Cesar Hernandez is an odd guy in one way, I think he is strongly adherent to the old baseball book. When he hits leadoff he tries to draw walks, work counts, when he is moved to 5th/6th/7th he moves to a more hard contact / drive the ball effort.
Before he started leading off in his career there were comments that he didnt draw all that many walks and didnt really have enough power to justify his position, but we had a terrible team and he was a young guy that we thought could grow with the team.
Then he became the leadoff hitter and we thought we had found something as suddenly he changed to a patient hitter with a very good OBP but still not much power.
Last year was an aberration as his walk rate went way up, but his BA went down. We know he was hurt, I think he tried to compensate and became "too patient", not hitting hittable pitches in hopes of working the count further. The 15% walk rate was great, but his OBP actually went down because he wasnt hitting.
Now he is no longer normally the lead off hitter and I think he has (mistakenly) changed his approach. I think he has gone opposite of last year, now trying to drive pitches rather than work counts because he is hitting 5th-7th. He would be better of just doing what he does best, hit .280, walk 10% and have limited power. That is the best he is, and that is about a 100 OPS unfortunately. He will hit more extra base hits this year than any other of his career, but his walk and strike rates are way, way down. He is trying to drive the ball, but he simply is not good at that.
What he needs is to hit 6th but somehow convince him that he needs to pretend he is hitting leadoff. That is what he does best, but he really is only an OK leadoff hitter.
