J-Hey in LA

 

When the Dodgers acquired Miguel Rojas, David Peralta, Noah Syndergaard, J.D. Martinez and Jason Heyward prior to the season, I was not expecting J-Hey to be the one with the most consistent numbers.

I mean, those other guys have been fine. Martinez was a starting All-Star and gave them a 25-homer year. Rojas and Peralta have done well enough in starting roles despite being a bit further from their prime than the Dodgers would have liked. Thor...well, Thor's looking for a job. But Heyward was signed as a depth option. Like, it'd be nice if he made the team, but the last few years in Chicago give off the impression that the veteran outfielder didn't have much left. So the Dodgers were taking a calculated risk with J-Hey, and crossing their fingers that they'd get something out of it.

To their surprise, and to mine, Heyward is having his best season since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. His OPS is over 800, he's hitting .262, he's got 35 RBIs and 13 homers, and for the first time in a while his defensive ability isn't doing all the work.

I was thinking about this recently. In 2010, Heyward was flooded with OMG reactions upon entering the league, and was one of the biggest stars in the game within a year or so of coming up. The guy also has a cumulative 30 WAR through his first six seasons, and was a big piece of great Braves and Cardinals teams. Heyward in the early 2010s was absolutely astonishing, and one of those players with a massive exclamation point who excelled in multiple facets of the game. Since joining the Cubs in 2016, he's had a cumulative 10 WAR. Shohei Ohtani has around that much this year alone. It saddens me that Heyward had so much of a career drop-off, even if it got him a ring. And it wasn't even a 'stats slide after 30' thing, no, he was 26 when he started slumping. And as much as I applaud the number of 20 or 21 year olds coming up these days, that can happen. People can peak too early. It's something that's worried me with Juan Soto. 

I'm really just glad that Heyward can be a part of this Dodgers team now and have some things to contribute. If you'd have told the blogs in 2011 'oh, Heyward's gonna be a Dodger soon', people would go crazy, but this is a calmer, more low-key Heyward performance and he's doing really well in a veteran bench role for this team. At 33, it is very nice that he can still be an essential piece of a playoff team, and with the Dodgers still surging and heading for a high seed in October, I hope Heyward can have a nice role in their success.

Coming Tomorrow- This is a year where the people you've heard of in the Orioles' rotation aren't doing near as much as the people you've never heard of. Here's another one of those.