Dodgers continue ‘to bet on’ Michael Conforto, but can he break unthinkable early slump?
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笔贬翱贰狈滨齿&苍产蝉辫;—&苍产蝉辫;The skill Michael Conforto has been best at this season is probably the last one he ever hoped to master.
“To be good at dealing with a slump,” the 32-year-old veteran outfielder said, “is not something that you necessarily want.”
Then again, when you’re batting .135 on the season, have a lone single in your last 40 at-bats, and have gone a month with as many as hits as double-play grounders (seven each), there’s little else for Conforto to do right now than grit his teeth, hold up his head and believe that — some day, some how — things will finally turn around.
“This game will kick you down. It will kick you when you’re down. It can be cruel,” Conforto said. “So sometimes, you just have to lean on what you know you are as a player, and all the support you have around you … and keep going straight ahead, keep working.”
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who has been stellar most of the early part of this season, gives up five runs on six hits in the Dodgers’ 5-3 loss to the Diamondbacks.
Conforto was first kicked down a month ago.
After starting his season with a six-game hitting streak, and batting .308 with six extra-base knocks (including two home runs) over his first eight games, the man manager Dave Roberts deemed as his “pick to click” in the preseason instead started firing blanks.
Beginning April 6, Conforto went on a nine-game strikeout binge, fanning 13 total times in a three-for-27 stretch that erased any confidence he had built with his hot start.
Ever since, the game has kept giving him a stiff boot every time he’s tried to get his numbers back up again.
Conforto recorded three hits over six games in mid-April, only to immediately endure an 0-for-31 stretch (including 15 strikeouts) that ranked as one of the 10 longest hitless streaks in the Dodgers’ history in Los Angeles — a rut that even a few games using a torpedo bat to couldn’t snap him out of.
He rolled a single through the infield last Monday in Miami, looking to the heavens with a sigh of relief after his first hit in 10 games. But it didn’t prove to be a spark. Despite feeling better about the competitiveness of his at-bats and the quality of his contact this week, he entered Friday on another 0-for-9 skid, the cruelty of his season reaching new lows in the Dodgers’ loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday.
In his first at-bat, Conforto hit a changeup on the screws, rocketing a 101-mph fly ball to deep center. The drive traveled 397 feet, the second-farthest he has hit a ball this season. But it found the deepest part of Chase Field’s ocean of an outfield, tracked down by center fielder Alek Thomas just in front of the 407-foot marker in straightaway center. He frustratedly gnawed on a piece of gum as he trotted back to the dugout.
His next time up, Conforto smoked the ball again, clobbering a 110.9-mph line drive that represented his hardest exit velocity of the season. Before he was even out of the batter’s box, however, he watched All-Star second baseman Ketel Marte climb the ladder and rob him with an athletic leaping snag, turning a ball with an expected batting average of .860 into yet another out.
After a leadoff walk in the seventh, Conforto got one more chance in the eighth. The Dodgers had a rally going, scoring twice to trim a five-run deficit to three. When he stepped in, he represented the tying run with runners on the corners and one out.
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Though he fell behind 0-and-2, he got a good pitch to hit, finding the barrel on an inside fastball for a 95-mph grounder. But once again, Marte was there, fielding and throwing the ball in one turning motion to start a double play that ended the inning.
It was three well-struck balls, for three slump-extending outs.
“I’m definitely frustrated,” Conforto said from his locker postgame. “Happy with a couple hard-hit balls today. Frustrated to be in position to keep a rally going and not being able to beat that ball out. It’s frustrating. It makes me sick.”
Conforto’s overall numbers this season have had the same ill-inducing effect.
His .135 batting average entering Friday is the second-lowest among qualified MLB hitters, one point above Washington’s Josh Bell and 35 points worse than anyone else. His .225 slugging percentage is also next-to-last in the big leagues. His .503 OPS and negative-0.6 mark in wins above replacement rank bottom five. His whiff and strikeout rates are well below league-average.
“If I could tell you exactly why these things happen, it would be a lot easier to come out of them,” Conforto said, somewhat unsure himself of how his numbers have remained so bad for so long. “They signed me because I have good zone [discipline] and an ability to get on base and have some power and spray the ball all over the field. It’s more about just being me and not chasing results.”
Perhaps most frustrating is that Conforto has actually felt more like himself lately.
With Thursday’s performance, he has now recorded a hard-hit ball (one with an exit velocity greater than 95 mph) 14 of the last 21 times he has made contact. He has struck out only twice in his last four games, and continues to draw walks at one of the league’s best rates, his 20 free passes trailing only Shohei Ohtani for the Dodgers’ team lead.
Given the $17 million investment the Dodgers made in him this offseason, and a 10-year career track record of productive (albeit injury-plagued and often inconsistent) offense, he hasn’t been demoted to the bench yet.
Internally, the Dodgers remain hopeful he is on the verge of a rebound.
“He’s obviously way better than he’s been,” co-hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said this week. “He’s a quality hitter. Long history of being really good. I think he’s gonna be just fine.”
Still, until the hits start falling, the mental toll of it all will only continue to mount.
“I think we’re right on the edge of getting things back,” Conforto said. “There’s just been a few of them where, you hit it [well], you look up and there’s somebody there. It just seems to happen more when you’re not going right.”
The biggest compliment Dodgers coaches have paid Conforto recently is how he’s handled this unthinkably bad start.
Van Scoyoc described Conforto, a one-time All-Star with the New York Mets whose career has tailed off since missing all of 2022 with a shoulder injury, as a “pro” who is “ready for every at-bat” and “never throws a fit” about his lack of results.
Roberts said it’s still “easy to bet on him because the head is still there, the work is still there.”
“He’s just got to keep taking good at-bats, and they’ll fall,” Roberts said. “A guy that’s been around for so long, I think he can handle this five weeks of adversity.”
If it goes on much longer, of course, it could lead to more pressing roster questions.
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Even after an offseason in which they added Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki, the Dodgers are back to where they were last year. Their rotation is unraveling.
With both Conforto and third baseman Max Muncy struggling, the Dodgers have lacked much consistent left-handed-hitting depth beyond Ohtani and Freddie Freeman. If neither of them can get going over the next couple of months, it might force the club to evaluate other options as the trade deadline nears.
That’s why the coming weeks seem critical to Conforto. He’s finally hitting balls harder again. He has eliminated some of the indecision at the plate that contributed to his 14 looking strikeouts this season, 12th-most in the majors. He feels like a breakthrough is close, even as his numbers remain at all-time lows.
“Putting together better at-bats, hitting the ball hard, I’ve just got to keep going out there, keep focusing on that,” he said. “Hopefully, [I will] find a couple holes and get it rolling.”
If it doesn’t happen soon, however, it’s fair to wonder if it ever will.
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