hitter with four years under his belt, but maybe it is not crazy. In 2014, the Royals did that with Mike Moustakas. Moustakas started off 2014 in the same boat as Pasquantino, with four years under his belt and a slow start, so Kansas City chose to send him down on May 22nd and recalled him on June 1st. Moustakas did not look back and stayed consistent from that point on.
Option three would be to leave him where he is and cross your fingers, hoping he fixes himself. This deep into the season, though, the Royals cannot really afford to keep doing that.
Kansas City has to make a change soon, because continuing to wait for Pasquantino to snap out of it naturally is becoming harder to justify for a team that is trying to stay competitive in an AL Central division that is quickly getting further away.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com ’
