If Navarro can’t learn to lay off pitches while watching Upton, Pena, Burrell, Gross and the others work the count, then there is no saving him.

another value of Gross. He seems to work the count very well. Purely anecdotally it has always appeared to me that he rarely sees fewer than 4-5 pitches and even with 2 strikes will watch a few balls go by and foul off some marginal pitches before completing the AB, even against lefties. Notice too that once reaching a full count he walks 4 times as often as he strikes out, second only to Aybar’s remarkable 61/2 times. (and Kapler’s of course. Even in his deepest slump, Kapler was walking a pretty good % of the time, more I think than he had done during his career.)

As noted in another thread, this year’s hacking tendency of Navarro, while a continuation of his trend while in TB, is completely out of line with his reputation and earlier history and so dramatically different even from last year’s low as to need more explanation. I am not ready to write him off yet or expect Jaso to replace him so soon.

It seems that our pitchers struggle with other teams who foul-off multiple pitches, Kazmir come to mind. But our batters, especially BJ seem to take the close pitch. As the data shows, he strikes out as often as he walks. Why do they take the chance on the ones at the corners of the plate.

Durbin threw him a perfect pitch for strike one, and then in typical navi fashion he misses a breaking ball by a foot. Kennedy said you can’t be sitting on a breaking ball for strike one so why change on strike two?

I watch each and every one of navi’s ABs and he rarely takes a pitch if he has a strike

swing and miss so much, it seems to me he is hitting more line drives this past month than earlier in the year when he appeared to constantly be popping up or hitting weak grounders. Even his foul balls are often well-struck. Is there any truth to that perception?

Ben Zobrist should be an All-Star.

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