Franmil Reyes hasn't lived up to slugging expectations

A partial list of major leaguers with more home runs this year than Franmil Reyes: Cal Raleigh, Kyle Garlick, Brandon Marsh and Seiya Suzuki. Don't look now, but you aren't far behind Reyes in home runs. He has three. The last time I checked, you had none. But it's still early. The Guardians as a team rank 12th in the American League in home runs. Keep this to yourself, but the Orioles have hit more home runs than the Guardians. Repeat: The Orioles! Paging: Franmil Reyes! Going into this season, one of the few things Terry Francona wasn't worried about was the number of home runs Reyes would hit. Reyes hit 30 homers last year and 37 in 2019. This year he ranks 51st in the American League, and he's being outhomered by Suzuki. Not only is Reyes not hitting home runs, he's not hitting anything. Among qualifying hitters in the major leagues entering the weekend, Reyes ranks 159th in hitting with a batting average of .195. He was 78th in the American League in hitting. As you've probably noticed, Reyes strikes out a lot. He's second in the American League with 57. On average, he strikes out once every 2.3 at bats, which is basically every other at-bat. Fortunately for Reyes, nobody cares about strikeouts anymore. The analytics nerds that run the front offices of most major league teams don't care about strikeouts. To them, an out is an out, even though it isn't. An out that moves a runner up a base is better than a strikeout, which accomplishes nothing. In Reyes' case, however, strikeouts are not a big deal. The Guardians will live with the 100-plus strikeouts in exchange for the 30-plus home runs. This year, however, the Guardians are getting shortchanged on that exchange rate. Reyes is striking out with his usual frequency, but he isn't counterbalancing that by hitting home runs at a 30-homer pace. That's a problem, and that's why Reyes was recently placed on the injured list, supposedly with a strained hamstring. That may be true, but it may also be true that Reyes was put on the injured list with a strained swing, i.e., too many strikeouts and not enough home runs. For the Guardians, this is a major problem. Reyes was supposed to be the middle-of-the-order masher who sent pitchers' mistakes into orbit. Instead, two months into the 2022 season, Reyes (.195 batting average, .255 on-base percentage, .278 slugging) is a poor man's Joey Gallo (.168/.277/.310). Or maybe it's vice versa. What it is unquestionably is a problem for a Guardians lineup that was counting on Reyes and his tater factory occupying the No. 4 spot in the lineup, and blasting pitchers' mistakes into orbit. That hasn't happened, however, and that means the Guardians must string together hits in order to create a rally that produces more than a single run. While Reyes is on the injured list, maybe his hamstring will allow him to get some extra swings in the batting cage in the hopes that his 2021 swing will elbow his 2022 swing out of the cage. Another option, however, is one that no Guardians' officials thought they'd be forced to ponder at the start of the 2022 season. Reyes could be optioned to Triple-A Columbus. He has three-plus years in the major leagues, but he also has two minor-league options left. Sending him to Columbus in search of his swing would not be ideal. But when an all-or-nothing slugger is, over a two-month span, long on "nothing" and short on "all," sometimes sending him to Triple-A, where the at- bats aren't nearly as crucial as they are in the majors, can sometimes kick-start a hitter's engine. Let's see how long Reyes remains on the injured list. It would seemingly not be out of the question that when his hamstring stops barking that he could be sent to Columbus in hopes of finding the swing that carried the Guardians lineup at times over the last couple of seasons. Sluggers who have lost their way are not unusual in baseball. In Reyes' case, his history is that he follows streaks of prolonged groping with streaks of long-distance walloping. For the groping group, sometimes the best remedy is a couple of weeks' worth of at-bats against Triple-A pitching, which might lead to some longball lullabies, and a subsequent trip back to the big leagues. That's especially true if the big-league club is having trouble consistently creating offensive havoc, which certainly has been the case for the Guardians, who went into Saturday's game at Detroit having scored three or fewer runs in seven of their previous 10 games. Nothing persuades an over-amped lineup to relax more than a big bopper bop-bop-bopping the long ball. At his best, that's what Reyes is. At his worst, that's where Reyes is now. With only three more homers than you. Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com.