Matt Gelb

He's deviated from that in such a way that I would be at least a little bit concerned, primarily because that's not how his body naturally moves.

Like Vlad Jr.

running into a pole side home run isn't the aim.

It's the byproduct of a really sound lower half, good mechanics that enable him to feed that swing and beat the baseball to its spot.

My favorite swing all of last year was, of course, in extra innings in the World Series when he hit a baseball that he had no business hitting and double to give you guys a chance to win the game in game seven.

It was an outrageous swing, one of the most outrageous swings I've ever seen.

And very few human beings on earth could do that.

If he saw that same pitch today, he would shatter his bat.

And the reason he would shatter his bat is because he's just not on time that way.

And when Vlad Jr.

is not on time that way, he becomes a shell of himself forever.

the pull-to-pull nature of his game when he's at his best, he's a far cry from that now.

I don't know if it's mental.

I don't know if there's a physical component to this that we don't know about, or if he's just in one of these slumps, for lack of a better term, where he's more concerned about just getting the barrel to it than he is about optimizing his contact.

What I would like to see him do are two things in particular.

The

The first of which is be willing to swing through pitches until you get to two strikes.

I see too many at bats in which he's taking feeble swings, sometimes in hitters counts, which to me is an unsatisfactory way for him to attack in at bat.

I know that that guy can put the ball in play.

Let's wait until the pitcher has count leverage before you do that.