Everyone's Favorite Meatball Yermin Mercedes Has Done A Faceplant Offensively And It Is NOT Because Of Tony LaRussa

I've been thinking about Yermin Mercedes quite a bit lately. Mostly how I feel for the guy; he spent about a decade playing MiLB and only made the team out of spring training out of sheer luck, both of the good and bad varieties. It was bad luck because Eloy Jimenez was punched in the face by the baseball gods right before the season started; it was good luck because there was no way Yerm was making the team out of camp without that injury. The injury also forced Andrew Vaughn to LF, and you don't want to throw someone at a new position 3 days before the season starts.

But the injury did, in a weird way, bless us with one of the most fun coming out parties of recent memory. Yermin Mercedes lit the world on FIRE in April: 

Everybody loved Yerm. Yerm loved everybody, and he relished in the attention that he worked his ass of to earn for 10 years. Everything was, as the fucking millennials say, "Gucci". 

Regression was expected, yes. Nobody can sustain a .446 BABIP or a .415/.455/1.014 slash line. NOBODY. Nobody on earth. But we thought his contact oriented, pitch-to-pitch adjustments would lend for a serviceable holdover until Eloy was back or a trade was made at worst. 

We were wrong. I was wrong, you were wrong, we ALL were wrong. In April Yermin Mercedes was a baseball god. Everyone on the planet was talking about him. The next two months? Not good at all:

Here are his May splits:

And here are his June splits:

Yeah, not good. I was digging up tweets for this blog earlier, and a lot of people are pointing to TLR's "scolding" of his 3-0 bomb against Minnesota as the reason for his dip (to put it nicely) in productivity:

I am going to state this very bluntly: TLR "scolding" Yermin for swinging 3-0 has NOTHING to do with the plummet of his offensive output. Zero. Zilch. I refuse to believe the two things are so incompatible I want to vomit at the notion that they have any relation at all. But, I am wrong here and there. I'm wrong more often than not, in fact. In this very instance, if I'm wrong, then Yermin Mercedes had Z.E.R.O. chance at being a successful big leaguer anyways. Baseball is a game of failure; Yermin Mercedes knows that as much as anybody. But if a player is so mentally weak that they can't take a coach getting pissed off because you swung 3-0 when told him not to? Then that player never stood a chance anyways.

That's all I have to say about that. But Yerm's offensive production has been in free fall anyways, whatever the reason. I tend to think it's because he swings at everything, and I mean that very literally. He's in the bottom 2% in baseball at swing rate: 

and pitchers realized they didn't even have to throw him a pitch over the plate to generate weak contact. That, and his BABIP was on Mars for April, and it was 100000% coming back to earth:

Sure, he'll often times make contact, but who gives a shit if it's weak contact that any decent little league team can combat? Nobody. Nobody on earth. But as a 28 year old rookie, Yerm's days could very well be numbered unless he makes a MAJOR adjustment that leads to him drilling the ball again. If (big if right now) he can carry a .270/.330/.450 slash from here through Eloy's return, we should be VERY happy with that, and if the org is doing it right, he'll be hitting against LHP only with Lamb taking his ABs against RHP. 

And Eloy's due to return soon:

This tweet was from exactly 1 week ago. They said a minimum of 4 weeks, so say his rehab process ends 4 weeks from today for a grand total of 5 weeks of rehab. That puts us at July 19th where he can start playing again. Give him a 7-10 day rehab assignment at various levels of the minors and that's an 8/1 or so return. With Vaughn's emergence of a serviceable OF, Eloy will take over Yerm's place as the primary DH UNLESS Mercedes turns it around to the point where Eloy is back in LF and Vaughn shifts to RF.

That's going to be very hard to do and frankly, I don't see it happening. I hope Yerm does it and that the White Sox have an embarrassment of riches when Eloy returns, but wouldn't bet on it at the same time. We owe Yerm a TON of praise for getting the Sox through April with an awesome offensive output. But baseball is a fickle game; it's what have you done for me lately, and Yerm hasn't done anything at all lately. He's a living, breathing, walking out right now… and Tony LaRussa has nothing to do with that. 

I said it earlier in the post weekend blog; the White Sox need to tread water until Hahn can pounce on a trade and Eloy/Lu return. Simple as that. They are good enough to do so, too. Yerm just needs to start hitting his weight again, because if TA7 and Abreu are slumping, the lineup isn't going to score dick for runs. Hard to win baseball games when your starting pitching has to pitch a shut out every game.