Much has been made of the Chicago White Sox Adam Dunn, and just how pathetically incompetent he’s been at the plate this season. Yes. it’s been analyzed and over analyzed, but the numbers are still STUNNINGLY BAD! Think about it, it’s almost August. So nearly four full months of the season has gone by and Dunn, after going o-2 last night with a K and a BB against Detroit Tigers lefty Duane Below, Dunn is now 2-68 on the season versus southpaws.
Two freakin’ hits! and 31 strikeouts, that’s pretty close to almost half of his at bats. With his $12 million annual salary, that means the Sox have shelled out $6 million per hit versus left-handed pitching. Just call him Steve Austin (or Lee Majors).
Versus righties, he’s only hitting .198 with 9 HRs and 34 RBIs. So that puts him at .160 for the season.
I’m not going to try and make sense of this, he is a career .245 hitter. It’s just an insanely bad, impossible to conceive type of season. Is it switching leagues, playing DH everyday instead of the field? I don’t know. I just know the numbers don’t lie, and in year one of the signing, it’s got to be one of the biggest free agent disasters and largest waste of money contracts in sports history.
The Sox beat the Tigers to pull within 3.5 games of first in the AL Central last night. Imagine where they would be if Dunn had produced ANYTHING AT ALL this season. Sure, some of this is on Alex Rios (it’s part his fault too), but Dunn is no doubt the southside scapegoat for this season.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, an official Google News site that generates millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports You can follow him on Twitter