Franklin Gutierrez's almost average August

Franklin Gutierrez has gone from heartthrob to heartbreaker in just two seasons. 

The center fielder’s production has fallen from 2009’s healthy .283/.339 /.425 to this year’s anemic .228/.266 /.278. Gutierrez’s ailment is well known by now: irritable bowel syndrome has sapped much of his strength and, apparently, his ability to not swing.

While Gutierrez’s power woes are discouraging, his batting eye that showed so much promise earlier in his career appears to have been eaten up along with most of his muscle. Perhaps he is pressing, but Gutierrez’s Z-Swing% is up more than four percent from his career average, and his O-Contact% has jumped more than nine percent from his career rate.

In other words, he’s swinging at more pitches inside the zone, and hitting more outside the zone. The rest of his plate discipline stats have remained fairly stable. But just as the Mariners had a resurgent August, Gutierrez also fought back. While he’s still stuck at just one home run, he posted a not-terrible .297/.324 /.366 over 109 August plate appearances, good for a 99 wRC+.

That’s almost average!

Any major league player could post such a line over 100 plate appearances (even Chone Figgins), but Gutierrez’s month is still encouraging. While he posted a likely unsustainable .361 BABIP (his career average is .307), it’s the first monthly BABIP he’s posted over .250. Those BABIP’s seem about as unrepeatable as this month’s—no one is that bad (not even Chone Figgins).

Gutierrez’s line drives didn’t spike terribly in August, but he did manage more extra base hits in one month(seven) than he did the rest of the year (six). And as is the case with any sample size of 100 at bats, fluctuations in his line drive percentage wouldn’t necessarily be indicative of anything.

Gutierrez will probably never be the player he was in 2009; that was a career year. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be useful if he can manage to sustain his August production. He didn’t mash the ball, and he wasn’t extremely lucky. It’s reasonable to think that he could post a high-.600 OPS next year, especially after an off-season workout regimen.

The defense hasn’t gone anywhere, and if he manages to not be Chone Figgins offensively he can still be a valuable asset to the team. While there are other options for center field in the organization now, fans shouldn’t write off Gutierrez just yet. He’s still death to flying things, and he's still got a solid grip on your heartstrings.

And if you’re a gambler, you might even consider going all in on Gutierrez for Comeback Player of the Year. You know you want to.