Ryan Raburn Through the Years

As Jay wrote earlier, Ryan Raburn has given us a typical Ryan Raburn first quarter. That means he’s been consistently inconsistent, and downright disappointing.

But can Raburn’s past give us any insight into what we can expect in the immediate future? Here’s a look at how his batting line has progressed over each of his four full (ish) major league seasons.

(Click on the image for a full screen version)

The red line represents where we are now, which is pretty much the one-quarter point of the season. As the graph shows us, Raburn’s OPS has been at or below .700 at this point in time in each of the last three years. A corner outfielder without a particularly good glove needs to be hitting north of .750 to be particularly useful.

But let’s shift our focus ahead one month to the middle of June. This is the point in which Raburn has bottomed out each year (after initial fluctuations). Even in 2008, after he hit well through the first quarter, Ryan went on an extended slump and found his season OPS plummet to the .600 range in mid June.

I think we can all see how he’s currently trending (downward). I can’t help but wonder if he is indeed following the same pattern as he has in the past. If so, we can expect him to get worse before he gets better. If “the book” holds on Ryan Raburn, we need to be prepared for an awful month ahead.

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