P2Daily: Strikeouts Continue To Plague Greensboro

It’s been a weird season for the Greensboro Grasshoppers. After Saturday’s loss, their record has dropped to 21-28, with only Jersey Shore behind them in the South Atlantic North division.

While the pitching has had its own fair share of troubles adjusting to a more hitter friendly ball park, the offense has had its own struggles.

That’s crazy to think, as Greensboro still leads the Pirates system in home runs per game, with a 1.34 mark as of this writing.

Regardless, runs are down even when just looking at games being played at First National Bank Field, where balls fly out at will.

Last year, Greensboro hit 1.91 home runs per game at home, 5.96 runs, and went deep once ever 17.14 at-bats. They scored a total of 358 runs in their 60 home contest, 115 home runs. The offense was able to score nearly at will.

The 2022 edition of the Grasshoppers is barely over the five run per game mark (5.09), home runs at 1.68/game and 19.17 AB/HR. They’ve scored the fourth most runs and are tied with Greenville for the most home runs at home.

Still not too shabby.

Over a full home schedule of 60 games, that’s 54 runs less and 15 fewer home runs from this to last. That’s nearly a run per game. At some point, that adds up.

So what’s the difference?

Greensboro is striking out at an alarmingly high rate in 2022. They lead all teams in the South Atlantic League in strikeouts by 54. Their strikeout rate is also the highest in the league, coming in just under 30% (29.7).

Comparatively, the 2021 Greensboro team struck out 26.5% of the time. That small difference adds up to almost 150 extra strikeouts over a full season. That’s a lot of at-bats where the ball doesn’t end up in play.

Of the eight current players on the roster with at least 100 plate appearances with Greensboro this year, only two do not have a strikeout rate of over 30% (Endy Rodriguez and Abrahan Gutierrez). Even those two, neither of which have had a full season where they struck out over 20% of the time, are pushing that mark (27.2% for Rodriguez, 27.9 for Gutierrez).

As far as the schedule goes, Greensboro will have played 26 at home by time the weekend is over and done, which is nearly halfway through. Not much time left to turn things around.