Freddy Galvis Has Forgotten How to Hit . . . Again

Look, I'm not going to lie here - I've never been a big fan of Freddy Galvis. Sure, he is a plus defender and seems to have a good attitude on the field, but I never thought his fielding was going to come close to making up for his hitting.

So needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised last season when he posted a .645 OPS and 1.3 overall fWAR.  His hitting was still sub-par, but his defense did in fact make up for his hitting, giving the Phillies a decent stop gap between the Jimmy Rollins and J.P. Crawford eras.

This season, as I feel the Phils' announcers have reminded us over and over, Galvis is really auditioning for the position of future Phillies' second baseman.  With Crawford likely coming to the majors later this year, there's only one other middle infield spot, so Galvis has to fight it out with Cesar Hernandez.  Early returns on both the offense and defensive side of the ball made it quite clear that Galvis was winning that battle.

However, Galvis' recent experience at the plate is renewing the fears that I had when he was starting up, as it's obvious that Freddy Galvis has forgotten how to hit.

Here's his incredibly impotent line over the past 19 games (including today's 0-for-4):

For June and not counting today's stats, Galvis has the worst wOBA among regulars in the majors by a good margin - .145 to Alcides Escobar's .174.  His average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage are each worst in the majors as well . . . and that again does not include today's 0-fer.

In other words, Freddy Galvis has been all sorts of horrendous of late.

But there is hope for the future when we look back over Galvis' career and see that he's been this bad before and bounced back.  The first time Galvis was this bad was from the last two games of 2013 to the first month and a half of 2014.  He wasn't a regular then, so he only had 54 at bats over 19 games, but in those 19 games he had a .111/.155/.111 triple slash (.266 OPS).  He then got hurt, missed three and a half months, and came back strong enough that he posted a .760 OPS from his return on August 23 through the end of the season.

More recently, we saw the same futile Freddy last May and June.  Starting May 18 last year, Galvis had 78 at-bats over 19 games and posted his career-worst 19 game OPS split - .115/.115/.128 (.244 OPS).  He was hitting for a little higher average than his current slump, but drew no walks and had only 1 extra base hit (a double).  However, in mid-June, Galvis got hot (for Freddy Galvis), posting a .790 OPS from then through August 1.

In other words, Galvis' career shows that he occasionally just completely forgets what he's doing at the plate but that each time he has worked his way out of it to become a productive part of the offense again.  Of course, past recoveries are no guarantee that he'll recover again, but signs do indicate league-worst Freddy should disappear again soon.